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| Barcelos Bridge and Count's Castle |
Today, we’re visiting Barcelos along the Cávado River, famous for its medieval bridge which leads to a tower gate and the town’s wall. We walked the grounds of the Count’s 14th century home. The symbol of the town is a rooster. The town is on the Portuguese Way and legend says that a pilgrim was accused of stealing, but proclaimed his innocence. Seeing the bishop eating a roasted rooster, he predicted that the rooster would crow proving his innocence. They were about to hang him when the bishop came running, declaring a miracle brought about by St. James. We visited the church built by the Count, where we found some of the floats for the Our Lady of the Crosses Festival.
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| Floats for the Festival |
The story behind the festival is from the 15th century. The town was suffering from a pandemic when a peasant dreamed that a cross was buried nearby. After uncovering the cross, the pandemic ended. We walked through the town, climbed a tower, then visited a cylindrical church which houses the cross of the legend. For the festival, it had several carpets made of flowers. The markets were open, and a carnival was in town. We had a delicious lunch of duck rice at a nearby hotel. After lunch the group practiced our painting skills by painting our own rooster.
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| Painting our own roosters |
We had some time to pack and then we had a final gathering
for a toast and to find out the times for our transfers to Porto airport. Our 6:15
flight called for a 2:30 AM transfer. It was a restless night.
This is a hard trip to summarize. The delays at the locks
turned a river trip into a bus trip and at least 4 times we felt that we were
rushed during our site visits. We were surprised that the riverboat couldn’t
sail at night, and yet we only had one night of local talent. A 16-hour power
outage closed restaurants, shops, and ATMs. This taught us to always carry
several days cash, and then we had a minor panic when we got stuck in an
elevator (only for 10 minutes). On the
positive side: the Douro is a gorgeous river valley and we enjoyed the free
flowing wine. Our highlight sights were Santiago de Compostela, Salamanca
Spain, and the Bom Jesus de Monte. We became close to several fellow
passengers, and the guides we had were an outstanding lot. I was particularly
impressed with our post-trip guides: Haya, Carlos, and Rafiela. Rafiela
impressed me with her strong backup plan if we had a second day without power.
The river portion of this trip needs improvement, but I cherish the post-trip.
A video of this trip is available on youtube.
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| Our hotel in Braga |
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