These are the last days of our trip. We had an excellent visit at a winery that makes port wine. We visited the cork museum. Today we split off on our own and visited the drinking museum. This has almost nothing to do with Portugal but is absolutely fascinating. We saw all manor of drinking vessels going back to the 7th century BC, and always about drinking wine.
I learned about a civilization I hadn’t previously known about. They were contemporaneous with Mesopotamia. They were the largest civilization in Europe. They were experts at long-distance trade. They made sophisticated metal, pottery, and ceramic vessels. They were the first to use copper tools. The were the first to use a bird as a symbol of rebirth and also as the transition between the earthly world and the heavens above. The museum did not give them a name, other than the civilization along the Danube River. Take that, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Greece.
The earliest vessels were made from horns or clay. They held a generous pour of wine on the top and a hole at the bottom. One would put their finger over the hole and fill the horn with wine. To drink, they removed their finger and let the wine shoot into their mouth.

Many drinking games were documented by Pliny the Elder, among others. Taking interesting pictures in a wine glass museum is quite a challenge. Here’s one of radioactive glasses.

On the way back to the boat, we encountered this famous rabbit, composed solely of metal trash.

Tomorrow we leave for the airport at 4:00 AM. We fly to Amsterdam, then Atlanta, and arrive home after 11 PM. I hope this finds everybody doing well..