Just back from a brilliant Valentine’s mini break in Porto. This is the city that gave its name to a country and also a drink. Great people, great architecture. The Old City where we stayed is a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Lots of the fabulous ceramic tiles on and in buildings that Portugal is famous for.
Here is the inside of the train station for instance. I can understand why some people call this one of the most beautiful train stations in the world.
Great architecture that is actively preserved can be repurposed in so many different ways…like this.
Hang on, I recognise that name!
Perhaps the only McDonald’s with chandeliers! oh and stained glass murals!
We actually stopped off on our 4 hour walking tour to have hot chocolate at the aptly named Majestic Café.
Even the chairs we sat on were fab!
Above you can see a great little food shop we passed.
Porto is also the place where JK Rowling lived when she was writing Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s/Sorcerer’s Stone. Here’s the bookshop where she would write upstairs. Now they make their money from charging a nominal entrance fee.
And that’s just the outside – if you wanna see more click here.
We spent Valentine’s day in Vila Nova de Gaia. Never heard of it? It’s just across the river from Porto and is where all the port is aged in vaults. It’s said to have the highest concentration of alcohol anywhere in the world! In the old days the port was brought by river to the cellars. It was stored in oak casks. Periodically the river would burst its banks and flood the cellars – and nobody was phased. Why? Oak is impermeable so the port would be fine and eventually the waters would recede.
Here we are having taken a tour at the Calem wine cellar. The tour finished with a tasting – of course! (Cold in the cellar).
But the added bonus for us was a Fado concert in the wine cellar.
Fado is a particularly plaintive kind of Portuguese folk music which I have loved since the very first time I heard it. If you like Flamenco there’s a good chance you’ll like Fado.
Wonderful to hear the Portuguese guitar live again – 10 stringed with a unique sound. I love it.
Out and about this window caught my eye – of course! See below!
Porto is a great walking city. We just happened to have chosen the weekend with the worst weather for a very long time. Not stop rain. So an interesting challenge, do you let it get you down or have a good time anyway? On the plane coming home we both agreed we didn’t have a good time…we had a great time and we’ll always remember it.
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