Braga; Sunday, 24 February, 2013

I had another leisurely breakfast, albeit in a completely deserted restaurant with only the waiter for company then checked out leaving my bags with the hotel.

I had a long wander around an almost completely deserted Braga. The city is one of the most conservative, and Catholic in the country and early on a Sunday morning it did appear that absolutely everyone was at mass.

I eventually ended up around the back of the Cathedral just after midday as the morning mass was coming to an end, and at that point, as several churches emptied out, the city centre suddenly came alive with people other than tourists wandering around.

I walked over to the other major Roman ruins in the city, which should by now have been open, but due to a technical fault their door was jammed shut so they were unable to accept visitors.

By now it was starting to cloud over quite rapidly and I was left with a choice. I could continue to wander around the city centre for another 40 minutes or so before heading to the coach station and taking the bus back to the airport, or go straight to the station and catch the train back into Porto.

Given that it did look like it was going to pour down with rain soon, and that the train was quite a bit cheaper than the bus I decided to head over to the hotel, pick up my things and wander back to the station.

In the end the cloud lifted again so it didn’t rain, but with a comfortable seat the whole way this time I was able to take in the stunning views of the Northern Portuguese countryside from the train on the way back into Porto.

Getting to Campanhã station in Porto I had around 10 minutes to make the connection for the half-hourly metro to the airport, which would have been fine if all the ticket machines had been working, but there were only two and the queues were quite long. In the end, for the second heart stopping time in two days, I managed to get the ticket out of the machine, slap it against the validator and leap onto the now waiting metro with a second or so to spare before the doors closed.

A 40 minute ride later I arrived at the airport, checked in, dropped by bags off and headed for the departure gates.