We visited Porto in the off-season during autumn school holidays, which fell on the end of October- beginning of November in 2018. One of things I always wanted to do is to go on a river cruise in the Douro Valley, which has been placed on UNESCO World Heritage List, because wines were produced in this region for over two thousand years.
When I started looking for cruise companies, I realised that majority of them sailed only until the end of October and Rota do Douro was the only company I managed to find with sailings in November.
I have done my booking via email and paid for the trip on the day. There is a variety of cruises you can choose from and during the season the choice is much better than in winter months.
I went for Porto-Regua- Porto Upstream Cruise, which departed Porto in the morning and sailed all the way to Regua, where we had around an hour and a half before heading back to Porto by train.