Porto, Portgul

I had a wonderful summer in Scotland staying with my good friend Eva. I spent a lot of my time processing photos and uploading everything to various photo websites.  It’s a long slow process, but I'm beginning to see a few more sales.  I did take some time off to enjoy Scotland of course, with trips to the Isle of May, Glasgow, the Trossachs, a road trip through the Highlands, and an awesome road trip with Eve on the North Coast 500.  I also went down to England and dog sat for a very handsome labradoodle named Valentino. I found time to visit my friend Terri in Liverpool before a great trip to Iceland, which you can read all about in a previous post.  I was a bit limited in what I could do because I was struggling with some lower back issues as well as ever present knee problems. I have come to the realization that I really can't put off knee replacement much longer. But first I'm off to Portugal. This is long been one of the countries I wanted to visit so I was very excited. I started my trip in Porto, in the north of Portugal.

Porto is a nice city don't get me wrong, but it really didn't wow me. To be fair this might be in part because my knee was giving me so many problems I could barely get around. I ended up doing the 48-hour hop-on-hop-off bus. I admit that I did a lot more riding than walking. My favorite area was Ribeira, one of the most beautiful and lively neighborhoods in the city.  It is a great walking area with narrow streets and lots of shops. The neighborhood includes the waterfront.  On this side of the Douro river you have brightly colored buildings, plenty of riverfront cafes, bars, and restaurants.  This is also where the boat tours leave from and you have several options.  There are seven or eight bridges across the Douro and you can do a river cruise to see all of them and a different perspective of both riverfront areas.  On the other side of the river you have a funicular that allows to see the area from up high.  It is a short ride, but still worth doing.  This side of the river also has cafes and restaurants, but more importantly for wine drinkers, this is where the port wine cellars are.  Most offer wine tasting, and you can find guided tours of the cellars.  The hop on hop off bus tickets include one of these tours.  Although I don't like wine, I did want to do the tour, but they were all booked up when I tried to go.  

There were plenty of traditional Portuguese food dishes so I thought the a food tour was in order. I can't believe how picky I have become with food.  While most of what we tried seemed fine, I found that I could only tolerate a few bites of every dish.  Most of it was just too 'heavy' for my taste.  The first thing was kind of a spinach and potato soup which actually, was the dish I liked the most. It didn't look too appetizing because it was a milky soup with plenty of spinach floating in it, but the taste was pretty good.  It was called caldo verde.  I think it can be made with various types of greens because I've also seen it with kale.  The other option was a soup with pigs’ blood, but that was a hard pass. The guide got an octopus salad with chunks of octopus, garlic, parsley, and olive oil and vinegar. It was quite colorful and also very popular.  Another dish we tried was sausage with a side of bread. They seem to have a lot of homemade bread items and I certainly could get on board with that, but I'm not a big fan of sausage. I should mention that I was the only one on the tour so it was a little difficult to not eat the food. I told her it was all so good but I wanted just a taste of each dish.  She had everything we didn't eat boxed up for me to take home.  I gave it all to a homeless person.  Another dish we had was a sandwich called Francesinha and it was on almost every menu I saw.  It’s made with two slices of thick bread with ham, sausage, and steak, all covered in a thick cheese, beer, and tomato sauce.  The last dish was the Portuguese pastry called pastel de nata which, of course, I did really like.  It’s basically a puff pastry cup with custard filling and is best served warm.  The last stop was supposed to be a port wine cellar for a tasting, but we were on the top level of the arched Luis I Bridge. To get down to Porto Calem, you had to walk down waaaaaay too many steps, so I said goodbye to my wonderful guide and went and found a place to sit down.

The pastel de nata is so popular its literally everywhere and there are plenty of cooking classes too, so I thought why not.  I was a bit disappointed because I thought it was a class where we did the cooking.  Instead we watched a pastry chef make it. It was still an interesting demonstration and our chef made it fun.  This dish looked pretty easy, once he showed us, but I'm not sure it would have been so good had I just tried to follow a recipe. The secret to the dish is the many layers of the light buttery pastry and getting that is quite the process.  You basically have to fold the dough around a huge block of butter, like you're wrapping a present. You then roll the dough out, fold it, roll it again, fold It again, roll it again. That's how you get the delicate layers on the pastry. You then roll the dough a specific way, cut little pieces off and put them in special pastry dishes, then bake it at super high temperatures. The dish was quite tasty and I can't wait to try it myself.

As a full-time tourist all over the world, I'm used to seeing the same bad behavior when it comes to people and photographs.  I constantly see people walk in front of someone obviously trying to take a picture, shove people out of the way, get in the way of other people's shots etc.  (In Cambodia I was taking a photo and a young woman in a big blue hat stopped right in front of me.  She was quite shocked when I patted her on her head to move along!)  But one place in Porto really surprised me.  Praca de Liberdade is the main plaza in the city center and there is a huge Porto display in block letters.  It's right in front of a beautiful cathedral so it makes an excellent photo op. What was so amazing was every time I went past, I saw a very orderly line of people waiting. When it was their turn, people would climb up, do as many poses as they wanted, then climb down.  Everybody waited patiently in line; nobody jumped in front of the sign or other people's photos. The first time I saw it I thought it was just an anomaly, but I walked past this sign every day for a week, and every day it was the same. I really wish this were the way it was everywhere. It made me think there is hope for humanity after all.   

I wanted to go to the huge Mercado Born Sucesso, but it was apparently under renovation. It’s an indoor market that offers a bit of everything, including flowers, fresh produce, fish, meat, clothing, and much more.  There are also plenty of food choices if you go hungry.  A few of the vendors had relocated to the lower level of a nearby mall, but the lunch choices were reduced to the typical mall food court.   It's always fun to go to local markets and see what produce they have. I didn't notice a whole lot of variety in fruit or vegetables, in fact I couldn't even find seedless grapes. To be fair it was November so I'm not sure what would have been growing then.   

As I always do when I'm in a big city I look for Vietnamese restaurants. I was quite excited to see there are several in Porto. After trying two or three of them I must say I was very disappointed. The dish that I like is called bun and its vermicelli noodles with some sort of meat, along with sliced carrots, cucumber, and lettuce. It's essentially the same dish all over the world. It seems Puerto Vietnamese restaurants put their own spin to it. None of the dishes were nearly as good, one of them in fact was so spicy I could barely eat it. Oh well, trying new dishes is all part of the adventure. 

There is a fantastic bookstore in Puerto called Livaria Lello, that I really wanted to visit because I had heard so much about it. It was used in the Harry Potter films and is rated the third most beautiful bookstore in the world by Lonely Planet. Here is a Google image. Every time I went by there was a line out the door. My knees still really bothered me and I knew that there was no way I could stand for any length of time. That was a little disappointing.

The public transportation in Porto was excellent, but there is a catch.  Each fare is €2, which usually gives you 1.5 to 2 hours on any bus.  Not in Porto; you pay the same fare each time you board, even if you transfer.  Or in my case, keep getting on the right bus, but going the wrong way.  I made sure to always carry plenty of coins. 

I found a great vacation apartment called Low Cost Tourist Apartment Casa da Musica.  It was right across from a nice park called Praca de Mouzinho de Albuquerque. There was a supermarket just around the corner and plenty of restaurants as well.  The best thing, it was right on the Yellow hop on hop off line, as well as plenty of public transportation buses and a metro station just around the corner.  Next stop, Lisbon

 

Link to Photos: https://photos.app.goo.gl/aX14zRVJDCkuhFVX6