Porto, Portugal. A Place Where Two Okies Felt At Home.

We made our way from Lisbon to Porto via train (bonus story on that at the end).  I had this gut feeling that Porto was going to be a place we would fall in love with.  Why?  I'm not sure.  I just did.  When we went over the Duoro River on the train, the sites were absolutely out of this world!  Wishing I had gotten pics from the train window, but sometimes you just have to soak in the experience while you can, not behind a lense.

So we checked into our cute little AirBNB... such a wonderful breath of fresh air after our Lisbon experience... even though the room was teeny tiny it was super clean and everything worked!  I was tired when we got there, so decided to take a nap while Dan explored in the area around our apartment.  When he got back he told me he found a craft beer place that I'd love.  Side note, if you don't know me... one of my absolute FAVORITE things in life is craft beer!  So, we planned to do dinner then go to the craft beer bar.

Dinner was amazing!  We went to a place down the street called Rua.  We had one of the most delicious foods I've ever tasted that had pork cheek in it.  We also had some kind of a cheese dip.  And of course... a bottle of white wine (another one of my favorite activities as well haha!).  During dinner there was a guy playing the guitar and it created a nice ambiance.

After dinner we headed to Mao Travessa for some beers.  This place had two resident dogs, one named Becky(?) (may have been Betsy or Betty but couldn't quite understand the owner).  The dogs were so very sweet!  And Dan definitely took a liking to Becky lol.

We then headed to Catraio, the craft beer bar just down the street from our apartment.  I can't even tell you how amazing the staff there was!  They were so very passionate about beer and very informative on their beer selection (which was quite impressive!).  They even let me take as many caps as I wanted from their bottle cap collection for a project I'm working on.  David, Bia, Fernando and Ricardo, you made us feel so very much at home.  I cannot sing their praises enough!

So for the first full day in Porto we had wanted to go on a Duoro Valley winery tour, but waited a bit too long to book so there was no availability.   However, we have adopted the travel mentality of going with the flow so no big deal, we decided to explore the port wine scene in Porto (because duh!  Porto = where port wine gets it's name!).

We started out at Ramos Pinto for a port wine flight tasting.  So very good!  We opted to not do tours to save on time and have more time to explore.  They had a neat tasting room with fun brochures to explain how the different port wines are produced and get their flavors.

After Ramos Pinto, we headed up quite the uphill trek to Taylor's for another tasting.  It was also very good.

So, I really was wanting a fantastic view of the Duoro River which separates the two sides of Porto.  Dan used the wonderful thing that is Google to find a good viewpoint and found a place near us at a hotel called the Yeatman.  Very expensive place to stay, but had an amazing view of the river below!  We got a bottle of wine from the upstairs bar and enjoyed staying there until sunset as it was so incredibly peaceful!

For dinner we went to Tasco for tapas and was a bit of a disappointment.  Usually internet reviews are fairly spot on... but they messed up our order and took 45 min to correct it.   Oh well, can't win them all right?  Bonus pic, a picture of the beautiful streets of Porto!

For our last day, we opted to go out to the coast for some R&R.  The tidal pools we had been wanting to see had just closed for the season, but again, we made the most of it and did some rock exploring on the beach.  We almost didn't make it in on time from the tide coming in, whoops!  Then we just laid on the beach for a long while and just relaxed.  It was probably the most relaxing day we had on the trip.

Dinner was really good!  We went to Taberna San Antonio where I tried their version of the famous Franceshina sandwich that you can find all over Porto.  It is basically a grilled ham and cheese sandwich on crack.  I loved it, but was way way way too filling and could only eat half of it.

Afterwards, we decided to go back to the street next to our apartment for a couple drinks.  Of course that included saying goodbye to our friends at the craft beer bar.  They were so sad that we were leaving and gave us hugs even with a super full bar full of patrons.  Again, how amazing is that?  It's not everyday you find a place like that with such kind and loving people!

Porto really stole a piece of our hearts.  From the hospitality to the scenery to the food and drinks... I hope to be able to go back there someday.  Thank you, Porto, for making us feel like we were at home.


Bonus story:  train travel.  So, we have never done train travel really so pardon my newbie opinion on it.  But for this particular leg of travel (from Lisbon to Porto), it was so incredibly cheap to use the train.  It cost 22euro each for first class and was super comfortable!  Took about 3 hours total so by the time you factor going to the airport, going through security, being there 2 hours early, etc. it actually probably saved quite a bit of time.  Plus, bar car!  We got a couple beers, a sandwich and were even able to drink a bottle of wine we had gotten in Lisbon on the trip.  We had so much fun!  While train travel doesn't always make sense, we definitely will look into train travel in the future.