British Airways flight BA2783 pushed back five minutes early barely pausing on its way out to Gatwicks only runway to get us airborn. Two hours later we were in Porto, arriving ahead of schedule, but any gain was quickly lost when our bags took ages to appear on the carousel.
We took the Porto do Metro in to the city from right outside the terminal, cheap too at just €2 each and efficiently delivering you right in to the city centre in about 30 minutes.
Our hotel, The Artist Hotel Porto was a brief, albeit steep and breathless 10 minute walk from the Bolhao metro station.
The Artist is attached to a catering college, used for training staff in the hotel industry, both cooking, waiting and front of house staff are all trained here.
Checking in was a delight, plenty of time taken to chat and be shown Porto highlights on a tourist map over a glass of port.
Dropping the suitcase in our enormous room, we headed back out in to the warm Porto evening with the aim of reaching the Douro river. Our route accidentally hitting most of the tourist highlights, Majestic coffee house, Cathedral’s and the railway station before finally finding ourselves enjoying the sights of the river and the illuminations of the bridge and Port houses on the other bank of the Douro.
Our slow and winding route back up the hill to our hotel took us up the pedestrianised precinct where we stopped for a cheese plate and some local Douro wine at Saboriccia, a delightfully hosted tapas bar; the host welcoming us like family who’d just happened to drop in. Our quick cheese plate turned in to several glasses of vinho and we ended up chatting with other guests and finally closing the bar with the owner.
THURSDAY
Lovely slow buffet breakfast at the hotel, good selection of food and great service.
Nothing on the agenda except a visit to one of the Port houses.
We made our way down the precinct to the Chapel of Souls, the blue tiled church midway down the precinct. Morning service was in mid flow and we stood back and enjoyed some of the busy service.
Following our nose we ended up at the Clérigos Tower,
we continued through the Parc to Livraria Lello, J K Rowling’s inspiration for Harry Potter, where the long queues and the entrance fee put us off actually visiting.
Finding our way finally down to the river we took the water taxi across to Vila Nova de Gaia where all the port houses are nestled on the hillside. These port houses are basically huge warehouses where barrels and barrels of port are maturing, very slowly. We chose Croft as we’d read that it was one of the quieter houses to visit, which it was. Being the ‘off’ season we were the only two on the tour, so we enjoyed a pre-tour glass of pink Port before being shown around the warehouse by our very friendly and knowledgable guide. Following our tour we sat by the fire and enjoyed glasses of Tawny and Ruby port.
The hotels restaurant, Escola by The Artist, is part of college that runs the whole hotel, offers two set meals, one of five courses and one of seven courses.
We opted for five courses that were based on fish.
You don’t know what is coming, leaving the choice entirely to the chef’s in the kitchen.
Each course is brought to your table where the chef explains the dish to you.
Each of the five courses were truly sensational.
FRIDAY
Taking another slow buffet breakfast to get our day off to another good start before heading out in to a Porto that seems to take it’s time waking up.
Today is going to be a tram riding day!
Only three lines remain from the original tram network that criss-crossed the city and on finding our nearest stop on Line 22 being massively queued up, we simply followed the line to the main square, beating the trams arrival easily due to an ambulance parking across the lines. Here we picked up Line 18 at the Carmo stop, the route that circles the square, then connects with Line 1 down by the tram museum before following the Douro river along to the seaside at Foz. Tickets are €3 per ride, or €10 for a 48 hour ticket. Taking at least four rides, a 48 hour ticket made perfect sense.
Never take a Porto tram if you’re in a hurry! We waited at the museum stop for a tram for about 20 minutes before one trundled around the corner. It was rammed when it pulled up, with the driver saying another one was 10 minutes behind. So, we waited, and waited, and waited. Another tram arrived, again, rammed full, failing to let anyone on. So, crossing to the down line, we then picked up a returning tram and headed down the river to the end of the line. Here we discovered another massive queue of people waiting, so we sat in a nearby cafe, enjoyed a quick cuppa before joining the queue for the next tram to arrive. By now we’d been queuing for over an hour and we’d gone backwards rather than getting closer to our destination.
Finally we managed to board a tram and we set off to Foz.
The incoming tide was creating massive waves; waves that came crashing in to the sea walls creating enormous towers of water. But oddly, the sun was shining, the sky was blue and there was barely a breeze.
Walking along the beach was delightful and we eventually found a Go Natural food shop, stopping to enjoy a lovely meal for the princely sum of €8.50 for soup, salad and a drink.
We headed back to the tram stop to be greeted by yet another big queue, where we were advised that the tram wasn’t actually making it to the end of the line and we’d need to walk around the corner to the previous stop. Once there we discovered that a car was parked across the tram lines, blocking its path. Two trams were backed up in the tram stop because of it. Police arrived, parking tickets were issued and eventually we had to walk back down the line to pick up another tram. Chaos !!!
Getting back to the square we spent some time shopping and picking up a quick snack of port and bacalhau in Casa Portuguesa do Pastel de Bacalhau before returning to the hotel for a break.
Refreshed, it was back out in the Porto evening to find something to eat, yup, you guessed right, we ended up back at Saboriccia for a cheese plate and some local wine. What a perfect way to begin to wrap up our stay in delightful Porto.
Suitably ‘refreshed’ we decided to head back to the hotel to enjoy a ‘night cap’ and we were talked in to trying a 20 year old Sandemans port, which as was advised it would be, was simply quite exquisite.
And that was it, out stay in Porto was at an end.
SATURDAY
Today is a bit of a departure from our usual kind of half-term break, today we’re not heading home directly, we’re moving on to another destination instead, Santiago de Compostela in Spain.
Taking another unhurried breakfast, whilst enjoying watching another table taking pictures of all the waiters, hugging each one in turn, thanking them for their service.
Porto has a good Metro, but it appears to be quite random with the airport train seeming to be every 30 minutes, of course, we’d probably just missed one and we had to sit and wait.
Once at the airport we simply picked up the EuropCar transit taking us around to their depot, where we picked up our little VW Polo where we hooked up my iPhone to the media system, set the SatNav to Santiago and headed North !!! Our drive was really simple with the roads being quiet and easy. There were a few tolls on the route, not too expensive, but otherwise nothing to slow our journey.
Our hotel, the Rua Villar, being in the really old part of the city has no parking of its own, recommending that we use a nearby public multi-story where a daily €6 discount was offered. As we were only staying for one night, €10 for a days parking was pretty reasonable.
Initially our host seemed a little distant, but after checking us in and then meeting her out of the lift on floor two, she very animatedly showed us around our room and delighted in showing us the view of the Cathedral from our window, the only room to have such a view apparently. Our room, quirky and odd;y shaped was spacious, clean and more than comfortable for our one night in Santiago.
Again, bags dropped, it was straight out and in to Santiago, were we entered the square behind the cathedral and sat and enjoyed a brief brew in the afternoon sunshine, before we entered the Cathedral. Inside it was fairly quiet mostly due to the ongoing building work we guessed, which prevented any services from happening and of course, no botafumeira either. No queue for the St James’ relics and his two apostles either.
Finding a bite to eat was problematic though, as we discovered afterwards that everything in Santiago opens up after 8:00PM, which we didn’t realise. Trolling around all the closed tapas bars and cafes, we eventually landed in Restaurante Codex where we had a fish stew and a reasonable bottle of white wine. Service was OK, nothing spectacular, but the place was a magnet for locals coming in to watch the football that was playing at the back of the restaurant. Dessert was found around the corner in an ice cream shop, BICO de Xeado, where we enjoyed a massive ice cream that was 100% natural. Very tasty it was too.
Our night was quiet, the Cathedral bells not disturbing us once we’d got to sleep.
SUNDAY
Breakfast was taken in the hotel buffet, pretty well stocked with the usual fare with the highlight being the local delicacy Tarta de Santiago, a delicious, dense almond cake. Coffee was made fresh for you which was nice.
Checking out and returning our cases to the car, we first visited the Camino Office, being promptly declined entrance as we weren’t real walkers looking for their final stamp, then spent the morning walking around the nearby park, Carballeira de Santa Susana, giving great views over the surrounding hills and the town.
Before heading South back to Porto, lunch was grabbed in a fast-food style tapas restaurant, 100 Montaditos. Something akin to Wetherspoons, it offers 100 dishes, all cheap and all tasting pretty good. Special cider, a beer and 8 dishes was under €10. Pretty reasonable.
And then it was back in the car, setting Waze for the return trip to Porto and heading out on to the motorway.
As we had allowed more than enough time for the the return journey we decided to get as close to Porto as possible and then take a short break. The natural stopping point seemed to be Braga; we knew nothing about it but decided it was worth a brief visit. Resetting Waze we drove through the labyrinth of narrow cobbled streets looking for a parking spot, which was a little tricky, before finding an underground carpark right under a park in the centre of the town. Popping up from the stairwell we were amazed at the crowds of people enjoying a sunny bustling Sunday afternoon with their families. We appeared to be the only tourists and thoroughly enjoyed meandering through the warren of streets. Taking a back street we wandered through pavement bars and cafes before stumbling upon a beautifully manicured garden that was buzzing with locals taking photographs. We only had just over an hour in Braga but loved the provincial feel of it.
We were now just 50kms from Porto Airport so after filling the car with petrol we reluctantly made our way back to the hire car return.
We had booked a short break to Porto simply because the flight was short and cheap; we had no expectations, preconceptions or plans for our visit, but in the short time we were there we truly fell in love with it. The people are warm and welcoming; we felt like family and have already begun to plan our return trip. We feel that Porto may have captured a piece of our hearts forever!
mrandmrsyoung 