The travels of Tim and Megan: Porto, Portugal

Sunday

On Sunday we had to get up at the outrageous time of 7.30am in order to get in our brilliant hotel breakfast, check out and get ourselves across town to the railway station to catch our 9:30am train to Porto. The journey from Lisbon to Porto takes around three hours. Like all of the Portuguese public transport we used, the train was clean, comfortable and inexpensive. Good work Portugal!

However, we did encounter an increasingly common phenomenon – many of our fellow passengers spent an enormous amount of time gazing around with confused looks on their faces and stumbling over each other trying to locate their pre-assigned seats. We have observed similar behaviour in London theatres, American sporting events and in other parts of Europe too. Seriously people, the seats are set out in numerical order, it’s really easy. People were walking back and forth wondering where on earth seat 89 could be - shock horror, it was obediently sitting between seats 88 and 90... It's not as if they are arranged at random!

Anyway, despite this kerfuffle and a few more shady characters with a keen eye for handbags and wallets, we successfully arrived in Porto. We made our way to the Quality Inn, which was sadly quite a step down from the champagne and before-bed chocolates luxury of the Sofitel in Lisbon. Sigh. However, we settled in and then stepped out into the Porto afternoon to do some exploring and to watch Arsenal beat Aston Villa 3-0!

Porto (which is also known as Oporto) is the second largest city in Portugal and is located on the banks of the Douro River, close to the west coast in northern Portugal. It has a population of around 220,000, but the city is fairly compact and we were able to comfortably explore it on foot. The main city centre is a UNESCO world heritage site, and is full of winding cobblestone streets and Gothic churches that spill down steep hills to the Douro River, which of course makes the walk back up to the centre of town a bit of an effort! There are loads of cafes, restaurants and bars along the waterfront, which must be particularly buzzing in summer, given they were pretty cool even in the middle of winter. Portugal is probably a summertime country really. There are amazing beaches, particularly down south in the Algarve region, and even in the cities where we visited, we got the feeling it would have been great in hot, sunny weather.

From the waterfront, you can look across to the south bank of the river to the Vila Nova de Gaia area, which plays host to all of the port houses. Vila Nova de Gaia can be reached by a short walk across the impressive Dom Luiz I Bridge. We planned to spend a large part of the following day on the south bank so for the rest of Sunday, we confined ourselves to exploring what the north side had to offer. The highlights of our exploration were the Se Cathedral, complete with a Manueline pillory in the courtyard in front of the cathedral, and the Parisenne-like Avenida dos Aliados, which is a sloping boulevard packed with amazing buildings down either side and a central grass and pavement area, complete with a lovely water fountain.

Finally, we wrapped up the day by sampling some local cuisine at a downtown eatery and turned in early - by this stage we were becoming accustomed to 11 hour sleeps!

Monday

We started Monday with a reasonable breakfast at the Quality Inn, before heading off on our own personal walking tour of Porto, as devised by the Lonely Planet. Monday was pretty grey and ominous looking but we took our jackets and umbrella and braved the conditions anyway. Our walking tour took us through the lovely and lively streets of Porto and we stopped to check out places of note along the way.

Our first stop was the Torre dos Clerigos, a magnificent bell tower for the Clerigos Church (there are a lot of churches in Porto!). The tower is 76m high and can be seen from most spots in the city, making it one of Porto's most famous symbols. We declined to climb the 225 steps for the amazing panoramic views of the city that our guidebook promised us, mainly due the miserable grey day which would have wrecked the views anyway, and also because we were a little climbed out after a year of tackling bell towers and cathedrals all over the Europe.

As we walked past the Clerigos church behind the tower, the heavens opened and it absolutely chucked it down for about 5 minutes. We ducked into the nearest shoe shop (another thing that Porto has way too many of - one street near our hotel had 19 shoe shops on it - out of about 50 shops total) and pretended to be interested in a pair of boots while a grumpy looking shop-keeper hovered over us. As the rain eased, we decided against buying the boots and continued on our merry way.

The next significant landmark on our tour was the Sao Bento railway station - Porto's most famous train station, renowned for its beautiful tile panels on the walls, which depict scenes from the history of Portugal. Further down the hill we again had to run inside to avoid a rain shower, although this time we happened to run into the Port Wine Institute, where we checked out the gift shop and watched part of a video on how port is made. In truth the Port Wine Institute was boring and we knew we had a lot of port information coming our way later in the day when we visited the port houses. So we carried on to the old Porto stock exchange building, where we admired the beautiful lobby and decided against joining a tour to see the rest of the building.

Instead, we scampered down the street to the Sao Francisco church, where we did do a tour. The Sao Francisco church is the most prominent Gothic monument in Porto. The Franciscan Order began building a church on this site in 1223 and later expanded the church, with this new structure being completed in 1425. The church is famous for its amazing Baroque interior. Over 200kg of gold encrusts the high altar, columns and pillars - truly breath-taking. The highlight of the entire church, however, is the Tree of Jesse - a gilded and painted wooden carving of a tree (1718-21) showing Christ's genealogy. Its branches and trunk, sprouting from a reclining Jesse, support a dozen expressive figures, culminating in Christ at the top of the tree. We also visited the catacombs and the treasury under the church.

Our next stop was the birthplace of Henry the Navigator, which is now the home of a small and unexciting looking museum. So we pretty much kept on walking and hit the waterfront of the Douro. We walked across the Dom Luiz I Bridge to Vila Nova de Gaia and we strolled along the south bank, where the Lonely Planet encouraged us to "find a table outside a cafe and watch the world go by". Clearly, the Lonely Planet has been to Porto in sunnier times. However, we revised the advice to mean "dive into the nearest port house" and were well satisfied with our choice - Calem - which turned out to be one of the most visited port houses in Porto.

As such, they provided a very professional and interesting 30 minute tour on the history of their company and the making of port wine, followed by tastings of two of their classic ports. It turns out that we did not know much about the intricacies of port. However, over the next couple of days we received a good understanding of how port is made, how it is different to other wines and the different varieties it comes in: ruby, tawny, white and vintage.

We learned that all port comes from grapes grown in a small area on the banks of the Douro River around 100km east of Porto. There, the stony soil (which has been blasted and shaped into terraces) creates an ideal environment where the vine roots can grow deep into the ground where they are protected from the most extreme heat by the stone, which in turn stores and releases the heat through the cold nights to keep the vines at a constant temperature. Once the grapes are harvested and squashed down into the pre-fermented base liquid, the fermenting process is allowed to continue only part-way (not entirely, as in the case of other wine) then it is halted with the addition of a high alcohol brandy. This makes the "fortified" wine, which retains lots of sugary sweetness (having only been partly fermented) with a higher than usual alcohol content, because of the brandy. One of our favourite parts of the port "story" is the old fashioned boats that were used for centuries to transport the casks of port from the Douro Valley to the port houses we visited on the south bank in Porto. The rickety old sail boats (stocked with old wooden port barrels) are still used today to give tourists rides along the river (see photos below).

After Calem, we wound our way up the hill to Taylor's, a stoically English port house and very pretty at that, with vines trailing all over buildings and several peacocks (or peahens, more precisely) and chickens wandering around the gardens behind the buildings. Taylor's generously offered two free tastings and a free tour of the cellars if we were so inclined, which we decided against after just seeing the same at Calem. We were impressed with what we tasted and made our first purchase, a 2003 late bottle vintage. After all that excitement, it was time for a long lunch and some more photos of river boats, before rounding off our port tour with a visit to the oldest house of all, Kopke, established in 1638. By then we were struggling to get through any more tastings (port, at the best of times, being a bit overpowering and rich) although the free chocolates that Kopke kindly provided were certainly appreciated. We purchased another two bottles of port at Kopke - so delicious and so cheap.

We finished off our day with dinner at a restaurant near to our hotel, called Cacuna, which we would recommend to anyone visiting Porto. We found it a bit hard to get away from grease and traditional meat/cheese/bread dishes in Portuguese restaurants so we were very happy to find some healthier fare at Cacuna!

Tuesday

On our last day in Porto we had planned to take a river cruise along the Douro, however, the weather conspired against us as the rain had meant the river level was too high for boat cruises. Instead, we did a spot of souvenir shopping and a bit more sight-seeing. Despite the high river levels, the weather was actually better than it had been the day before. It started cloudy and grey (but dry) and by afternoon it was actually sunny and warm.

To help us get around we decided to buy day passes for the metro system, which we could also take out to the airport later that afternoon. However, this simple exercise came with a few surprises, starting with the discovery that the ticket machines would only permit us to deposit the required 11.70 euros in coins, not notes. Now, in London, home of useless shrapnel, this wouldn't be much of an issue, but it turns out Portugal runs on a tight coin allowance. Everywhere we had been, we had been asked for exact change, or an extra 1 or 2 euros so change could be given in notes rather than coins, so we had ended up rather coin-poor. After undertaking some strategic kit-kat purchasing at a nearby shop, we managed to obtain the required fistful of coins to buy our metro tickets. Back at the ticket machine, we were joined by a sifty looking man who stared at us very intently while we used the machine...and made a quick grab for the tickets immediately on printing. Luckily Tim is always on alert for such shenanigans and moved at ninja-quick speed to fend him off - honestly! The man jibbered some Portuguese and made another grab for our tickets, so Tim unleashed some fury on him and he eventually left. Exciting times on the metro.

The metro took us across the river to the south-side to the foot of a hill, the top of which houses an old monastery which is very picturesque despite now being used by the military. We walked up the hill under the cold stare of a machine gun-wielding soldier and admired a fantastic, if rather misty, view of Porto. Many photos ensued! Afterwards, we made our way back down to the river.

As the river cruise was off, we consoled ourselves by taking a tour of the one port house we hadn't been able to tour the previous day, Sandemans. It turned out to be an excellent tour, and we were particularly charmed by the Sandemans mascot - the "Don". The Don looks a bit like Zorro in a black cape and hat and was introduced to the public in the 1920s. He features on the bottles, casks and advertising and was apparently one of the first trade marks registered in the UK. Megan got quite a kick out of all the intellectual property talk! To emphasise the brand, our tour guide wore the costume (see below) and there were life size cut-outs of the Don lurking in many corners of the cellars during the tour. After the very interesting tour, we sampled some Sandemans port. Having purchased three bottles of port the day before, we thought we had enough port to take home, although the Sandemans port was so delicious we had to buy two more bottles.

Back across the river we had a challenging time trying to order a toasted sandwich at a waterfront cafe, as the owner was good heartedly intent on serving us something else - a Portuguese "special" that looked like a sandwich with cheese, ham and beef, lying in a kind of weak tomato soup. He was determined to sell us (and an American family) this special, which also happened to be the most expensive thing on the menu - he even brought it to our table for us to admire. We eventually got what we were after, although he seemed rather downcast over what we had missed out on.

After some shopping, we stopped in at a cake shop where we had a much simpler experience over hot chocolate and custard tarts before heading back to the hotel to pick up our bags. We took the metro to the airport - this time without incident - and boarded a flight with the good people at TAP Airways (who have very trendy uniforms!). We got home 30 minutes early - surely a record for us heading into Heathrow. We had packed the five bottles of port as carefully as we could in our checked on luggage. There was a slight moment of panic at Heathrow when Tim's suitcase arrived squashed and soaked, but thankfully this was due to the London rain, and not leaking port!

That ended another fantastic year of travels and the country tally is climbing:
Megan 35
Tim and Bear 32