Porto and the Porto area is our next stop. We will spend 3 days in the city but will take the middle day to tour North into Minho. I did a separate post about Braga and Minho so this will cover our other two Oporto city days.
Our arrival and first morning in Porto was drizzly and rainy so we toured with umbrellas and ducked in and out of buildings. The sun kind of came out and the rain stopped early afternoon and we were able to walk the historic centre and go for a boat ride under the beautiful bridges of Porto.
Porto is actually 2 cities on either side of the Douro River right up to it’s mouth at the Atlantic Ocean. Oporto as it’s known by the Portuguese on the North bank and Vila Nova De Gaia on the South bank. Many refer to it all as Porto. You would need weeks to do this city justice….there is so much to see. We made a list of places and neighborhoods we wanted to see in our short time and we even ran out of time to see them, but we did get to see some awesome things and will share them.
We saw Lello , a bookshop opened in 1906 that is referred to as the most beautiful bookshop in the world. The story is that JKRawlings lived in Porto for two years, spent lots of time at the bookstore and got the inspiration for Harry Potter from this bookstore. It does feel Harry Potterish for sure!
We ate the famous Francesinha sandwich at Santiago’s! The Francesinha is a Portuguese massive sandwich. It’s composed of several layers: bread, cheese, ham, fresh sausage, linguiça (smoke-cured pork sausage), veal steak, more bread, and finally, a fried egg (although the specific fillings can vary). The whole thing is covered in melted cheese and smothered in a rich beer sauce. For Jim a 9 for me a 6.
We also toured the Palácio de Bolsa, some beautiful cathedrals and monasteries, the famous Porto market, catacombs and the Sao Bento train station with over 22000 tiles decorating the walls.
It feels like we just scratched the surface of Porto. We had a lovely Airbnb that we got for such a great deal because it had four of these before you got to it.
And we did find our favourite cafe “Tupi“.
The last thing we did leaving Porto is go to McDonalds for a burger. We had seen many McDonalds in Porto and they all looked so different, we wanted to give one a try. Beautiful place – Big Macs identical!!
