Kiwi Roaming

The weather forecast had us anticipating a cooler climate – we found it’s been anything but cool, fantastically hot. Our first full Porto day was a Saturday (13th Sept) so the 4 of us went off site seeing along with tens of thousands of other tourists it seems. Imogen was in transit in Singapore at this stage and live messaging her experiences in their wonderful facilities. This coupled with the narrow wee streets and many photos taken meant my phone churned through it’s battery, followed by Steve’s and then Rachel’s – so that night Gordon had to navigate us home.

Generally Porto is wow, we see why people love it here. The architecture and landscape along with the age of everything and their use of tiles make it really stunning. There were however too many tourists, it was stifling hot and the group tours made it challenging to see many landmarks up close. We didn’t buy tickets for the bookshop but went and saw the queues which were crazy. By lunchtime and still on the Porto side of the river we were hot and thirsty so had lunch in a total tourist trap – but the beer was cold and rose cheap so it wasn’t tooo bad I guess.

Walking tour – Steve was our tour guide and took us on a “top 10 sites in Porto tour”. Our apartment while fantastically located for local facilities is a 25 minute walk into the old town so was interesting to see the more residential parts of the city on our way there. Even though we had 10 sites to hit we saw dozens of others on each stage so it was a slow meander with many photos taken by everyone. We saw parks, monuments, fountains, the university, narrow streets with tiled buildings towering above us, churches, towers, markets (great local ones on a Saturday as well as the touristy ones too). We also saw a long queue for the Cathedral office where you buy tickets to enter the cathedral and get your camino passport.

Gaia and River cruise – After lunch we crossed the river on the lower bridge and while still packed with tourists found the lovely, far more relaxed Gaia on the other side. Here the Port houses have their caves and you can take tours, do tastings and enjoy a sip in the sunshine. It was also where most of the river cruises leave from. We jumped on a 3:30pm 6 bridges cruise and to be perfectly honest I nodded off so missed half of it. The highlights were the Eiffel designed Maria Pia bridge (60m high) and the iconic Dom Luís I Bridge designed by his former colleague 9 years later in 1880. They are both fantastic feats of architecture, we had walked across the lower level of the Dom Luís which is also a road bridge now, and the upper level is a rail bridge (45m high). The river has newer crossings for the increasing flow of traffic. On the cruise we saw 7 river cruise ships all moored which explains some of the tourist volumes.

After this we were a bit peckish and ready for a drink so we ventured into another up market food court and sat in the sun with our daily pastel de nata, beers and rose’s then continued wandering before jumping on the gondola up to the higest point on this side of the river.

Sunset experience – our gondola ride took us up to Jardim do Morro a park perfectly situated to watch the sunset over the old city of Porto. It was a crazy experience, we arrived at 6pm for a 7:45pm sunset time. The place was already pretty full but over the next 90 mins it really filled up. There were vendors walking around selling everything – local foods, Brazilian foods, beer, wine, water, confectionery etc etc. Some took only cash others had card readers and others used a local app. There were some concrete walls with grass in between, we scored a spot in the sun on a concrete wall and Steve went to a churro vendor cart for a nutella sharing platter for us (yum) and then we people watched! it was a crazy place with increasing numbers of people, guys with coolers walking along trying to sell us stuff, people smoking everywhere and a cacophony of sound – boom boxes, buskers and bars nearby. It felt like we were waiting for a gig to start.

Upshot, the cloud came and the sunset never happened! at about 7:50pm people started drifting off. We called it at 8pm as it was getting a little cool with a breeze coming off the river far below. Walking over the rail level bridge was another experience, there were too many tourists for the small footpaths so everyone had to stop each time a train passed. And the trains passed right next to you, like 10cm away kind of thing!

Finally off the bridge we walked home. The city looks different in the dark, had a really busy vibe, the streets we walked in the morning were now full of tables and chairs, or people queuing outside tiny restaurants. Once home we went to our local food hall again feeling more confident we bought a wider range of local meals – it was 10pm and people arriving for dinner so quite a vibe.

I took soooooo many photos I don’t know what to share so here are heaps! Ronaldo is everywhere in this town. The McDonalds is in the most beautiful building – same with Starbucks, Taco Bell etc too. And a couple of pics of the train station too.