Saint Joana Boat
Many towns do what they can to lure the tourist dollars. For Aveiro, Portugal the draw is brightly colored boats that will take tourists for rides up and down their many canals and past colorful homes. My goal was to take photos of the commercial fishermen fleet of vessels in a harbor with their brightly colored boats.
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Porto Douro River View
Porto, Portugal was built along the Douro River in northern Portugal. This view is of the oldest section, Riberia, which is largely dedicated to the port wine and tourist industry. The bright yellow billboard near the center of this photograph is the Sandeman trademark of one of these wines.
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Oban Harbor, On Vacation
Continuing our practice of alternating between large cities and small towns on our European tour, from Glasgow we next headed for the small town of Oban, Scotland. While some scotch drinkers will recognize this a a brand name, most have likely never heard of this fishing village/tourist town on the west coast of Scotland. The scotch distillery is right in the middle of town. Along with my goal of tasting the local cuisine of where we visit, I went for my first scotch tasting here. I am no expert and that may be a good thing, both physically and financially.
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A large part of the Dingle, Ireland economy is based on a lone bottle-nosed dolphin named Fungie. No less than eight large boats full of eager tourists will mill about in the harbor hoping that Fungie will soon be sighted. Boats refund your ticket price if there is no Fungie sighting. Immediately upon spotting Fungie, which seems to be a near certainty, all the boats speed forward, creating a wake from each boat hoping Fungie will choose their wake for surfing and jumping, providing paying guests with the best view. It is a hokey but fun time, waiting for Fungie to suddenly appear, then the shouts of delighted tourists as the boats speed off, another successful day in the Fungie business.
Kenmare, Ireland is a small town in southern Ireland that serves as a very good base for exploring the peninsula via the well-traveled 110 mile Ring of Kerry and the smaller peninsula to the south, the Ring of Beara. Wonderful views of the North Atlantic, great stone walls where sheep graze waiting for their next sheering and vast fields of vivid shades of green await the travelers to this area. Miles and miles of thick, solid stone walls are a striking and common sight. No mortar binds these rocks. What backbreaking work it must be to first dig these rocks out of the fields where the sheep graze, then carry them to the wall and sort through them for the right shape to fit with the adjacent rocks. At least they had cool weather and great views during their efforts. Even more picturesque is the adjacent Ring of Beara, which we circumnavigated twice.
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