Our last stop of the day is in Braga, Portugal! We have seen the castle and churches in Guimarães, Bom Jesus Sanctuary, high on the hill outside Braga, and had lunch at a beautiful restaurant in the country!  See previous posts on those!  Now we are going to the city of Braga, before returning to the ship. There were lots of beautiful doors here!  Let’s start at the town wall and the Arco da Porta Nova………I have shown both sides since they are different. I believe they have added the colorful disc to the arch. It is beautiful! And, I also hope that it is made of plexiglass!

The arch leads to an all-pedestrian street with three story buildings featuring shops on the lower level and housing above the shops. Many of the buildings are covered in beautiful tiles and wrought iron railings are everywhere!

See the sign on the window of the shop? Drink Poncha and Keep Calm! Poncha is an alcoholic drink made from aguardente de cana, (alcohol made from sugar cane) honey, sugar and orange/lemon juice. It is where we got the word punch from!

Many shops also featured cork accessories. We saw many cork trees on our adventure today. Did you know that cork trees are stripped of their bark every nine years? Then the tree is marked with the year it can be stripped again!

There is lots of Batanzos GREEN here too!

The skinny building in the middle was the house of a priest…… it is similar to the fishermen’s houses in La Coruña, Spain. They can only be as wide as the oars of their boats.

The Cathedral of Braga is now a museum. Notice the sea shells on the motif of the church? It is sign of “The Way,” a refuge and network for those walking on pilgrimage in medieval times to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, the shrine of the apostle Saint James in northern Spain.

and inside the museum/cathedral………..

Golden walls and tiled walls, oh my!

And DO NOT THROW ANYTHING AWAY!

and leave the Cathedral by way of the garden………..

One last look at the Arch as we board our bus!

and the beautiful city gardens………

and the olive tree growing in the pot……..

We’ve had a wonderful, long day, in this part of Portugal and we enjoyed all of it! Now back to the ship………Where are we headed next?  I’ll see you there!

This is just one of many photos in the Thursday Door Collection featured by Norm2.0!   Won’t you join in or take a peak at all the doors?