Porto

One whole week in one location? What a concept. We had RELAXATION days! What a concept. We slept in. We puttered. We chilled. Wow.

Porto is straight up gorgeous though. The skyline of buildings working their way up the river valley is one of the best in the world. It’s phenomenal. The city itself is a little chaotic, with many derelict buildings downtown as a result of rent cap laws. The streets are lovely to walk down though.

We settled into our little hostel along the Douro river, staying above a port cellar. The main area was quaint, and breakfast was free. What a concept. After getting ourselves put together, we walked along the south side of the river. Many restaurants have port tastings being offered, but what enticed us was a small canned fish shop. We had seen canned fish everywhere in Lisbon, and after the shopkeeper offered us a free sample this was our time to try. It was spicy tuna. A mild European spice, but it was actually quite good. We bought three cans.

Canned fish is no meal, so we walked across the famous Dom Luis I Bridge to actual Porto (south of the river is technically Gaia, a separate city) in search of a francesinha. This is a common Porto dinner, and apparently somewhat of a religion here. There’s shops everywhere, and everyone has their favorites. We went to the place with a line, and got one each. The sandwich is two sausages, steak, ham, another meat, egg, cheese, and bread all layered together, covered in a beer sauce, with fries on the side. It felt more like a breakfast food to me, but you cannot deny it was artery clogging stomach filling deliciousness.

We did some general city sightseeing on the way back to the hostel, and went to bed early.

The next day we hitched a ride to the Douro valley with our friends from Lisbon, Ben and Alex. They were super gracious to let us go. We wrote about the day in another blog. But it was a really lovely day.

Day three was a chill rest day for us. Which included a Pastel de Nata making class. They are both simple and complicated at the same time. We wrote about the class in a separate blog.

We took a walk up the hill to Jardim de Morro later in the day, a scenic viewpoint. There was a Christian rock concert occurring there, so we stayed for a few songs. Honestly, pretty good. The crowd was full of groups of youth of different nationalities waving their countries flags. We decided it was finally time google what World Youth Day is.

Throughout our time in Lisbon, we saw banners everywhere for World Youth Day on from August 1-6, and we didn’t think much of it. Apparently, the popes coming to Lisbon, and an estimated 1-2 million Catholic youth are travelling there to hear him speak and do religious stuff. In Porto, there were many Catholic youth groups from around the world making a pre-trip here. You would have these groups break out into song walking down the road. They loved the buskers that would seemingly only play Coldplay and The Beatles (like the rest of Europe). These groups were everywhere, and they especially loved the Christian rock concert.

The next day we did a morning wander of the city, with more sightseeing of various buildings and fountains. We had some delicious pork sandwiches for lunch. They were actually proper spicy. We then headed to our hostel for a cellar tour and port tasting. We met a great group of guys there, and spent the rest of the day drinking Super Bocks and listening to music with them. We wrote about this in another blog as well.

We lost most of the next day to the night before. Great times, no regrets. We did spend the night watching the sunset at Jardim do Morro. Absolute beauty. The seagulls were aggressive, with one successful heist of a piece of bread. Some lovey-dovey buskers made the evening complete.

It’s now our last day in Porto, and we finally decided to do a walking tour. Our guide João was really excited to show us around. He talked about the history and architecture of the buildings, as well as Portugal as a whole. It felt like a worthy thing to do. We went for dinner to Tokyo Sushi, an all you can eat sushi and Asian food (stir fry’s, dumpling’s etc.) place. We went crazy and stuffed ourselves. Top tier meal. Maybe not for taste (but MSG and sushi is always great), but for price and quantity.

That’s pretty much it for Porto, and Europe by extension. The whole six weeks was a total blur. We’ve got a long travel day ahead of us now, and we are off to South America after. We will see you all across the pond!