Discovering More of Porto

May 31, 2024

Since we didn’t have any specific plans for the day we didn’t set an alarm. It felt good to sleep in and I was surprised when I looked at the time and it was 8:40. We took our time getting ready and enjoy the second ham and cheese thing we bought yesterday for breakfast out on our tiny balcony of our Airbnb.

Since we didn’t have specific plans for the day I threw out the suggestion that we could probably hit a couple of geocaches throughout the day to help us with things to see. The first one was relatively close to where we are staying and we actually walked by the little alley way a few times this week. I can’t believe we never noticed the big blue cat mural on the wall before. This is why I love geocaching!! I found the cache with the help of an employee of the store who had come out and asked if she could help me.

Next up we walked to Livraria Lello (https://livrarialello.pt/), a historic and famous bookstore that is said to have inspired J.K. Rowling for the interior of Hogwarts of the Harry Potter series, to check out how long the wait was. The line was already quite long and we decided that we would come back later in the day. We then ventured up the road to Igreja do Carmo (Carmo Church). https://www.portugalvisitor.com/porto-churches/carmo-carmelitas. We paid our 5 Euro/person fee to tour the inside of the church, hidden house, catacombs and museum.

After the church I checked the geocaching app and saw there was one nearby. I scoped the area while Tom rested in the shade. I made the find relatively easy and enjoyed the nearby street performer dancing to Backstreet Boys songs.

I was ready to look for more geocaches, but Tom said he didn’t want to take the next several hours looking for caches on the way to wherever we were going, so we just walked straight down to the river for our river boat tour of the bridges that came with our hop-on hop-off bus tour. There are several boat tour operators and I thought I knew which one was ours but I wasn’t 100% sure, so we walked back to the tour office we had used on Tuesday. The employee there verified we had been at the right spot but they were not currently operating due to lunch and that the next tour would be at 1:30. At this point it was 12:45 so we asked if she had any recommendations for lunch. She pointed out a nearby local Portuguese restaurant and mentioned another one further up the road. We decided we didn’t have time for a full sit-down lunch so we opted to get a popsicle and do a nearby virtual geocache on the river.

At 1:20 we boarded our boat and enjoyed the almost 1 hour ride up and down the river looking at 4 of the bridges. Going one direction it was super hot with no breeze, but going the other was quite nice. The ride was uneventful but it was interesting to see an old bridge (the steel one was designed by the same person who designed the Eiffel Tower) with a new modern new one right next to it.

I sat behind him so he could sit in the front row to take pictures.

After the boat tour I talked Tom into doing another geocache that was along the river. I looked where I thought it would be and didn’t see it so I expanded my search just to go back to my original spot and made the find. This geocache was just a log that was a magnet. I saw it the first time I looked but didn’t realize what it was I was looking at.

I could tell Tom was getting cached out and said we should get lunch. We decided on the place the tour employee recommended with traditional Portuguese food. We waited several minutes to see if someone would come seat us, but when nobody really directed us we just sat ourselves at a table outside. We still weren’t sure if we were going to get served, but just as we were contemplating other options a waiter came and took our drink order. The menu was in Portuguese and we tried using Google Translate, but it was having a hard time translating the hand written menu. When the waiter came to take our order he could tell we were a little lost. He didn’t speak a lot of English and obviously we don’t speak Portuguese but he made two recommendations for us that we just went with. We weren’t entirely sure what we would be getting but thought it would be adventurous. The one word I did understand was sardines and that had me a little nervous, however the waiter made some solid selections for us. The sardines were deep fried, and for those that know me know that I will eat most anything deep fried . . .even things I typically don’t like. I would say the same is true with sardines. They were a little fishy tasting but we ate them all. I don’t think I would particularly order them again though, as the sardines continued to come back to me throughout the rest of the day . . and that wasn’t so pleasant. The other dish the waiter picked out was a mixed meat plate . . or maybe it was all different parts of a pig I’m not sure. Either way we enjoyed whatever meats they were. This was also one of the cheaper meals we had so far. It was a fun adventure in food and it seems we seated ourselves just in time. They were closing up as our food arrived.

After lunch we hiked back up to the bookstore. The line was still long, but we discovered the tickets for entry should be bought online and that’s when you pick a time to enter. It was about 3:55 when we started the ticket buying purchase on Tom’s phone and I was going to select the 4:00 time slot, but then decided that maybe it wouldn’t be as busy at 6:00.

With the tickets purchased for 6:00 we moved on to tour Igreja e Torres dos Clerigos, a nearby church with tower. I really didn’t care about seeing the inside of another church, but I was interested in the tower. We did walk through the church and museum and then made our way up the skinny tower steps to the top. It had the best 360 degree view of the city we have seen thus far. We could even pick out where our AirBnB is located. I think it was worth the price of admission for the tower experience.

When we were done with the tower we still had some time before our 6:00 time slot at the bookstore. There was a nice little bar nearby where we sat outside and I enjoyed a beer and Tom had a Somersby.

Finally it was time for our book store experience. It was pretty inside for sure and I’m glad we did it, but was it totally worth the price of admission and wait . . . I’m not sure. I guess from a historical perspective, yes.

We had spent about 30 minutes in the book store and wasn’t hungry for dinner, so I talked Tom into one last virtual geocache of the day. The title of the geocache was “Best View in Porto” so I thought it would be worth doing. It was .70 miles from where we were and Tom said he was up for the walk. Tom used Google maps to navigate us and when we got to a split in the road we opted to continue going straight which was downhill, instead of take the upper street. I should have known better. Although we came within 100 feet of the location, we were not at the correct elevation. We had to walk back up that long, steep hill to take the upper road. Of course the best view would be higher, so I was kicking myself for not going that way originally. We had to walk further around than anticipated, but we found ourselves at the entrance to The Crystal Palace (https://porto.travel/palacio-de-cristal/) grounds. This was a nice park where on our way to the viewpoint we saw many peacocks. The view at the top of the tower was quite nice, but I don’t think it was better than the view we had earlier in the day at Igreja e Torres dos Clerigos. I’m glad we made the walk . . . Tom probably could have done without it. On the way back out of the park we watched a peacock do his thing for a nearby lady peacock, but she wasn’t interested. It was fun to watch.

We walked back to the heart of the city and down to the river to find a place for some drinks and a light dinner. We walked back and forth before we settled on a place. I had a mojito and caprese salad and Tom had a prosciutto board and a couple of Somersby’s. It was the perfect light meal we were looking for. We were done with dinner at 10:00 and it was time to get back to the BnB to start blogging.