For the last two days in Porto, we've taken side trips to nearby towns. Here's the great thing about day trips: You can base yourself at a central guesthouse, see cool stuff, and be home in time for a nap and a nice dinner. Know what sucks about day trips? Sometimes they go very very wrong.

So I guess we're batting .500 in the day trip department, which is great if you're a baseball player, but really stinky if you're on holiday.

Friday morning we were up early to catch the 9am train to Peso de Regua, a vineyard town two hours east on northern Portugal's wine route. Portugal has the world's oldest vineyards (who knew?) and an extensive system of vineyards on the Douro River. We didn't want to join a regimented (and spendy) group tour, so we visited the tourism office to figure out where we should go for the day, and how to get there. Tourism offices are great; they have tons of free maps and helpful information, and they're staffed with knowledgeable people you can trust. Except when they're not. And really, you don't know that last part until it's too damn late.

Our guidebook had said that Peso de Regua was the center of the winelands, though there's not much there- people visit for the wine museum, but everything else requires a car . So we were surprised and happy to hear from the tourism office lady that Peso de Regua was filled with wineries offering tastings, all walkable from the Regua train station....and tickets on the direct train were just fifteen euro apiece. So the next morning, we were off to Peso de Regua.

First off, the schizophrenic Portugal weather was not cooperating. As we exited the train station, it was once again pissing (and often pouring) rain, with a bitter, whipping wind. And I would say that would be pleasant for strolling around wineries, but I'd be wrong on BOTH counts because it was miserable...and there are no wineries in Peso de Regua. The confusion on the Peso de Regua tourism office worker's face when we asked "where are the wineries here?" would have been funny if we hadn't just found ourselves trapped in a shitty town with no train out for five hours (also note: why is there a tourism office in Peso de Regua? So they can tell you to get the f**k out and go visit somewhere interesting? Because that's essentially what she told us .) Apparently the nice lady in Porto meant "Pinhao," the next train stop thirty kilometers farther east, when she said "Peso de Regua."  So we said fine, and made the milelong walk in the pouring rain back to the train station, and attempted to hop the next train to Pinhao....which wouldn't be arriving for four more hours. We tried to take a bus, but luckily Peso de Regua doesn't have any! So we attempted to hire a cab, but the cabbie only wanted a roundtrip fare to Pinhao (we wanted to take the train all the way back to Porto), a ransom-like fare, and also he was an asshole. So we could either immediately catch the next train (and only train for five hours) back to Porto and call the entire boondoggle a wash, or find something redeemable about Peso de Regua. There's always something good, right? Well, except when there's not.

We walked a few miles (IN THE PISSING RAIN) to a wine cooperative, which offered us one sample of port and a dull-as-shit documentary we were forced to watch, a la "A Clockwork Orange," just to earn said sample . We walked back to town, and attempted to visit the famous wine museum. It was so deserted that (and I am not joking) there were chickens milling about the entrance. We did finally find the way in, and were essentially told to go the f**k away by the bartender since we hadn't bought a ticket, he was busy eating lunch, and also he was an asshole. So we continued on to what we were told was a tasting room, all the way up a huge hill. The wind began to whip so hard that now Matt's new umbrella was ripped from his hands, the metal shaft was torn from the base, and turned inside out (we had bought the same shitty umbrellas in Lisbon). So when we arrived at the tasting room, soaking wet, imagine our thrill at seeing an "Abierto/Open" sign on a padlocked door. Eventually some guy came out and told us that tastings wouldn't happen for another hour (also, he was an asshole). So we began yet another hike, this time to a port winery we'd seen a flyer for. At 1:30pm on a Thursday, it too had an "Abierto" sign accompanied by the apparently mandatory padlocked door.

We gave up and decided to have a late lunch and kill the rest of the afternoon until the 4pm train. So we found a tiny family-run tavern that specialized in grilled fish, and if nothing else the octopus and sardines were fantastic. The owner was pleased that we liked his wines, and offered us his father's 40-year-old port. Which we of course loved, and that pleased him so much he offered more. So by the time we lurched out of that place, we had found one redeeming quality in Peso de Regua.

Yesterday we took a commuter train one hour north to Guimaraes, an adorably preserved medieval town famous for its castle. We arrived at 11am, and strolled the lovely Old Town, with lots of curving cobblestone paths and gray stone buildings. The castle is pretty much what a child would draw when told to draw a castle- it has those perfect square turrets, a tiny drawbridge, and its gray ruins sit ever-so-perfectly atop a green hill. There isn't much inside, though walking the ramparts affords gorgeous views over the countryside. I was also fascinated by the 12th century adjoining church; Guimaraes' town slogan is "Where Portugal Was Born" because the country's first king was born here in the 12th century....and baptized in this church. They still have the baptismal font, which is frankly amazing given that I have no idea what became of furniture I had in college.

We spent a few hours exploring the town, but decided (given yesterday's clusterf*ck) to catch an earlier train back to Porto and enjoy our last afternoon in Porto's waterfront port district. We had a lovely afternoon visiting the port rooms we missed on Thursday, and on our evening walk back to our hotel, we happened upon a wine shop celebrating its fourth anniversary. We of course crashed the party, and met a wonderful local Portuguese sparkling wine distributor. We spent the party learning about his Portuguese wine, his trips to America to sell it, and drinking a lot of his sparkly.

Tomorrow we fly to the Portuguese island of Madeira!