From our little riverside campground we went to Porto the 2nd biggest city in Portugal and the namesake of the drink. My estimation was that is was the Birmingham of Portugal. Tam
liked the “grubby chic-ness” of the place. To me it was just like being in Venezuela or Brazil with out the 3rd world charm. We spent the day walking though narrow streets looking at run down houses with the laundry 
hanging out the window.
It simply never grabbed me. It is not a bad place but it is not a nice place. After a few hours of that, we decided to head to the country again for a nice quiet campground and some peaceful rest out of the city.
What we found was the worse campsite ever.. noisy expensive at 16€ per night, the showers smelled like urine, and the people!…. The couple on our 
right were engaged in a yelling/crying match until 0400h, the people on our left were the Portugal version of the CHAV. Mobile phone music, footy shirts, muffin-toppers, tracky daks, chav-kinis the works.. uggg…To make things even more unpleasant almost everyone was scowling at us and the bike like we were the ones making all the noise. Maybe it was the British plates, or maybe it was the lack of CHAV in us but anyway you look at we were not made to feel welcome. It was a pretty enough place but the feeling and the enviroment was basically bad.. I left there thinking the Portugal had adopted the worst of England and threw everything else away. At this point I did not like Portugal at all.
The plan for the next day was to head for Lisbon although we would stop in a little town (Alcobaca ) so that we could arrive in the big city fresh. For the first time I was not looking forward to it. Prior to this I was excited to see Lisbon, I had heard a lot of good things about it. I was afraid it was a case of Royal Nunsuch.
On route we met a guy at a petrol station that was used to dealing with Brits in the Algarve and had a chuckle about how they create sports and then never win at them again! (Ironically, the ashes were just about to start).