Martin M. Miles' photos with the keyword: bottle shop

With around 250,000 inhabitants, Porto is the largest city in the north of Portugal. More than 1.7 million people live in the "Greater Porto area", the metropolitan region. The historic centre of Porto was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996. Port wine is named after Porto because the wineries of Vila Nova de Gaia on the south bank of the Douro River are the centres for packaging, transporting and exporting the fortified wine. I have uploaded many photos from previous visits. So I will limit myself and only upload a few. In its own words, this is a "Cathdrale of port wine".

Carnival has a long tradition not only in Cologne, where it is known and often got suppressed since medieval times. The French did not like it, but allowed carnival in 1804, from then on, carneval societies were founded often making fun of (French and later Prussian) militarism. The "fifth season" (carnival season) is declared open at 11 minutes past 11 on the 11th of the 11th month November. That is the time of balls and sessions. The carneval hits the streets on Fat Thursday (Weiberfastnacht) with a declaration at the Alter Markt square at 11.11h. on the Thursday before the beginning of Lent. Shops are closed, pubs are open, Cologne folks are masqueraded, sing and dance. For somebody not born here - it feels a bit strange. The emperor and his jester return from the bottle shop.

Cologne is the fourth-largest city in Germany - and one of the oldest. A Germanic tribe, the Ubii, had a settlement here, this was named by the Romans "Oppidum Ubiorum". In 50 AD, the Romans founded "Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium", the city then became the provincial capital of "Germania Inferior". Cologne has a local beer, named Kölsch, but as you see all kind of strong booze is available here too. The bottles are even "free delivered" to the customer´s door, in case the customer can´t walk any longer.