Two Curious Souls

Porto – The word of the day is Port! The name Porto is derived from the Latin word Portus meaning a sea port which also provided us with the Italian word Porto. Often we would see it as Oporto which is the English version of Porto.   Why does every journey have a last stop? Why is there ever a stop? This is where this one ends. We have decided we could keep on traveling, except… and, there could be no finer city to end this journey than in Porto, Portugal. A beautiful city on the Atlantic with both coastal waters and a river running through it. It’s always the river running through it that reveals a city’s history. Missoula Montana, Wharton Texas and Austin Texas. Pick it. The Douro River’s history has its own story to tell and what a story it is. Almost forever, there have been people that have known how to convert the sugars in grapes into wine. It’s well covered in the biblical stories. There is no other region in the Iberian Peninsula more well known for wines than the...

Leaving the Algarve region was hard. The almost perfect temperatures, the beauty of the coastline and the sandy beaches. We poured our relaxed bodies onto the train in Faro and away we went. As we started getting into Lisbon, we realized we were back in a big city. As we roll across a bridge coming into Lisbon, we see a large statue mounted on pedestals. The Portuguese, almost as much as the Spaniards, love their historical heroes. It’s all part of what makes up the Iberian peninsula personae. The history is colorful, the heroes are plentiful, and there’s a story behind each which makes up the myth of history. But Portugal is not Spain. It's culture and people are very different. And we found ourselves falling in love with Portugal. This is a picture of Christ the King statue on the river and above the bridge we crossed over as we entered Lisbon. (Note: we borrowed this picture off the internet and would give credit if we knew the photographer.) The word of the day is season. For e...