We are coming to Porto for a week the first week of October. We have a car but will be staying in Porto. After visiting Porto for a dew days, we would like to drive to a few small interesting towns nearby. Can anyone suggest the best towns to visit? With our remaining time we would like to do a day River Cruise and then perhaps drive our car along the Douro River, is there a particular route we should take. In regards to a day river cruise, can anyone suggest the best company to use?

Check out Pinhao - we didn't have a car, but spent three nights there.

Hi, can you recommend a hotel there? Thanks in advance!

In our four days in the Douro we stayed at two great hotels ... Quinta de la Rosa and Quinta do Pego. I talk about them in the below report. Douro Valley is Chapters Fourteen and Fifteen (lots of photos). There are tons of Portugal trip reports on Fodors for even more ideas.

https://travelswithmaitaitom.com/portugal-2022/

I concur with maitaitom's recommendation of both.

If both are full, try the Casa do Viscode Chanceleiros, within a short drive of Pinhão, also a Fodorite favorite. No river views from the rooms but a lovely garden, pool and the hotel offers evening meals.

I will throw another winery accommodation into the mix - Quinta de São Luiz. I stayed there last month, I used to stay at Quinta de la Rosa but have found the prices to be going up and the quality to be going down over the years. I was very happy with Quinta de São Luiz - gorgeous rooms, many but not all with river views, great staff, and a good restaurant onsite. They do bus tours of the winery facility there so at times there were a lot of people milling about, but only in the winery area and only during the day. It will be my go-to now when I am in the Douro area. It is about 20 minutes from Pinhão.

https://kopke1638.com/pt/turismo/
You have to scroll around a bit to get to the hotel part of the website. They say their website is "award winning" but to me it is far from user friendly. But their rooms are on booking.com too I believe.

We stayed here:

https://www.vintagehousehotel.com/en/

Walking distance to most of what we wanted to see/do. If I had I car I would have probably chosen one of the places mentioned above, but we did enjoy our stay at the hotel, although their restaurant didn't knock our socks off.

maitaitom…….You give a colourful and humorous trip report. Thanks!