We left Barrio Santa Cruz after 5 days of good food and wonderful sights. The streets were very different this morning – no tour groups, no school field trips, no tourist groups. Empty by all accounts. After a quick coffee stop, we caught a taxi at the Alfonso XIII hotel taxi stand and headed toward the airport, our first trip there. After a few blocks of silence, MLW asked the driver if he thought there were more tourists in Sevilla than normal. The floodgates opened and we had 20 minutes of non-stop, rapid-fire Spanish. I’ve often said it’s a dangerous thing to let a local know that you have a bit of the language because the dynamics of the relationship change instantly. I learned that lesson the hard way many times in China when the conversation went far past my skill level after an innocent comment on this, that, or whatever. In any event, we covered everything that could be covered in that ride.

The Sevilla airport was an interesting object lesson in what happens when a country cares about its transportation infrastructure. Sevilla is not a huge city – about 300,000 people – but the airport was a tribute to what can be done with an old building and a tired site if someone is willing to spend some money to make it attractive. We were greeted by one of the best security zones I’d been through and from there it only got better. High-quality shopping and nice restaurants serving local specialties made traveling through here a great experience. We left on time and landed in Oporto per schedule.

The host of our apartment had arranged for a driver for us who for some reason wasn’t there. I walked back and forth in front of the exit where the other drivers were showing their signs for arriving passengers, and none of them were for us. We waited a bit longer, went back around again, and still no driver. So we caught a taxi and headed to town. It turned out okay as we got one who was completely fluent in English and wanted to talk. He gave us a good overview of the area, even suggesting it would be worth our while to buy a house since their expat program is very generous. Additionally, in his opinion, Oporto is the best place in Europe due to its wine, its food, its people, and its prices.

We have an apartment that’s reasonably placed relative to the major sights and just up the hill from the Duoro River waterfront. And by “hill” I mean a thigh-burning multi-block climb.

After settling in, we decided to try and find some breakfast food so we headed down that hill toward a Spar minimarket. Ten yards down, we passed a fruit stand that I had spotted on Google Maps and stopped to look in the window. The shopkeeper stepped outside and waved us in. We were able to find just about everything we wanted and went back to the apartment almost fully provisioned. We put the stuff away and went back out to find dinner down on the riverfront, a trip that allowed us to fully appreciate the nature of the climb we’d face on the way back up.

We thought the crowds in Sevilla were crushing, but this place made Sevilla look like a ghost town. There were lots of options for eating – each one with huge outdoor dining areas. Given the banquet of options, we chose one that looked interesting; Chez Lapin. It was a good choice, I had pork cheeks once again (Portuguese version) and MLW had seafood pasta. The house wines were again superb, confirming that the good stuff never leaves the Continent.

The climb back up was just as bad as we expected, but we were rewarded at the top with fresh, hot, Pastéis de Nata, those delectable Portuguese egg custard tarts that are famous across the country with each region claiming to be the best. A nice end to a nice day – tomorrow we’ll make a better assessment about this place.