What do foot-weary, heart happy pilgrims go for some R&R? Well, somewhere close and cheap and easy to get to. And were we could sample the delights of another culture? Porto was our answer!

We left Finisterre in a state of happy exhaustion on a bus back to Santiago before heading down to Porto. To say that the bus journey from Finisterre to Santiago was just a bus journey would not be doing it any justify whatsoever. For the Saffas, imagine the the Gordon´s Bay-Hermanus coast route with a Spanish twist of fishing boats, a pinch of towns and a dash of villages. Throw in a good handful of the Overberg´s patchwork of wheatfields and distant hills and add a good sprinkling of Spanish/Galician folk along the way and bring out the sun on a sparkling sea. For the Brits, imagine a rural version of the Amalfi coast or a remote coastal road on a Greek island!

After what seemed like a very swift bus journey into Porto(it ONLY took 3h45min to travel 200km! On the camino that took about 8 days hard walking!), we arrived at our "home" for the next fews days.

Historic Porto, like any city based upon a once thriving merchant trade, has its fair share of old splendid buildings. Unfortunately, the hey days are long over and so there is an air of "character and charm" about the place. And so it must be a mixed blessing to be granted UNESCO World Heritage Site status.

Perhaps the rules of applying for, and accepting, the status mean that you can only restore the buildings in the way that they originally were built. Or you leave them as they are. In old historic Porto, it seems that the inhabitants have taken the latter route as to restore any buildings to their original standard would takle the budget of a small country to do so.

However, that does not mean that there are places that haven´t done so. We stayed in what was once a very prosperous merchant´s guest house! Have a look at http://www.castelosantacatarina.com.pt/English.htm and watch the photos change. If this is the guest house, then what was the main house like?! Unfortunately, it does not stand anymore. But the guesthouse does. With old world elegance and charm, it was a delight to stay in and gave a glimpse of another world that existed in this city once upon a time. The dining room probably doubled up as the ballroom where the "saturday disco" was a ball complete with wigged and powdered orchestra and gowned ladies!

But what is Porto without its port? And since we had some time to spare, we thought it might be worthwhile to sample a few of the local varieties in some quaint locations. All in all, by the time we left, we felt that trying 14 different varieties was pretty good going! We sipped and tasted in old port caves, tasting lodges and why not as the sun set over the western Atlantic! It seems that port is changing itself from that stiff pre-dinner drink or with-the-post-dinner chocolate drinks to a more "sexy" version. Don´t be surprised to see some white port and soda water over crushed ice coming to a summer party near you. Move over Pimms, there might just be a new kid on the block!

After some time in a port cave, we were very happily surprised to have had the sun for the time that we were there! And we were also very pleasantly surprised to see that the nearby seaside town of Foz had some pretty fine beached that supported some pretty funky beach bars. We could not decline the yawning inviation of a sunkissed sunlounger on a sunwarm deck over white beach sand! The beers had here seemed to slide down pilgrim parched throats with ease!

So, if you have a little time, a craving for port and the need for some Portugese bacalau, then you can´t go wrong here!