Vila Nova de Gaia

Mileage: 161206

After breakfast, we packed our things together as we were heading to Porto today.

We drove to the disposal station, emptied the wastewater, and disposed of our neatly sorted waste.

Suddenly, Fernanda from the reception came running towards us waving her phone. We were surprised. She wanted to take a farewell photo of all of us with Gary. She said we spread such a good vibe that she wanted to capture it. Of course, we immediately agreed. Then, after two days, we said goodbye to one of the friendliest campgrounds and drove towards Porto.

The campground awaiting us in a suburb of Porto only shared the price with Camping Belinho. The facilities and upkeep of Camping Salgueiros could not compare in any way to Fernanda's place. Nevertheless, we chose this campground because it was close enough to Porto that we could take public transport into the city, yet far enough away that we couldn't have booked a hotel room for the same price.

Today's route was also relaxed at 30 degrees - so without mountains - but what was remarkable was that we saw vegetable stands again along the roadside, something we had not encountered or only hadn't noticed in Spain. We didn't know. At one of the corrugated iron huts, we stopped and bought tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, parsley for a salad, and a persimmon.

When we arrived at the parking spot, we settled in, and after a short break, we made our obligatory visit to the beach.

Wow! A good part of the urban population was lying on the beach; it was Sunday after all. That was a bit too much for us, and we searched for a section of the beach that was a bit rocky but significantly less crowded.

In the evening, we went back, made a salad, and even had time to play a little before it got dark while we were eating. We noticed how much the proximity to the city affected the temperature. While it had turned quite cool after sunset yesterday, the asphalt and concrete here stored the heat, and one could sit outside the camper for a long time after sunset at pleasant temperatures.