This week’s travel dream: Tracing the Douro through Portugal

“I had been drawn to Portugal by word of how splendid the area around the Douro is,” said Frank Bruni in The New York Times. This “enchanted region” in the country’s north, which follows the river of the same name, rivals Tuscany for beauty—and for wine. The countryside is “alternately craggy and lush, terraced and cleanly diagonal,” the slopes of the valley a “precipitous, mesmerizing patchwork of greens, reds, browns, and grays.” Running along the base of those slopes is the Douro itself—“narrow, wide, greenish, grayish, roiling, calm, and never, in any two places, exactly the same.”

I first caught sight of the river in Oporto, a city in northwestern Portugal that’s the “tipsy mother of its namesake product, Port.” In Oporto, you can pass buildings from several different centuries in just a few blocks, and the “bold, sudden architectural contrasts” are startling. I wandered the Praça da Liberdade, a square whose 19th-century “beaux-arts flourishes recall Paris at its prettiest.” Half a mile down the road, I stumbled upon the rococo facade of the 16th-century Igreja da Misericórdia, a beautiful baroque church that reminded me of Rome. I then strolled down the Rua das Flores, a charming little street with low-slung buildings covered with painted tiles that have “faded to a subtle, exquisite beauty.”

The next day, I was off to explore the countryside and taste the wines for which the region is known. As I drove along the “slow, serpentine” N2 highway, I marveled at grapevines planted on mountainsides that looked like “gargantuan, crop-friendly steps.” Portugal’s winemakers grow grape varietals not well known elsewhere, and I could taste the particular flavor of the place in each glass. At the Quinta do Vallado vineyard, I sipped an “elegant white blend of Gouveio, Viosinho, and Rabigato” that had a “glimmer of the opulence of a white Burgundy.” The wine was delicious, but the scenery was even better. As I ventured to the next winery, I could hardly tear my gaze away from the “soaring, tumbling, majestic land around us.”

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Contact: Visitportugal.com