What a fun change of pace from our last locations! We had so many visitors in Porto that we could barely get anything done! We arrived knowing shockingly little about this town (just that I had really wanted to check out Portugal) and it was fun to get to explore it with friends.
Porto is such a charming city, with an old city area of tiny alleys, annoyingly steep hills, and a lot of the buildings are covered in hand painted tiles.
Portugal has a long and complicated history, and I didn’t ever realize how much of a wealthy, exploring super-power nation they once were. During that time of riches, they installed beautiful blue and white hand-painted tile scenes (azulejos) onto what before must have been large, stark buildings. Churches, train stations and other significant buildings began all getting these stunning tiles. It became such a tradition, that even the regular buildings began getting tiles—but in repeating pattern instead of a huge scene. Now a significant number of buildings all over town are tiled and it has become part of the identity of the city.
One of the city’s other notable features is the Duomo River which divides the city of Porto from Vila Nova De Gaia. Gaia, as its called, is where all of the port wine is stored. People who live on the Porto side will tell you the only good thing about Gaia is the view of Porto. People who live in Gaia will tell you at length that port wine has nothing to do with Porto, other than the name. The Portuguese seem to love their friendly rivalries. (What’s better—Porto or Lisbon? Who’s got the “right” accent—Portugal vs Brazil? Everything can be a competition for these folks!)
Porto is a place that’s easy to fall in love with. It’s built along the river, but only a mile or so from the ocean. The wine is so cheap, pretty decent and with the biggest pours you’ve ever seen. (In one store I noticed that the pours were so large that she got 2.5 glasses of wine out of a bottle—when it the US that is 5 glasses!)
Their food is simple, local food but prepared with the freshest ingredients. Sardines came into season while we were there. While I presumed they’d be little tiny things that could fit into a can, I was completely wrong. An “appetizer” of sardines consists of about 6 fish that are about the size of a glass Heinz 57 bottle. They are usually just salted and thrown on a charcoal grill. They were delicious and we ordered them many times. A far cry from what I thought sardines could be when I arrived!
People here are soccer insane! When one of our friends visited, he requested we go to a match. Porto’s soccer team (FC Porto) is one of the best in the league and he wanted to experience a game there in person. At the stadium, tickets are only sold to FC Porto fans (no coming to cheer for the opposing team), and the entire game people barely sat down singing and chanting the whole time. Later in the month, FC Porto won the national championship and the town went crazy for several days—singing, dancing, partying in the street and then a huge celebration with parade.
Great biking, great transportation infrastructure, great places to day trip (post coming soon) and tons of friend visits made our time here fly by. We left feeling that 2 months was definitely not enough time and that we’d be planning to return again.
