We liked Porto as soon as we arrived, for silly reasons such as liking the airport and the train into town. Our first impressions were soon confirmed over and over again as we discovered more of this beautiful city.
Porto is a small enough city to enjoy by foot, which is great as you get to experience its lovely streets and its colourful buildings. One of the highlights of the city include the Azejulos, typical Portuguese blue ceramic tiles. They can have a simple design, but more often than not the tiles are paintings of historial and/or religious scenes. While Azejulos can decorate any building, most churches are using them to ornate their exterior, as well as the interior. One of the most splendid examples of Azejulos in Porto is the Sao Bento train station, where the tiles are painted scenes from the history of Portugal.
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| Azejulos on a church in Porto |
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| Sao Bento train station |
Whilst we were in Porto we weren't so much interested in seeing all the tourist attractions, but more of just experiencing the city and its streets and people. We walked, a lot!, we admired the architecture, and most of all we took in all the wonderful views this city has to offer.
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| Church perched up on a hill |
When we did go to see tourist attractions we were a bit disappointed. For example, Livraria Lello, also known as Harry Potter bookshop, was a bit of a let down. Although beautiful, and the interior swirling staircase seemed to be taken straight out of a Harry Potter film, it was very small and, thus, very crowded. Also, you weren't allowed to take pictures inside!
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| Snuck a picture inside Livraria Lello |
Other tourist attractions that we walked past, but did not go inside, include the Cathedral (Sé), built atop of a hill, rewarding the climber with wonderful views from it, Torre dos Clerigos (Cleric's Tower), and Casa da Musica (The House of Music), which was not worth the long walk to go see it. Another landmark all tourist guides mention as a must see is Mercado do Bolhão, the central market. The market itself is nothing special, as when we went there many stalls were shut, giving it a deserted look, but there is a lovely bread shop which gives out free samples! Delicious.
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| The cathedral at sunset |
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| View over Porto and Gaia from the cathedral |
Back to the views. Due to its slightly hilly geography, Porto has many viewpoints, or miradouros in Portuguese, which unfortunately was not a clever play on words from the Spanish mirador combined with views over the Douro river resulting in miradouro, as Carmen initially thought! Miradouro is actually the Portuguese word for viewpoint. How disappointing!
As just mentioned, Porto is built on one bank of the River Douro. On the other side of the river lays Vila Nova da Gaia, Porto's twin community, where all the port wine magic happens. From both sides you are spoilt with wonderful views over either the colourful buildings of Porto or the wine disitilleries of Gaia. The views are great whether you are low on the river banks (or ribeiras in Portuguese), or high atop of a hill. Our favourite miradouro was from the Jardins do Palacio do Cristal, Porto's most beautiful park, which overlooks the Douro river.
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| View from the Jardins do Palacio do Cristal |
Speaking of the Douro river, a Porto must-do is taking a trip upstream. Up the river valley is where the vineyards for the famous Port wine are located and it offers stunning views of terraced hills after hills. There are a few options on how to visit the valley. You can either take a short cruise upstream, lasting about 50 minutes, and costing 10 euros (2014), you can opt for a full-day trip, which includes a cruise one-way (until Pinhao) and return by train (cost 60 euros with lunch included), or get a return ticket by train. The train ride must be one of the best train trips in the world as for most of the journey it follows the riverfront.
We opted for the train ride, because Carmen loves trains, but also because we have learnt that the best part of the valley lays past Pinhao, all the way to the end of the line, Pocinho. The ride lasted about 6-7 hours return and costed around 20 euros each, but it was well worth it. Around each bend there was a lovely sight to be seen, a nice vineyard towering atop of a hill, a new and exciting side of the Douro river.
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| The Douro valley |
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| The Douro valley |
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| The Douro valley |
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| The Douro valley |
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| The Douro valley |
After seeing where the grapes grow, the next must-do in Porto is to do one (at least) Port wine tasting. As we are not very interested in alcohol in general, we only did one. Most of the tastings cost around 5 euros and include an hour tour of the winery. After a bit of a digging, we found one winery that does the tasting for free, at Krohn. We didn't get much of a tour, but we were given three types of Port to taste (white, ruby and tawny). We didn't think we'd be big fans of port wine, but we were surprised to find that we really liked both types.
On the day when we did the tasting we got the opportunity to also experience Vila Nova de Gaia. We had a stroll along its Ribeira, and enjoyed the nice aroma of grilled seafood mixed in with the sweet smell of wineries. To compliment the delightful scents, we were visually spoilt by colourful Porto just across the river.
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| Porto seen from Gaia |
All that Port wine cannot be had on an empty stomach. Luckily, there are many places where you can have a good meal, from street food to Michelin stared restaurants. Even Lisbonians agree that Porto is the culinary capital of the country! Not surprisingly, a lot of Porto's cuisine revolves around seafood, with bacalhau and grilled sardines topping it. Bacalhau is basically salted cod, done like this for preserving reasons. It is said there are 365 different recipes to cook the bacalhau, one for each day of the year. Most common ones include bacalhau con nata (cod with cream),bacalhau a bras (with onions and thinly sliced fried potatoes in scrambled egg) and bacalhau com todos (boiled with vegetables and hard boiled egg).
However, if you are not a big fan of seafood, do not despair. Porto has something to cater for each taste, from mouthwatering pastelerias (bakeries), with sweets the size of your head, and extremely cheap, to arguably, the world's best sandwich, Francesinha.
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| Bakeries |
Francesinha is layers of steak, choricao (chorizo), ham, linguica (a type of pork sausage) between two layers of bread, all covered in melted cheese and topped up with a fried egg, sunny side up. All this beauty comes in a spicy tomatoey beer sauce with a side of chips. It's a gorgeous heart attack on a plate. Be aware that the francesinha is huge, and we had one split between the two of us and we left the table absolutely full. However, this is something that cannot be missed when visiting Porto. I mean who would want to miss that anyway?
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| Francesinha |
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| Francesinha |
All in all, we really enjoyed Porto and we were happy to return to it in a week's time or so, in time for Festa de Sao Joao, but more about that in a few post's time. Tchau!
P.S. If you are like us and wondering why on the plane ticket it's written Oporto and not Porto, it's because when the English businessmen arrived they heard the locals say stuff like 'Vamonos no Porto' which means we are going to Porto, and because of the pronunciation they thought the city name was Oporto. For some reason that stuck, and in English the city name is still Oporto, but in any other language (including Portuguese) it's Porto!
P.P.S. We had a bit of action going on one day, when a house caught fire and we were witnesses to firefighters and locals putting it out. Luckily they succeeded quite quickly and we do not think there were any casualties.
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| The fire in Porto |
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