How hard was it to leave Pinhão! The Douro this morning was like a sheet of blue glass, reflecting the beautiful clear sky (a bit of a surprise actually, as the forecast had been for cloud and some rain).

Before checking out of the Vintage House Hotel we had yet another visit from the evil Baggage Gods! First the good news that Stephen’s suitcase that had been listed as stolen or permanently lost was miraculously delivered intact to the hotel at 10.15 pm last night. One happy camper:

Still one suitcase-less member but Cobie’s hasn’t been missing for long enough yet so hopefully it will be delivered to Óbidos before we depart for Morocco.

This morning’s baggage mishap: Robin and Larry who have the most humungous bags in the universe asked the young man at reception if he could kindly collect them from outside their room this morning while they breakfasted on the terrace. Comes time to depart and all our luggage is loaded onto our coach. But no sign of said large bags. Long story short — they were loaded onto another coach that departed an hour earlier (full of Spanish tourists — say no more…)

BUT…once we deduced what must have happened (amateur Sherlocks that we are), the hotel tracked the wandering flamenco dancers and found that they were in the same town — Lamego — to which we (the intrepid art group) were heading! Driver to driver conversations resulted in the missing jumbo cases being left for us at the Lamego tourist office. Happy ending!

Back to our day. Our bus (albeit 2 bags short) travelled along the Douro to Régua before bidding the river adeus as we headed to the hills. This is a pic of Régua taken by Ev:

OK enough of that. I guess you have got the idea now that I really love the Douro!

Lamego is home to an amazing church (Nossa Senhora dos Remédios — or Our Lady of the Medicines) perched atop a hill with 600 stone steps leading down to the township. A perfect place for our artists to spend a few hours.

Time to admire the artistic creations before the coach took us downtown to a sumptuous lunch and then south on the motorway to Óbidos, our home for the next four nights. More about that in tomorrow night’s blog.