Porto 🇵🇹

After visiting Lisbon during our first tour felt we had to visit the second largest city in Portugal on this one.

Sites are few and far between in this area, so we only really had a couple of options – both of which didn’t have great reviews, so we picked the one with easiest access to the city and hoped!

On arrival we were shown to our pitch and recommended lunch in the restaurant next door. The site was quite run down so we were very surprised when we walked into Casa Helena. A daily menu of 3 courses, all delicious with a glass of wine for a mere €20. We couldn’t believe the food was that good for that price!

We toured Porto over a couple of days and did a walking tour via Guruwalk. It’s a relatively small city all very easy to do on foot (apart from the hills!).

The best view of the city is from the monument on the hill before you cross the Luís I Bridge.

We had drinks in the Riberia area on the river, walked up a hill to a bar, Aduela, for a snack and to enjoy a glass with the locals.

Our tour took us to the main scenic parts. A couple we didn’t know anything about were the ‘most ornate McDonalds’ in the world (complete with chandeliers and Art Deco), and the ‘most beautiful bookshop in the world’ – Livraria Lello.

The bookshops claim to fame is JK Rowling, who lived in Porto for a couple of years, penned the first of her Harry Potter books here! All speculation and has been denied but the bookshop is a beautiful work of art with an amazing staircase and stained glass windows.

As Porto isn’t that big the sites were easily doable in a day or so.

We spent our last afternoon on the Gaia side, sampling port and watching the world go by. We preferred this side of the river, especially the port tasting – 5 for €5!