We had the BEST. DAY. Seriously. All four of us decided that we couldn’t be bothered with the 6-hour tour today and we’d rather just have an off-day on the ship. What a good decision that was!

Nearly everyone went off early this morning to watch bread being made and to sample some different wines, but we said nope. We’re gonna have a lazy day today… and the sun came out (finally) and that made it even better.

Up on the sun deck, me and just two other people were soaking up some rays and watching the vineyards go by, when we saw two of the deck crew lower the antenna.

Well, I know what that means. We’ve got low clearance coming up. They turned all the chairs on their sides and lowered the shade canopy down as far as it would go. The deck hand said that normally, they make everyone go down to a lower deck, but since there were only three of us, he’d let us stay up top, provided that we pay attention and get ready to duck if we needed to. OK, well, that got us on notice.

It reminded me a little of a coaster trip to Mexico when someone in our group talked the park operator to let the adults ride the kiddie coaster, even though it was clearly not designed for us. He said, “OK, but only two people at a time and when you get to the apple tunnel, duck!” That was silly fun.

But I digress. This time, the clearance would be low enough that the bridge had to be squished down. The captain still has to drive the boat, though, so he opened a sunroof before he lowered the bridge and he drove the boat like this:

As we approached the railroad trestle, it became obvious just how close this would be.

We were warned not to get out of our seats. We were also warned that simply sitting in a chair might not be good enough. And it wasn’t. You either had to scrunch down in the chair or get out of the chair and crouch next to it. I chose the latter. Ann-Marie and Cathy (the other two passengers on the sun deck) chose the former.

Even the Captain had to eventually duck down a bit to get under the bridge.

After clearing the bridge, the crew didn’t put anything back up because we had a lock to do right after that. Rob came up top and watched it with me. It was another low clearance, but with 43cm extra to play with, we didn’t have to duck this time, as long as we remained seated.

The weather today was perfect. Temps were around 22C (72F) and sunny. It was nice, just quietly watching the river go by, from one vineyard to the next. I even saw a few that I recognized.

And it was quiet. That was the nicest part. In fact, the only noisy moment came when a passenger train raced out of one of the many tunnels along the river and gave us a friendly toot from his whistle.

Before long, we stopped and picked up the folks who went on the tour and everything was a bit more crowded. Still, we really, really enjoyed our quiet day.

Tomorrow, we’ll get back on the tour schedule and see what there is to see. But none of us were feeling like we missed much by staying on board today. It was pretty much the perfect day on the river.

We docked back in Régua, which looked quite different than the last time we were here. Sunshine can really brighten up a place!

Three other river ships were already docked and one of them apparently couldn’t park very well, leaving his ship’s nose sticking into our parking spot. That meant that we had to park with the front half of our ship poking out past the dock.

The crew managed to finagle a way to get a ramp down to the dock so we could go ashore, but it would’ve been much easier on everyone if the other ship had parked correctly. Captain Fabio was not amused.

Dinner tonight was a Portuguese version of peri-peri chicken, which the chef said he toned down a lot so people wouldn’t be afraid to try it. He also said that he’d include the hot version of the sauce on the side if we requested it. Of course I requested it!