Forecast has been revised down to 29C and we head to Casa de Mateus. The Casa is the summer home of the current Count and his wife. The family went home yesterday, so we missed him. The Casa is a very large Gothic house with tended gardens based on those of Versailles (but on a much smaller scale).
Much of the house is open to the paying public and in typical Gothic style most of the rooms are entirely regular in placement of doors and windows. No passageways, you walk from, and through, rooms to get to another, or to get across the house. Quite a bit of lot of grand furnishings, art works and collected memorabillia. The famous Mateus Rose is no longer made here (now made further south) and the Casa image has been sold to the current producer.
Then to Vila Real, a city of 50,000 for a wander, coffee and local delicacy before rejoining our boat at Pinhao after another drive across, and down, the magnificent Duoro Valley. My understanding is that the large wine producers are limited to 800 hectacres and are obliged to then buy from the hundreds of small vineyards, which themselves are limited to 20 hectacres.
An afternoon of cruising, including through two more locks. Valeira's lock required the Sun Deck to be cleared and everything lowered, including the swimming pool (it is lowered hydraulically through the Sun Deck).
As we head further up the valley, the vineyards thin out, but we are rarely out of site of one, even as we move into more rocky granite country, often rising as steeply as 60 degrees from the river.
Crew show this evening, very entertaining (and a little bit politically incorrect).
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