August 20, 2021 – redhouseexperiences.com

After a record number of steps and flights of stairs logged in this unique historical city, we needed a little extra down time to get ready for our flight back to the U.S. on Friday!

Travelling: Covid-19

Covid-19 has upended life as we all knew it for over a year now. And though we are thankful for our ability to travel once again, preventative measures are both understandable and welcome.

We have one major requirement to take care of before we fly – a COVID-19 test. COVID measures here in Portugal have been very reasonable (masks indoors and, when social distancing is not possible, outdoors as well…reduced capacity in retail environments, etc). We had to get a PCR or rapid antigen test (within 72 and 48 hours of flying, respectively) in order to get here, and to check into our hotel. That was all pretty easy since Walgreens provides those tests, and everyone involved spoke American English.

We have the same requirement for a PCR or rapid antigen test for the return flight. So, like most Americans, we consulted the interwebs. We found the requirements pretty easily on the US State Department and the Airline websites. But finding WHERE to get tests was a whole other adventure. One State Department information site indicated that the tests were readily available at the many pharmacies in Portugal. Let me just say, there are MANY, MANY pharmacies here. I’m pretty sure that if you could put the right spin on a ball (to avoid corners) you could hit two or three pharmacies from the one in which you’re standing.

But the pharmacy websites we looked at didn’t provide much assistance (in English, at any rate). Kevin attempted on several occasions to get information directly from the pharmacy we could see from our hotel room; however, actually making contact with a store representative seemed challenging – either the store was closed or there were too many customers in the store (We later discovered the limit was two people at a time). Kevin made contact on Tuesday, and we attended the walk-in clinic Wednesday. Fortunately, we both received negative tests – Yay! Always happy to fail that particular test!!

Aside from that requirement, we are taking time to recuperate from all of the travelling we have done while we have been here. We really like the pedestrian lifestyle (and we dream of a life without an automobile). But our full day of travel back to the U.S. ‘begins’ with a cab ride at 5:30am Friday (Porto time) and ‘ends’ with an arrival at Chicago O’Hare at 8:00pm on Friday (Central Time…which is 1:30am Saturday in Porto). This itinerary comes with a delightful 8-hour layover in Lisbon, so we want to be energized before we head out.

Kevin looks a little TOO chipper for 5:30am!

Enjoying Our Last Few Days…

As our time here in Portugal winds down, we took some time to just stroll around the city and enjoy the scenery a few more times. We will be back, so there is no need to jam-pack our schedule. Every time we go for a walk, we see something new…or maybe just some of the same things from a different angle. In any case, Porto is absolutely beautiful and we enjoy taking it all in without worrying about time.

As we’ve been blogging, we realized that we had drafted several posts while we visited Kathleen and Mo last summer. So we will attempt to get those completed and posted during our downtime. Luckily we have access to the pics….

In the meantime, we hope you enjoy the photo galleries (below) from our last few days in Porto. Bom dia!!

Azulejos (Portuguese Tiles)

Food, Glorious Food…..!

The food was SO GOOD! If we had not walked so much….it would have been ugly for our waistlines!

Street/Building Art

We are really drawn (get it?!?) to all of the graffiti and other building “art” we see when we travel. Porto has some of the best we’ve seen!

Buildings and Architectural Details

Donna really couldn’t help herself…the buildings here are just so, so amazing! All the photos in this gallery were taken within several blocks of our hotel.