Day 3 in Porto: Books, Trams, and plenty of Port

This post is all about Day 3 in Porto! You can find Days 1 and 2 here and here!

After last night’s fog-fest, Mr Fletche is happy to discover the city is still hidden under a blanket of fog when he wakes early the next morning.  I roll back over in the nice comfy bed, less excited. He walks the length and breadth of Porto capturing the early morning scenes whilst I get a lie in.  Everyone’s happy By the time we’re ready to go down for a champagne breakfast to celebrate our 8^th wedding anniversary, the fog has lifted. It’s a lovely sunny day outside.

Our first stop this morning is Livraria Lello, Porto’s most beautiful bookstore. To get here, we need to cross Avenida dos Aliados.  Except it’s all shut off, to traffic and to pedestrians.  The police are here, and the army, and the press too.  The lampposts are all strewn with red and yellow, and red and green banners.  We guess that something important is going on, or someone important is visiting.  The fuss is probably not for our anniversary celebrations.  We finally find a way across the avenue via the metro station, and we’re back heading in the right direction.

There are only a couple of people queuing up for tickets at the little blue ticket office opposite Livraria Lello. We congratulate ourselves on coming here first thing in the morning. Signs everywhere advise us that photography is not allowed. Maybe we can sneak a quick phone pic here and there.  We hand our ticket to the doorman enter – only to find ourselves behind a queue of people vying to get a picture of that ornate staircase.  The staff don’t seem to be batting an eyelid about this prohibited photography.

As popular a tourist attraction as Livraro Lello is, first and foremost, it’s a bookstore.  So I weave my way around those pesky photographers checking out the wares.  There’s something exotic about seeing familiar titles in a foreign language…. ‘The Girl on the Train’ becomes ‘A Garota no Trem’ in Portugese, or ‘La Ragazza sul Treno’ in Italian.  There are books of Portugese poetry and coffee table books of the amazing street art that adorns the city.

The experience is slightly marred by the inconsiderate camera-wielding brigade, pushing and shoving to get the best shot. Influencers block the staircase. The staircase is not a photo prop. It’s an actual staircase that people actually need to use to get between floors. I smile at a girl curled up reading a book on a chair, until I notice that the book was actually upside down. Maybe the ban on photography should actually be enforced so that people who love books and beautiful interiors can enjoy the experience a little more.

So, love of books sated, we head off down to Infante Dom Henrique to get the tram.  Actually, we don’t. We take a detour and end up somewhere slightly off track where Mr Fletche indulges his love of taking photos of laundry billowing from windows. 

But soon, we’re at the tram stop and I’m a little bit giddy with excitement.  I love trams.  Especially the wooden panelled, red seated trams that criss-cross Porto, and in this case, take us to the seaside.  I love every uncomfortable jolt, every rattle and squeak and grinding, crunching noise.  I loved the gravity-defying trams in San Francisco. Mr Fletche, not so much.  I always want to sing the Trolley Song from “Meet me in St Louis”.

 
The tram from Infante to Passeio Alegre takes about 20 minutes, and it’s a pleasant if slightly boneshaking ride.  I resist the urge to do my best Judy Garland impression, much to Mr Fletche’s relief.  We alight at Passeio Allegre, where the river Douro meets the Atlantic Ocean.  The November temperatures are up in the late teens today, so we find ourselves shrugging off layers in order to feel the sunshine on our Vitamin D deprived skin.

We watch the waves crash up near the lighthouse, a local playing with her dogs on the beach and avoid the slightly annoying roadworks that are currently blighting part of the seafront.  It’s time for an anniversary beer at a bar overlooking Praia dos Ingleses. It feels as warm as any mid summers day back in the UK.  It’s a wrench to move. We could sit watching the waves lap the beach all day but we force ourselves to get moving again.

There’s a limited selection of places to choose for lunch but I spot BH Foz – another blogger recommendation.  We sit on the sun soaked terrace and share a pizza and salad. After lunch we continue our stroll to the most northerly part of the promenade, to the Castelo do Queijo.  Castle of the Cheese. Here we can catch our Blue HoHo bus back to town.

We take the bus over to Vila Nova de Gaia, where it handily drops us off right by Sandemans. We’ve just missed the introduction of the next English language tour, but they let us tag onto the end anyway.  The first thing that hits you is the smell.  It’s heady and woody and makes you feel like you’re being embraced in a warm, dark, sweet-smelling, squidgy cushion.

Tawnys, Rubys, Vintage, White.  We learn about all the port from a woman who’s dressed as ‘the Don’.  We learn about cask sizes, and how long it is stored for, and how sherry and port are not the same thing.

Port and sherry are both fortified wines meaning that they have distilled spirits added; however port does not complete the fermentation process before the spirit is added and therefore is sweeter with a higher alcohol content.  Also, Port is from Portugal, sherry is from Southern Spain.

Then we watch a video which looks like a children’s educational film from the 70s. Finally, we get to the actual tasting bit.  We patiently wait with our glasses in front of us while they tell us what we should be smelling and seeing and tasting, and then it’s ‘Saúde’!  Knocking back two ports in quick succession imakes it an easy decision to purchase an obligatory bottle from their shop.

 

We see our Blue Bus outside just about to leave the bus stop. We make a run for it out of Sandemans, swinging the signature yellow bag around and waving our arms with abandon at the driver.  Incidentally, “stop” in Portugese is “pare”.  This may have been useful to know beforehand but the driver kindly lets us on anyway.  We’re getting our money’s worth out of our bus tickets. It’s a shame that they don’t run later in the evening – this would make the thought of going out at night much more pleasurable when you don’t have to think about those hills. 

We get off the bus at Torre dos Clerigos. If we’ve been lazy getting the bus then its time to get those thighs working now.  At around 240 steps, it’s not the tallest tower we’ve climbed (hi Florence!) but it’s relentless and there’s no handy rest places. It’s up and up and up and up.  The port we’ve imbibed this afternoon certainly doesn’t help my energy levels at all.

It’s relatively quiet at the top. Which is a good thing as it’s a very small space up there and it’s hard to manoeuvre round to see the other side.  Any busier and I can imagine it would be quite claustrophobic.  The views are nice but I wouldn’t make it a must-see simply due to the lack of space at the top. And the effort it takes to get there.  The best views are those that include the tower as part of the skyscape, from the upper level of the bridge at Vila Nova de Gaia for example, or from the Cathedral terrace.

 

 

It’s a quick freshen up back at the hotel before we head out for our anniversary meal.  I’d booked a restaurant right near our hotel, but seeing as it was at the back of a demolition site I was a bit wary. So we headed back down to the riverside.

(Incidentally, Trip Advisor reviews are still raving about this restaurant, and how it’s a hidden gem so maybe I made an error in not trusting my initial research). 

Bacalhau is a popular Porto dish – salted and dried cod, served in any number of weird and wonderful ways. It’s also the name of a lovely little traditional restaurant overlooking the river.  The menu centres primarily around its namesake dish, so that’s what we ordered – two different kinds of bacalhau.  The staff were friendly and hospitable, and the restaurant was in a great location.

Final thoughts on Porto

Sadly, it’s time for us to leave Porto.  I wished we’d stayed a little closer to the river as this is where we ended up spending most of our time, but the proximity to the train and metro station from our hotel was definitely a bonus.  We load another single journey onto our Andante card, and the metro soon whisks us back to Francisco sa Carneiro airport for our flight home.

Porto is full of surprises.  It has beautiful buildings, amazing street art, wine lodges, quirky transport options, stunning bridges, a lovely riverfront, spectacular churches, plenty of parkland and green space and a natural mix of traditional and modern architecture. It’s also just 20 minutes away from beaches and the ocean.  We had two and a half days that we spent doing completely different things, and we could easily have spent another day or two using Porto as a base to see some of the other Northern Portugese cities such as Braga and Guimarães, or travelling to the source of our new favourite tipple, the Douro Valley.

The city was quiet at this time, and we probably had a different experience than if we’d gone at the height of summer, when I can imagine the bars, restaurants and cafes of the Ribeira would have been buzzing well into the evening.  We probably missed out on some little gems simply because a lot of places were empty or closed, and we probably didn’t have the best foodie experience.  But at the same time it was nice to wander around without being in a sea of tourists shuffling from one must-see attraction to the next – only Livraria Lello came close to that.

I hope you’ve enjoyed following our three day break to Porto. If you prefer a more condensed version with less chat, check out my “Guide to 48 hours in Porto”!