I couldn’t help recognising the scene in this photo from Saturday’s Guardian Review:-

It was illustrating an ensemble piece about various writers’ relationship with Europe.

The photo brought back memories of that wonderful trip we took down (and up) the River Douro from just that jetty in the picture and which I featured in this post:-

And this one:-

Curiously an item on Reporting Scotland on Thursday? night about the trip of Rangers to Porto for a Europa League* game also showed scenes of the same jetty. Synchronicity.

*So-called.

Hotel Vincci, Porto, is a modern Deco style hotel by the banks of the River Douro. Helitours landing pad is in the foreground.

More of Hotel Vincci fron River Douro- plus heritage tram to left:-

Close-up. I like the clock:-

There’s a different view of the hotel here.

Bank of River Douro, Porto, Dom Luís I Bridge to left of photo:-

Mosteiro da Serra do Pilar, Porto, Dom Luís I Bridge to extreme right:-

Yacht on river:-

Riverside buildings and river cruise boats:-

Another river cruise boat. Its inhabitants must have been visiting the port warehouses along the banks as they were in singing mood!:-

More buildings, Arrábida Bridge in background:-

I took this photo of the Arrábida Bridge (of which more later) from the road above the north bank of the River Douro before we found the starting point for the boat trip:-

And I took this zoom from the bank itself:-

River bank buildings hard by the Dom Luís I Bridge:-

Other river bank buildings:-

Heritage Tram, Porto:-

This bridge seemed to take a road out over the river,* presumably because the houses were right on the bank and allowed no room:-

Cable cars. They seemed to come down from near the Dom Luís I Bridge:-

*Edited to add:- it’s called the Viaduto do Caias das Pedras.

Back to more pleasant things.

This is the Ponte de São João or St John’s Bridge in Porto which appeared in the background of my photos of the Maria Pia Bridge and replaced it as a carrier of rail traffic across the River Douro.

It’s another elegant concrete structure:-

If you look to the left of the bridge support in the above photos you can see kilns. Those brown things look like kilns anyway. This closer view also shows the nice arches on the river embankment:-

Porto is bridge heaven. There are six bridges across the River Douro of which the Dom Luís I Bridge (Ponte D. Luís I) is a two-deck bridge that carries the metro line I featured a few posts ago as well as road traffic on its lower level.

It being a very nice day we enquired about the length of the boat trip available on the nearer boat in the above pictures and having plenty of time decided to go for it.

From that vantage point we got closer to the north bridge support buttress:-

The one below is from the bridge’s Wikipedia page and the last photo is of a distant viaduct bridge somewhere across the Douro which I had taken on the way down to the river:-

Porto is a stunning city. I suppose it helped that the sun was shining – after all, even Cowdenbeath looks good in the sunshine – but the buildings were interesting. Not just São Bento Railway Station and the tiled churches but even generally “ordinary” buildings.

This was just down from the Great War Memorial. That tiled church is just to right of centre here:-

“Ordinary” building:-

Some of the streets were narrow though:-

And like all great cities, Porto has a river, The Douro:-

That way kind of led us out of town so we doubled back and found this way down to the river:-

Looking back up to city from bank of River Douro: