Obrigado Portugal!!

We have arrived back from yet another little jaunt over to "the continent", to Porto (yes! The home of Port wine!) in the north of Portugal. Porto is another ancient city, with it's history going back to Roman times, with a large section of the old part of the city being National Heritage Listed.
We generally had a great, relaxed weekend. We stayed in a beautiful old Hotel, whose lift must have been an original 1925 model, and on the first day explored the city of Porto itself which is based on the steep banks of the Douro River. That evening Portugal played Germany for runners up in the World Cup, so it was great to be there for that. They didn't win, however, so we didn't end up partying late into the night with a jubililant crowd of Portugese....
We did, however, come across a kids carousel which we just couldn't resist despite some bemused glances from onlookers.
On our second day we ventured to Villa de Conde, one of the nearby beaches. The beach was really nice, but we couldn't work out why not so many people were swimming...until we jumped in. Those north atlantic currents coming down from the north sea are a little refreshing, to say the least!
That evening was the world cup final, which we got to see just before we boarded our flight back to london. It did, however, cause mayhem at the airports with pilots refusing to fly until the game was finished, and of course with it going to penalty shootouts it took longer than they expected. We arrived back in stansted (normally about an hour out of london) to huge queues at the passport desks which caused us to miss the last train back to London....three long bus trips and about 5 hours later we finally got home at 4 am.....ready to rise and shine at 6:30 for another week at work...