Day 5 - Santo Tirso

Another rainy day!  The day started out dry and sunny, then it turned to rain from about 1:00 - 7.  We were still able to see some great sites again.

Eduardo let us do a load of laundry this morning. His dryer didn’t work very well.  He said he never uses it.  We tried to use it and it didn’t dry things all that well, so we hung stuff around our room trying to get it dry.

Drying Portuguese style

Eduardo had to make a couple of business stops this morning. The first stop was to drop off fabric to Carlos who makes pants for Eduardo’s collection. We met Carlos when we were here in 2019.

The next stop was to one of Eduardo’s tie suppliers in Porto to pick up an order of ties.  They make ties, pocket squares, and scarves.

All of the drawers seen in the picture below are full of ties. We were also able to see the production factory in action, and the warehouse which was full of all kinds of fabric.  We couldn’t believe how many different fabrics there were.  The had fabrics for ties going back to the 1970s still in the warehouse.

To get to the factory, you drive to a steel gate in the old part of the city, you call them, they open the gate and you drive back to the building on this vine covered drive way.

Lunch was our big meal today. Kenneth had fish and chips (no picture), I had codfish with potatoes (yes, this is one serving!), and Eduardo had steak that comes cooked rare and you finish to your liking on a hot skillet they bring to the table.

Dessert was the traditional Portuguese pudding (top) and pao de la humido (bottom). The pudding was the best we have had of the three we have tired on this trip. The other one was part cake and part sweet thick filling.

After lunch we went to the Our Lady of Assumption church, which is up on a mountain above Santo Tirso.

View from Our Lady of Assumption Church

The flowers decorating the church are real and smelled wonderful!

We then drove to a park in the town of Santo Tirso and walked around a little bit. It was raining hard at that point so we didn’t walk around for long but we took a few pictures before we left.

We were able to visit the Sao Bento Church, which is on the left. The right section is an old monastery that is now a Catholic school. The inside of this church was amazingly beautiful.

Dinner was a light sandwich with a chocolate croissant for desert. 

Eduardo has been a fantastic host and tour guide again!  We will be back with him for two nights before we head home. Tomorrow, we fly to Barcelona first thing in the morning to visit Spain for the first time.