Saturday, 29 June
We woke up in our own apartment and decided to take things easy for the day. Finn was content to hang around the house so Jen and I finally roused ourselves and walked downtown to find a good breakfast. On the way we stopped at an impossibly crowded antique store to browse through the stuff. There was a lot of vintange petroliana available but I stayed strong and backed away from it. Jen and I found our breakfast at an interesting combination store/cafe (think of a Banana Republic with a full restaurant on the second floor).
We tried a Caipirinha for the first time, which were delicious and deadly, and each of us had a wonderful meal followed by cappuccino and dessert. Taking our time to slowly wander back home, we did some more lazy sightseeing and tried to find some other alternatives for food and destinations later in the week.
Sunday, 30 June – 7822 steps
We’d been told about a variation on the Pastel De Nata called Ovos Moles, which are the specialty of a coastal town a little south of us called Aviero. The town is nestled right on the water and also includes several examples of Art Nouveau architecture as well as a museum (and several ancient cathedrals, of course) so we set course southward to check it out. After finding some on-street parking that wasn’t covered by my app we got some lunch and commenced to walk the town. The Art Nouveau museum was underwhelming, as was the city museum, but we learned some things about the region and saw some beautiful buildings.
Stopping for our first ovos moles at a touristy cafe, we were underwhelmed with the flavor—very yolky as opposed to creamy like the Pastel de Nata. We walked the old section of town over to their historic cathedral and were lucky enough to sneak in before they closed, which was lucky; it’s a beautiful building filled with some incredible art (and one creepy seven-swords Our Lady of Sorrow statue).
Leaving there we decided we needed to make sure the subpar ovos moles weren’t a fluke and found a beautiful padaria where the woman at the counter hooked us up with several things to try. This one was a little sweeter but still very yolky—so we decided this wasn’t for us. With that, we headed back to the car and to our house in Porto.
Monday 1 July – 15,943 steps
Monday was the day. Jen and I plotted a course around the old section of Porto to see a bunch of sights, some of which we’d bumped into and others we didn’t know about. I got up early and crossed the street to pick up coffee and egg croissants at the bakery on the corner (something I’d already made a habit of; the guys behind the counter were exceptionally generous to your jet lagged correspondent) while everyone got ready to go. Our course took us first to a proper breakfast at a lovely cafe in the historic district, and we filled up on good food and our second Porn Star Martini of the trip (highly recommended).
From there we went first to the Chapel of Souls, an 18th-century church covered in hand-painted tilework, where we shot a few pictures and then went inside to pay our respects.
The influencers were out in force outside so we continued on our way to our next waypoint: the Majestic Cafe, an Art Nouveau restaurant with eye-watering pricing (most likely to keep the influencers from clogging the place up). We viewed it from outside and then kept moving.
The church of Saint Ildefonso is up on top of the hill in the middle of a shopping district. It has an unmistakeable impact on the area not only because of its location, but because of the incredible tile work across the outside of the whole building. Both times we saw it, it was behind locked gates, so we couldn’t go up or inside, but as an object in both morning and afternoon light, it was beautiful to look at.
From here we wandered further downhill, and through some construction to reach the Porto train station, which had been noted in a bunch of the different guides we read for its architecture and tile work. This was definitely something we wanted to see, so we brave the crowds and went inside we weren’t disappointed. The main hall is empty of benches like most modern train stations are, but is filled with people all staring upward at the tile and plasterwork.
Outside, it’s an old-school series of platforms with latticed ironwork creating a barrel roof, under which several trains sat idling. It’s actually in the middle of a valley so the trains leave through tunnels at the other end of the station, and the whole thing is surrounded by ancient buildings, reaching up over the edges. We stood and took pictures and walked the platforms for a while, then went back into the main building to stare upward for a while longer.
Leaving the train station, we wandered the streets slowly downhill until we found a nice open air café to stop and get a cold beer and a nosh to eat. We were entertained by a man playing an alto sax out in the Square for euros, who was perhaps, un willingly accompanied by a man in his 60s or 70s suggestively dancing to his music, trying to get women passers-by to join him. Café culture really is a thing, and I could really get used to it here in the states if our towns and cities were actually organized in a humane way.
The next thing we ran into was the Bolsa palace, the original stock exchange for the city when Porto was a key trading port. We were a little dubious about the ticket price, but once we walked in the building, and saw how magnificent everything was we were happy we had taken the chance. The middle courtyard was being rented out for some sort of event so we couldn’t stand in the middle and look upward but from where we were it was breathtaking.
One thing that we got to see that made us very happy was the final stop on the tour, a room called the Arabian room, which was decorated in the 1880s with carved wood covered in gold and Arabian accents.
Leaving the Bolsa, we found ourselves very close to sea level and figured we might try walking over one of the bridges to see the other side of the city. The city has three bridges, and we were close to one with a span we could cross at our level.
On the other side of the water, we took a break at a park and rest our legs and looked at a map. We realized we were very close to most of the port wine distilleries, and thought we would stop in for a tasting. We chose Callum as our vineyard, and were lucky to get a table outside under an umbrella to watch people walk past. Jen and I settled on a flight of vintage ports with a cheese plate to accompany things. All in all, it was a lovely way to spend an hour or two by the water and tasting fantastic wine.
From there, we walked back across the low span of the bridge to the funicular, which was a cheap way to climb 40 stories without having to walk any stairs. From there, we circle back to walk out on the top span of the bridge and view the city from high. It was beautiful, but a little wobbly so we only got out about a third of the way before coming back. On our way back we stopped past the church of Saint Ildefonso again, this time in the afternoon light, and marvel at how beautiful it still was. The rest of the trip was a slow uphill until we got back to the apartment and at that point we were so tired we didn’t go back out for dinner.
Tuesday, 2 July – 8662 steps
There were a couple of things still on our list that we wanted to see before we left Porto so we made a careful plan and mapped out our course for the last few highlights Finn had made a list of sites she wanted to see, one of which was called the Bank of Materials which is a collection built by the city of reclaimed tile from buildings that have been torn down. After getting a decent breakfast at a café, halfway downtown, we circled a square until we found the museum itself, which was tucked away on a side street. The museum itself wasn’t very big, but held too long racks full of wooden boxes with reclaimed tile inside with more patterns than we had seen out on the street—in geometric shapes, hand, painted scenes, and printed patterns. They also had an entire collection of porcelain street signs, plaster, castings, and a couple of mosaics on display.
After that, we wanted to see the Livaria Lello, which is build as the most beautiful bookstore in the world. As with many things in Porto, you have to get tickets so we figured out our entry time and only had to wait about 20 minutes to get in. Once inside, it’s filled with the requisite influencers, and TikTokers, all posing on the grand staircase, which is only about two people wide, so you have to wait for people to make duck lips before you can go anywhere. With about 1/10 of the people inside the library would be absolutely beautiful, but we had a hard time really enjoying it when being jostled by other tourists wandering up and down looking for the best photo op. They were hosting a celebration of José Saramago, the only Portuguese Nobel winner, whose biography display made him sound like a very humorous and interesting author—but none of his work was available in English. It was breathtaking inside but we all reached our people limit quickly and bailed out.
Worried about having some upscale clothing for dinner, we walked downtown Porto to try and find a women’s boutique with a blouse that Jen could wear (she packed for cold weather and it got hot on us) but the only two choices seemed to be cheap tourist peasant-type clothes or the Zara/Burberry stores where you have to buzz to be let inside. We gave up on this after awhile and headed back home.
We made plans to try a restaurant our hosts recommended, so we hopped in the car and drove to the west side of the city. The restaurant specializes in fresh seafood, and when I walked in I was met by a glass case holding some of the largest lobster I’ve ever seen. Our waiter was excellent and recommended some fantastic dishes for us: Jen had a seafood “açorda” (bread and seafood stew), I had grilled crayfish with butter rice, and Finn had steamed clams. They paired it with an excellent wine, and we were all in heaven. Everything was perfect and we had a great evening together. Waddling home, we all hit the sack immediately.
Wednesday, 3 July – 7715 steps
We got a late start on Wednesday, possibly because we were trying to put off the idea of having to leave. We did some straightening up around the apartment and I went out to fill up the rental car. There wasn’t much left to see other than wandering the streets, but we headed back downtown to find some lunch and check out a store we’d scoped out for Finn days earlier. The other thing we wanted to do was find the arts district to see if there was anyplace selling something we could bring home and hang on the wall, as well as some gifts for our hosts. We found a long street sprinkled with upscale art galleries—actual hung artwork on the wall—and smaller shops with prints and more tourist centered objects. We did stumble on one storefront, selling prints from local artists, which was perfect for what we wanted. After only about five minutes of looking, Jen found a series of prints by one artist that we really loved and we picked a bunch out for ourselves.
Then we regretfully wandered back to the apartment to straighten everything up, repack all of our gear, and get ready for the following morning.
Thursday, 4 July
Our flight was at 12:20 so we wanted to be in the airport by 9 AM. We got the rental car back to the counter by 8:20 and we’re walking into the airport by 8:40 from there. We had to wait about an hour for the ticket window to open up to get checked in. Once that was complete, we made our way through security and found our gate. I had woken with a sore throat and my nose had started running, so we stopped in at a pharmacy and got me some bizarre Portuguese cold meds that tasted like old sheets and a couple of masks I could wear on the plane.
The first flight to Lisbon went without any problems and this time we had an extra 40 minutes to make it to our connecting flight again there was some confusion as to which gate we were supposed to go to, and once we got into the boarding line, there was an extra security check that made no sense to us. But we boarded the plane and settled in for the flight. Then it turned out. There was something wrong with the plane. They made us wait an hour, and then had us deplane out onto the tarmac and get onto some very hot buses. At this point, I was running a fever, so standing on that bus made me feel like my eyeballs were boiling in a pot of stew. They drove us to the other side of the gate to a different plane, let us bake on the bus for about 20 minutes and then got us on the new plane. There was no issue with this plane, so they got us in the air and we flew without incident back to Dulles. After collecting our luggage, we called for an Uber and got back the house at about 12:30PM (6:30AM Portugal time).
Portugal (and Spain!) were very, very good to us, and I would not hesitate for a second to go back. Obrigado!