What in the world are we doing?: Porto, Portugal means more than Port!

I got introduced to Port when I was living in Colorado about 12 years ago. So, to be living in Europe and having a chance to go to Porto, the origin of port was an excellent opPORTunity. However, there was more to Porto than the Port.

We were meeting Rachel, a friend from our Africa trip in 2010. Since we arrived on Thursday night, we had some time to walk around in the morning, find a place for breakfast and get an idea on how to get around. We ate at the Traveller Caffe for breakfast and gave it a two thumbs up and ate breakfast there every morning.

Francesniha with chips.

We were told we had to try the traditional francesinha, so found a place to have one. It wasn't hard to figure out what the sandwich was made of with a photo on the wall.

Let's build a sandwich!

After this huge feed, we thought about going walking around, but the rain started to come down hard. We decided it was a good day to be inside trying some port. So over the bridge we went (the number one attraction to see in Porto, according to Tripadvisor). This bridge was built by a student of Gustave Eiffel in 1886. Quite an amazing looking bridge, especially for its time.

Ponte Dom Luis I Bridge

On to the port tasting where we learned a lot about port wines. They are sweet, stopped half way through the fermentation by adding a spirit, and the grapes come from Douro (about an hour drive away from Porto). Similar to wine tasting you start with the whites and move to a newer style called the pink (like a rose wine), then on to ruby and tawny. There are others like vintage (coming from grapes of a certain year), reserve (a premium ruby port, not of single vintage), and LBV (late bottled vintage) that are also thrown into the mix. I didn't know there were so many types, but well worth tasting to find out your favorite.

Rachel and Penny at Kopke

Kopke was our first stop and we had a tasting of 5 different ports between the three of us. We all had a bit of each of them, and each had our favorites. The best part of this tasting was they had chocolates to accompany the port. With the nice size pours and chocolates, we were there for a while before moving.

Next stop Sandeman. Here we had a tasting and a look at the museum before we went on a tour. On the tour we saw the warehouse, which stores the port, and learned most of the information we needed about port. We all found the Sandeman branding to be excellent with the Spanish hat (sherry is produced in Spain and is part of Sandeman's product), the black cape (actually a Portuguese student's cape, which they still wear today), and port/sherry glass in hand. We had a tasting of the white and tawny ports after the tour as well.

Our tour guide and a lot of port!

Deciding we had enough port for one day we went back to our hotel, making sure to pass by another one of the best attractions in Porto - the Sao Bento Train Station. The main hall of this building has a bunch of murals made with mostly blue and white tile, which is a Portuguese tradition. We saw similar tiling on a lot of the older buildings in Porto. The tiles were not always white and blue on the houses, but many of the houses had some tiling for the siding instead of brick, wood, or panels.

Sao Bento Train Station

We ate dinner down on the river front and found a nice place to eat, which had some interesting items hanging from the ceiling. Found this one particularly perplexing on why it was among the others.

Yes, it's what you think it is!

Saturday was a clear day and much better for walking around. We went to Ingreja de Santa Clara and the Cathedral. These places were very ornate with a lot of gold paint. This would have made me ask as a parishioner, "where is the tithing money was being spent?". A bit too extravagant for my liking, but beautiful non the less.

Santa Clara

Penny and I love bell towers, so we had to ascend the 250+ stairs to the top of Torres Dos Clerigos for some great views of the city. The views were well worth the effort even in the narrow space with people going both up and down at the same time.

View from the tower

We had trouble getting around a couple who wanted to have a photo shoot up in the tower, so we were stuck up there for a bit soaking up the view.

Our next stop was the library that is considered (at least according to the lady in the tourist information center) as "the 3rd most beautiful library in the world." J. K. Rowling was so inspired by the stair case that she describes it in her Harry Potter books and they library appears in the Harry Potter movies. We were not allowed to take photos inside the library (a guy was at the top of the stairs watching for those taking photos and telling everyone "No Photos.") Sorry, you will just have to watch the movies to get a glimpse, but they were very cool. They have one entrance at the bottom, and then split part way up so there are two stairs to the second level.

Livraria Lello

It was over to taste some port again. Porto Cruz was first on the list with a taste of the pink port. The ladies liked this one a bit more than Scott. We went for a boat cruise on River Douro to see several bridges and enjoy the sunshine.

Porto Cruz Pink

Scott, Penny, and Rachel getting ready for River Douro cruise.

Porto view from cruise boat

Porto view from cruise boat.

Back on shore it was time to go to Offley for a tour and tasting. Next was Croft, which was one of our favorites. We had an excellent tour guide (explained about the introduction of pink port), tasted some really good port, and ended up buying two bottles of port from Croft.

Tour guide from Croft

We stopped by Quevedo, which had live Fado music. It was nice to hear some live music, taste some port, eat some snacks, and have a little play around in the old barrels. Mostly kids were playing in the barrels, but Scott had to see if he could fit in the little opening. The girls were a bit more practical by having a seat on a bench.

Scott's big barrel, little opening

Live Fado singer

Rachel and Penny sitting inside a barrel

Before leaving we went out to the beach for a look at the lighthouse and enjoy the busy boardwalk watching walkers, joggers, and bikers get into their exercise on Sunday. It was another gorgeous day, but time to leave Porto. We enjoyed our time here, especially since we were able to spend time with Rachel. We left with 4 bottles of port, so have plenty to remember our trip for a while, but will have to drink it all before we leave for Australia. Too expensive to bring into the country!