Barca d'Alva for Castelo Rodrigo

The Douro River has become one of the highest demand waterways for river cruises.

With plenty of sunshine and a beautiful country, it's easy to understand why.

If you seek scenic cruising, Viking's "River of Gold" itinerary is a great choice.

Those who see the cruise as primarily a means to get to shore excursions may be disappointed by Viking's approach, unless they choose to buy optional excursions. 

Our ship stopped at 11:30 AM in Pocinho for guests who had booked optional excursions.  Both excursions included lunches to provide a bit of local flavor, metaphorically and literally.

Julie and I enjoyed our standard itinerary, including the leisurely starts for river cruising.  Based on what others shared, our fellow cruisers also enjoyed the trip, regardless of whether they did optional excursions.  Viking knows their clientele.

Morning Cruise on the Douro River with Viking (video).

Other river cruise lines have distinctly different approaches on the Douro and other rivers.  They may stop at different ports entirely in some cases.

If you regularly add optional excursions with Viking River cruises, you may want to give further thought to AmaWaterways, Avalon and Uniworld, which may provide deeper immersion in the region, albeit at higher prices than Viking.

Some of those competitors include both morning and afternoon excursions at no additional charge, as well as choices for different levels of activities based on physical fitness of guests.  Always review the specifics of an itinerary and what is included when choosing a river cruise.  They vary considerably.

It also means you can return to a river you love and have a very different experience based on what excursions you choose.

We again encountered many locks.

Julie took a brief video of one.

Cruising Into Locks on the Douro River (video).

Basically, a ship cruises into the lock.  A huge door closes.  Then, if the ship is going to a higher elevation of river, the lock fills and floats the ship higher.  If the ship is going to lower elevation, water is released, allowing the ship to slowly drift lower.

While river locks make it possible for cruise ships to adjust to changing river elevations, there was a dramatic change in 1790 that was required to make the eastern part of the Douro navigable.

Prior to 1791, boulders that blocked the Douro at various points caused dangerous rapids.  This meant that land that could be productive vineyards could not transport their product.  By removing the boulders beginning in 1790, upriver vineyards became financially viable.

In the 20th century, modern technology delivered bulldozers and dynamite to make easier work of the task of making the Douro easier to transit.  This is another case where I find myself wondering what a modern state like California would do, given modern environmental concerns.

We again dined at a river view table for an unhurried lunch.

Our ship wasn't scheduled to stop at Barca d'Alva until 2:00 PM.  We were delayed a few minutes by another ship using the lock before us.  Locks hold only one ship at a time on the Douro, and even those are shorter than traditional ship sizes in Europe due to lock lengths.

That afternoon, the buses took us to Castelo Rodrigo, where we had what I would describe as a Jewish heritage tour led by our tour escort Inis.  We followed her through the ancient cobblestone streets, stopping to observe subtle markings on homes which held hidden meanings.

The story goes that the hill on which Castelo Rodrigo is perched was used for hundreds of years before the medieval fortress was built on the site of an old castle.  However, there are no artifacts from those civilizations.

It may very well be that if excavations were done on the site, other layers of civilization would be revealed.  For example, in Cartagena Spain, a 6,000-seat Roman amphitheater built at the dawn of the "Common Era" had been buried for centuries before new construction dug it up in 1988, and that's not a unique example.

The pre-historic village of Skara Brae was uncovered when a massive storm hit Scotland's Orkney Islands in 1850 after being forgotten for 5,000 years.

Jay's friend Kim is an archaeologist in Los Angeles County, called out to investigate relics discovered in new projects, often forcing reconsideration of how to proceed.

With Castelo Rodrigo being a United Nations protected historical village, I can't imagine them digging it up soon to see what's below it.

In any case, if you believe the lore, then a forerunner village and likely fortress of some kind has been there since 500 years or more Before Christ.  Some say that might have been a Jewish village.  Over the years, it changed hands between conquering kingdoms, including the Romans, Visigoths, Moors (perhaps Moops if you believe George Costanza from "Seinfeld") and Spanish.

It seems to be generally accepted that the time of Muslim rule in Riba-Coa, which included the site of Castelo Rodrigo, as in Al-Andalus in Spain, was somehow a time of peaceful coexistence between the followers of various religions.  Generally speaking, the ruling class exploits dominance of the others, and I doubt there was an exception in Iberia.

This Gothic Castle goes back to the 12th Century, which if you recall was the time of the Crusades to re-claim the Holy Lands and Iberia from Muslim rule.  The Almohad Califate was a Berber Muslim empire, though it you're like me, perhaps neither name rings a bell.

The Christian army of King Alfonso IX of Léon (Spain) wrested control of "Riba-Côa," from the Berbers, returning it to Christian rule.

Parish Church of Our Lady of Rocamadour founded in the 13th Century

The UN calls Castelo Rodrigo "a rare example of Leonese architecture in Portugal."  I will note that the eastern gate seems to be a Moorish arch though Spanish architecture adopted many Moorish touches, merging them into their own styles.

Castelo Rodrigo was part of Leon's defensive line in 1209, when the town was chartered.

Almost immediately, Portugal challenged Leon's presence.  After back and forth battles, King Denis of Portugal captured Castelo Rodrigo in 1296.  Portugal remodeled the fortress, including building the wall that still surrounds the hilltop village.

In 1492, Spain banished Jews, and many took refuge in Castelo Rodrigo.

A tax of a third of their wealth is said to have been extracted to be allowed to stay.

Scallop Shell Marking Pilgrimmage Route for Santiago de Compostela

Spain became dominant in the area again, and Jews were forced to convert or go into hiding.  They hid their religious ceremonies and took surnames that didn't sound Jewish.  They even did things like making spicey sausages out of alternative ingredients to pork in order to appear more like their neighbors.

There's more history that unfolded there, but most prominent is that Spain burned down Moura Palace, which had been built there for the Spanish appointed Viceroy of Portugal.

Hard to believe, but among the ruins, about fifty residents still live in Castelo Rodrigo, some of them selling almonds and souvenirs to tourists.

There were stories about marks on buildings and the height of doors, some of which seemed more logical than others.  The Viking TV video below tells some of the stories.

After our guided tour, Julie and I went to the site of the castle ruins, which to us was more interesting visually than the streets through the Jewish quarter, as evidenced by our photo choices.

Back on the ship, we opted for Diet Pepsi on the sun deck.

After the usual happy hour, including a description of what to expect the next day, we enjoyed another tasty dinner.

That evening, we had flamenco dancers join us in the lounge.

Solearte put on an energetic show, with several costume changes.

All three women were excellent dancers.

The dancers had come aboard the ship from their home in Salamanca, Spain.

Oddly, walking down a busy street in Salamanca during our free time the next afternoon, we saw the percussionist walking towards us.  

He pointed at Julie and me and said, "Viking River Cruise."  At first we were sort of amazed he recognized us, but we remembered we still wore Viking lanyards holding our Quietvox listening devices.

Cruising to Mateus Palace & Gardens with Mr. Sandeman

Along the Douro River, ships only cruise in daylight hours.

That translates into lots of scenic cruising.

We began our days forward in the outdoor seating area in front of the lounge taking in the views.

Several guests including ourselves would spend time in the rocking chairs, literally watching the world go by.  That's luxury.

Breakfast was not served outdoors as on Viking's usual Longships, so we would head inside about 8 AM for breakfast.  There was menu service by waitstaff available, but the large selection of buffet items from fresh fruit to meats and cheeses to breads to pastries, along with a station where eggs were fried to order, proved to be most efficient and delicious.

One day, I did order off the menu.  After what seemed like a long wait, but really not any longer than usual menu service, I suppose, I tried Norwegian Waffles, which served with sour cream and brown cheese, like the Viking Cruises founder's mother --- "Mamsen" --- used to make.  

Tables under awnings seemed ideal for breakfast outdoors.
They instead were used as game tables or for resting beverages.

The waffles didn't appeal to me as served.  I asked for maple syrup, which made them edible, if not as good as Belgian Waffles, but I didn't order off the breakfast menu again.

After breakfast, we usually went up top to the sun deck, though many who had French Balcony or Veranda rooms presumably took in views there, because there were seldom more than twenty fellow guests up there, and often considerably fewer.

Lounge chairs in the shade of that awning were seldom used by anyone besides Julie and me.

It was a great place to watch the changing scenery in the comfort of shade on sunny days in the 80s.

 

Locks that fill with water and then release the water once the ships have floated to a different level allow ships to navigate between different water levels along the river.  Going through a lock is a source of entertainment, in a way similar to the Panama Canal pleases guests on ocean ships. 

On a river cruise ship, the spaces are tighter than on the Panama Canal, making transits even more interesting to me.

Often, a bridge by the locks requires the awning we used daily for our lounge chair shade to be lowered.

For particularly low bridges, guests were required to go downstairs until the headroom barrier had been transited.

We passed through a lot of locks on our cruise, some incredibly tall, evidence of the big gap in water levels.

We arrived at the Center of the Douro Valley Winery Region, declared to be so by none other than the Marquis de Pombal.

Shifting his attention from the reforms instituted by the Marquis de Pombal following the devastation of Lisbon in 1755, he somehow found time the next year to turn his attention to the Douro Valley.

He was the first to classify vineyard regions of the Douro Valley, marking the region with 335 of stone bollards.  Pombol's Douro Wine Company defined the Port wine region in the Douro Valley, making it what is considered to be the first appellation d'origine contrôlée (protected designation of origin) in the world.

We departed the ship and found our buses.  Julie and I had procrastinated and found ourselves, as the last to board bus 2C, in the back row.  Actually, that turned out to give us extra space, but we would get there earlier on subsequent days to get seats.

The drive to our next destination took us through rolling vineyards.  The wine that our first stop brought to mind was not Port, but Rosé.  In fact, one of the most famous Rosé wines in the world: Mateus.

Stately Mateus Palace is prominent on the label of the artfully curved Mateus Rosé bottle.

However, the connection is not what it seems. Mateus Palace & Gardens is not where Mateus Rosé is produced.

Some of the grapes used in Mateus were grown in the vineyards of Mateus Palace.

Mateus co-founder Fernando van Zeller Guedes bought the rights to use an image of the Palace as a tribute to his home region.  He paid a pittance for the rights.

The Count who sold what became a world famous trademark never imagined that the wine produced by this young guy and his brothers to market in Brazil would become a worldwide sensation.

When Brazil banned importation of wine altogether, it should have spelled disaster.

As it turned out, what seemed like a terrible break steered the course of Mateus on a path that brought fame and fortune.  Rather than fold, Fernando got creative. He sent two bottles of Mateus Rosé to Portuguese ambassadors and influential friends.  One bottle was to savor, and one each was to share with someone who they thought would make a good agent for the pink wine in the elegant bottle.

While that alone might have been sufficient to reach a worldwide market, Fernando made Mateus a sponsor of a horse race at England's Ascot Racecourse in 1961. Queen Elizabeth II attended and tried Mateus Rosé.

She subsequently ordered Mateus when dining at the elite Savoy Hotel in London, where many celebrities were photographed with the distinctive bottle.  Average folks found the bottles could be used for decorative projects in the home.  And the rest, as they say, is history.

Our tour leader, Inis, and our Palace guide said the contract for the right to use the image was renegotiated after millions of bottles had been sold.  The price was undisclosed, but probably still not close to its value to the wine company over the decades.

To tour the interior, an expert joined our group, describing all of the beautiful furnishings and artwork, including family portraits, and sharing a bit of background information.

Concluding our tour, we were taken to a wine tasting area, but it was really more of a sip and run on this hot afternoon in the building without air conditioning rather than a more elaborate event like we've experienced elsewhere.  

This was not Mateus Rosé, but it was a product of the vineyards of Mateus Palace.  I would say the consensus was to keep moving forward rather than linger.

With limited time on a warm afternoon, we were soon on our way to the lush gardens of the estate with the balance of our free time.

Back on the road again, our bus would not head directly back to the ship.

We enjoyed the panoramic views of vineyards on the winding roads.

We were in the heart of the Port country, so before returning to Viking Torgil, we would make a stop at a vineyard of acclaimed Port maker Sandeman.

From a distance, a gigantic version of the trademark image of a man in hat and cape is visible.

At first glance, I thought he looked like my childhood hero Zorro.

It turns out "The Don" holds a glass of wine rather than a fencing sword, along with a Spanish sombrero and the cape (capa e batina) from the University of Coimbra uniform.

Designed by poster artist George Massiot Brown in 1928, The Don first appeared on Sandeman's wine label in 1935.  It is  now the international symbol of the company.

In any case, I was happy to find a smaller version of The Don near the entrance for a photo op.  There would be more to come during the winery tour.

Sandeman's tour guide did a great job of clearly explaining the process of creating wine and highlights of Sandeman's history, which you will enjoy should you find yourself fortunate enough to take the House of Sandeman tour.

Old vintages gather dust while aging, between bottle turnings.

We enjoyed sampling Sandeman's delicious Ruby, Tawny and White Ports in a large room with scenic views.

If you have not ever drank Port, it makes a delicious dessert wine.  It holds its own when paired with dark chocolate, although we had cheese and crackers with this more formal tasting session than we had at Mateus Palace.

With a choice or retracing our steps inside or walking along a path overlooking the vineyards on this sunny afternoon, the choice was easy for Julie and me.  Others chose to take the path indoors, concerned the path might be harder than it actually turned out to be, presumably.

The bus ride back to the ship brought more panoramic views along our way.

Photos out tinted bus windows in bright sunshine seldom do justice to the experience, but Julie snapped a few more.

Once again, I am reminded how often I hear people ask if you can really experience a port --- a cruise stop, not fortified wine --- in one day.

Looking back at this day, we could hardly believe we did Sandeman, which was another full experience, after Mateus.

And that was after we enjoyed our morning scenic cruise on top so much that we skipped attending presentations about ports of call and a lecture about Portugal's natural cork production.  Some of our fellow guests had actually taken an optional tour during the morning.  I'm happy we didn't miss the relaxing cruise that we enjoyed before lunch in the dining room.

Lest I forget to mention this and not be able to find it later when I do a search to help clients know what to expect, our port stop was Régua.  Its history of vineyards and making wine dates back to the Roman Empire, if not further back.  There are ancient ruins there, but that was not on our agenda.  We departed the ship upon arriving in the afternoon and did not return.

We re-joined the ship in Pinhão, another port named that day by Viking in the itinerary.  We were actually docked across the river from Pinhão, purportedly a quieter berth, but there there was no compelling reason to get off the ship on that side.  

Pinhão is primarily considered a gateway to wine estates --- "quintas" --- like we had visited and driven around that afternoon.