Porto, Portugal
Funny how things work out because we added Porto to our itinerary last minute based on a recommendation of a friend who said it was his favorite city - period. Mingo is Portuguese, so perhaps a bit biased, but we quickly saw what he was talking about. Wow! Porto is a coastal city in far northern Portugal known for, among other things, the incredible bridges spanning the Douro River and being home to port wine (along with its sister city Vila Nova de Gaia directly across the river).
We stayed five days in an AirBNB apartment very near the city center which allowed us to walk pretty much everywhere. Porto is very hilly so walking around was a great workout. AirBNB is always a bit of a gamble in hoping reality meets the digital promise. In this case, it exceeded our expectations and we had a wonderful apartment next to a gourmet chocolatier. Good thing we were doing all that walking!
View of Porto from the Gaia side of the river
Ribeira District - about a 15-minute walk straight downhill from our apartment
There are so many things we loved about Porto and we just scratched the surface. There is beautiful architecture throughout, but my personal favorites were the bridges and the blue and white tile work that has been added to many the buildings later in the early 1900s. We spent hours walking across and down the river front from the Luís I Bridge which has both an upper and lower level, which both can be walked across. Both the Gaia and Porto side of the bridge have plenty to do on their respective sides, but each side has its own personality for sure.
The tile work on the Chapel of Souls and the São Bento Station were favorites of mine. The detail is amazing and then you remember it is a working train station! Commuters were rushing through here by the thousands every morning and somehow my own daily train commute through Ogilvie Station does not measure up. Click on any of the images below to see a larger version.
There are several bridges across the river, but the two designed by Gustave Eiffel are probably the most unique and interesting. As you can see in the pictures below, the design is familiar.
The street art throughout the city is amazing and something we did not expect. Two of my favorites are below and the cat served as a nice landmark on which turn to take coming home at night.
The music in Porto was also an unexpected and amazing surprise. Street musicians and performers were established at nearly every square. When walking, we would stop for mini-concerts two or three times. Getting wherever we were going, became an experience itself as you never knew what you would hear or see. The group below caught our ear as we began to pass, in a hurry to make a dinner. The GOT theme stopped us, and many in the crowd in our tracks. I caught a short clip on video below:
Trish, being her usual outgoing self, made friends on our second day when she approached someone to take a photograph. Turns out that Nigel is as outgoing as Trish so 30 minutes later she had a restaurant recommendation for dinner that night. We ended up having dinner next to Nigel, Gloria, and Sally. They were traveling from the UK and were a few days ahead of us to Lisbon, so we made plans to connect there as well. So far, we have been lucky and met some great folks on the road.
Click on any of the images below to see a larger version of some of our favorite meals and snacks that week. The seafood in Porto is legendary, but the Nata pastries were a close second. Zach refused to try one and Trish and I were always happy to split the 3rd one.
We also took the tram out to the beach area where the Douro river starts off the Atlantic based on the advice of our AirBNB host. The day started so foggy, you could barely see the boats coming in, but soon cleared up to a beautiful day.
As we left for Lisbon, we all three said that Porto was a city we want to visit again. It offers so much to do for a relatively small city.
