We left out oceanfront hotel this morning for Porto, where we are staying in our first Air B&B apartment. More on that later but we have arrived, met the owner/manager and settled in. The title of this post deives from the fact that there are a lot of traffics circles in Portugal, but as deemed by the Waze traffic app, are in the more British vernacular, roundabouts. And when they occur every half mile or so until your find your way to the highway, the phrase I heard frequently over the last two days was “at the roundabout” do something.  Take the third exit, or proceed straight. Generally it worked pretty well until we were in smaller towns or villages, where the app interpreted a weird street pattern as a roundabout.  We did did several circits of being told to turn left in the village of Tomar, which ultimately got us back to the point of the original incorrect instruction, only for me to make the same error and starte the cycle over with. At which point we followed out noses and got pointed in the right direction..

After that we drove another two hours north to Porto to drop off the rental car, then proceeded to our apartment rental.  It’s a first for us and a big change from two fairly high-end hotels, but so far so good. The location is terrific, steps from the bridge you can walk over to reach Gaia, the city on the other side of the Douro River. We went there last night on the recommedation of out host for dinner. The riverside restaurants are still touristy, but the views of Porto are great and the restaurant we picked was very good.  Called Douro Valhe Barbecue. Simple grilled fish.

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