On Wednesday we had to get up super early (3:10am) to catch our flight to Portugal. Unfortunately our flight from Amsterdam got delayed due to the foggy weather in Portugal.
From the airport we took an uber to our hotel in Matoshinhos. Although we were super beat, we decided we still wanted to head out and explore Porto. What we didn‘t know was, that it‘s better to take the metro instead of the busses. The traffic is terrible, which means even with the bus it takes a lot longer to get from point A to B. And the busses don‘t have AC. That meant sitting in the hot bus for almost an hour.
The first thing we did was to visit the wine cellar at Taylor‘s. They have a self guided tour, that you can do at your own pace (it takes roughly an hour). Afterwards you can participate in a portwine tasting. (The kids got some crackers and grape juice). This was very informative and we enjoyed it a lot.
For dinner we decided to go back to Matosinhos. There‘s a restaurant located inside the fish market where you can enjoy fresh seafood. For lunch you can even pick and buy the fish at the market and have it prepared and cooked for you at the restaurant. The food was so delicious, we can highly recommend going there if you ever visit Matosinhos.
On Thursday we did a lot of walking. At first we went to see the Capela das Almas de Santa Catarina. Porto is known for their beautiful tiles, the Azulejos, that are on almost every (old) building in Porto.
Across the street from the Capela is the Bolhão-Market in which you can get all kinds of food. Because it was almost lunchtime we got some fresh juices. It was hard to choose, because they had so many choices. The next thing we got were oysters. We knew that the kids loved fish, so we asked them if they would want to try some. They described it like this: If you could eat the ocean, that’s how it would taste like.
We also visited the São Bento train station to look at more tiles. The Igreja dos Clérigos, a church that is nearby and also the Livraria Lello, a bookstore that is also known as the „Harry Potter bookstore“ aren‘t really worth a visit. Skip them and get some Natas instead. You won‘t regret eating those 🙂
Because we already walked a lot we decided to take the Metro and then afterwards the Gaia cable car down to the other side of the Douro river. We wanted to do another port wine tasting, this time at Ramos Pinto.
For dinner we went back to the other side of Porto to another fish restaurant called Meia-Nau. It was delicious, yet again.
Yesterday we started our day with a tasty brunch in Porto. Unlike the day before it was super foggy (probably similar to Wednesday as our flight was delayed) and somewhat cold.
Our feet still hurt from all the walking, so we reduced our program accordingly. We went to a tile store where artists paint the famous Azulejo tiles by hand (Prometeu Artesanato). The only other thing that we did was visit the cathedral of Porto. This was definitely worth a visit. At night we had a BBQ at the Surf Church Porto, to kick off their first summer surf camp 2025. We‘ll still spend the next days until Monday morning in Porto, then we‘ll leave for Esmoriz to finally catch some waves.
