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Day cruise on the Douro from Porto?

Hi everyone,

I am interested in seeing if anyone has done a day-long Douro river cruise from/to Porto. It looks like there are a few options- cruise up & cruise back, train up & cruise back, as well as multi-day trips. Has anyone done one of these, and do you have any recommendations? Would teenagers be interested? Or, are we better to drive up the Douro- we'll have a car.

Thanks, Robert

Posted by
461 posts

Hi Robert,

I was hoping you would have some responses by now so all I can offer is what we did, including our teenagers, by car. We had a great day in July 2013, but it was a hot day! We followed the description in Rick's book and had fun crossing the Roman bridge in Amarante, toured the church there, visited a vineyard, and had a late lunch at a restaurant near the river in Peso da Regua. There are lots of windy roads, it is a very dry area, especially at the vineyards, car sick prone people will not have fun, and it is a looooong day from Porto to Peso da Regua and back to Porto....but we did it and it was a great memorable day! Good luck!

Posted by
415 posts

I haven't done the day long cruise and may try it out when I'm there in June. We hired a car and guide to drive us up the Douro valley on a day trip out of Porto a couple of years ago - we had a contact in the wine business so we were headed to a specific winery where we spent quite a few hours touring and having lunch. The winery was about 30 minutes further away from Porto than Pinhao.

It was quite a long day and we only did two wineries. There is a major highway to take you out of Porto, but to see the pretty parts, you have to leave the main road. The road along the river was 2 lane and quite windy in places.

I suspect that you would enjoy the cruise/train combo better.