Porto Day 1

Today started off trying to get all of the clothes we tried to wash dry enough to pack for our trip to Porto. We were mostly successful and the taxi showed up on time and got us to the train station in time to board and get settled in. We booked a 1st class coach and had comfortable seats and on-board wifi for the 3.5 hour trip. Very comfortable and efficient, travelling at up to 190 kph.

There was a short connection in Porto that we missed because we were a few minutes late arriving so we had to get a little longer cab ride to our apartment. This was not a big issue as taxis are relatively cheap here.

We arrived at 15:30 h and were taken to our apartment in a little courtyard just off of one of the main streets.

We thought Lisbon was hilly, well, this is something else altogether!

After settling in to our place, we walked down to the riverfront and took in the ambience. Again, lots of tourists.

The city has a flavour of even older than Lisbon because it was not rebuilt from an earthquake in the 18th century.

This bridge connects the historic part of the city with the port wine region on the other side of the Douro River, the Vila Nova de Gaia district. We will be walking over the bridge sometime during our stay to do some port sampling!

After walking a bit of the waterfront, we walked up to a park that gave an overview of the river. It was quite a climb! many stairs and steep streets but lots of terrific street and alley views.

The views were great and we we descended back to our apartment to try to source some necessities.

We had not seen so much as a corner store to pick up milk, juice, coffee etc so we asked at the rental office and were told the only small supermarket in the downtown core was closed because the owners were tired after the summer season and needed a vacation .... really????

Next was the search for a supper spot that:

• had a reasonable TripAdvisor rating
• not overpriced
• less than 1000m climb

We sorted through the list, walked to several and were told the next available table was days away or at 22:00h tonight.

We finally did find a little place that we noticed that was highly rated but was essentially a sandwich shop with interesting chicken or beef on a bun. By now we were tired and when we were offered a table, we took it. It was actually good, their burger was actually a shaved rare roast beef on a nice bun with salad and fries. Best of all, the beer was 1.6 euro. Great after a long day of nothing to eat since breakfast.

We found an english channel on the TV and relaxed and got a reasonably early bedtime to prepare for some serious walking tomorrow.