Porto

Finally, after 20 days on the bikes were having a rest in Porto. The bikes are locked away in a backyard as our landlady says that in porto, the police will arrest you if you take your bicykle too your room???... (I dont quite know what they think we would do to the bikes in the room...)  But there out of everybodys way and its been quite nice to rejoin the normal tourist world. We spend a lot of our time eating nice cakesd and drinking cheap port.  

The city is amazing. Its all quite tumbled down and a bit broken. Lots of very narrow streets and alleyways wind their way up and down hills between 4 or 5 storrey houses. If you look up there are lots of balconies that look like they may land on your head any minute and swamp you with large peoples laundry. Although its mostly shady and a bit dingy in the small streets colourfull (partly because of the laundry) but also because many of the houses are covered with tiles, full of patterns.  Sometimes the litlle streets give way to a tiled church, a square, a fountain and not rarely a speeding taxidriver on the lookout for bikes to run over... Every so often the world of endless small steets, squares and  taxidrivers is interrupted by old enormous buildings with suitably enormous squares to go with them. Then everybody who may be on their bike with an angry taxi behind them can relax and escape. (But thats not us for once. Were all civilised on the sidewalk with our cake!)Very nice indeed.