Braga; Friday, 22 February, 2013

As it was an early flight I’d stayed overnight in a hotel attached to the airport so I was able to meander across to check-in after a hearty breakfast at a more reasonable time. However, all the timesaving in the world could have proved useless as it was starting to snow as I left the hotel, an in Southern England that means only one thing – major disruption.

For once, the snow wasn’t having too much of an impact, as less than 15 minutes after clearing security, and a full hour before departure time, the gate number came up, and by the time I’d meandered over to the gate boarding had already commenced.

In reality they had been hoping to get us all on board early, which they achieved, as we had a good 15 minute divert at the airport to a holding pen to be thoroughly doused with de-icing fluid, which given the build-up of snow on the wings, nobody was complaining about.

Thankfully with a strong tail wind and generous timetabling on easyJet’s side we arrived into Porto a few minutes early, but sadly not early enough to enable me to make either the once every three hours direct coach to Braga, or the Metro into Porto that left 10 minutes later. Instead I had a 25 minute wait at the airport before getting the Metro into town, which then left me with just 8 minutes to make the connection to the train out to Braga.

When I got to Campanhã station, at the same time as a spectacular cloud burst, there was a massive queue for tickets and I did think that my chance of making even the train an hour later were looking dubious, when I then spotted the ticket machine that nobody appeared to want to use, so I got my ticket out of that and made the train with about 30 seconds to spare.

I was quite surprised that at half one on a Friday afternoon the train was quite so full. Full enough that it was over half an hour before I finally managed to get a seat. Having arrived in Braga, with the skies threatening another spectacular downpour, I caught a taxi over to the hotel, getting into my room at the same point as the heavens opened again.

When the rain finally abated about an hour later I wandered out of the hotel to have a look around the city centre, stopping off at the Cathedral and visiting the Museu Pio XII and the medieval tower. I’d been having such a nice wander that I’d failed to notice what the weather was doing, and it was only as I started to head back to the hotel that I noticed quite how dark the sky had become. In the end I nearly made it back to the hotel, getting within 100 yards of the hotel when an absolute downpour started at full speed – none of this increasing intensity from a light drizzle, it was straight into full monsoon.

It was still chucking it down an hour later after I had dried off, so I decided to have dinner in the hotel restaurant, rather than heading out into the weather again.

By about 9pm it had stopped raining so I went out for an evening walk and to take in more views of the city, before heading back to the hotel for a good nights sleep.