19:27:00 05/09/2022

We drove from Coimbra to Douro today, taking our time and driving the country roads.  The scenary is just beautiful through the middle of Portugal.  We left around 9:00 and got to the Douro at just after lunch.  

Getting off the main highway to get to Quinta de la Rosa the winery where we are staying was a bit of a challenge.  The roads are very narrow, two lane and the locals drive faster than Krista was comfortable with, at some points the road is only built for one car.  We were lucky and got behind a large truck that cleared the way for us.

There was also a major distration, this region of Portugal is one of the most impressive, beautiful, majestic, glorious, and amazing places we've ever seen.  This description just does not do it justice, pictures can't do it justice, the only way to really experience this is to come here and take it all in for yourself.  This is one place I will just simply not forget.  It rates up with the Fjords of New Zealand, El Capitan in Yosemite.  Its grandure is hard to put into words.

Once we got to the quinta, the room was ready yet, so we had lunch at their restaurant.  I had the iberian ham, so so good with mushroom, truffle oil mashed potato's OMG they were awesome.  Krista had the chicken dish just as amazing.  

After lunch we made our way to our room, well its more like a townhouse, where the main floor is the living area, and the upstairs section is the bedroom and bathroom.  Once settled we made our way to the pool to take a quick dip, and just relax for a while, we just needed to take some down time.

We had a tour of the winery booked for 5:00pm and with quite a large group we were shown this beautiful winery, how they make their white's, red's and their Port wines, followed by a tasting of all these kinds of wines.  We met a couple from Seattle, and from the Netherlands.  The wines were very nice, as we expected.  Once the tour and tasting were over we headed back to the room to get ready for dinner which was at 8:00.

At dinner we both had the veal, with those awesome mushroom, tuffle oil mashed potato's.  We were seated next to the couple from the Netherlands and had a nice coversation.

Tomorrow we have a tour planned of the valley and three vineyards.