We had a nice slow morning on our first full day in Porto, enjoying breakfast at the apartment and looking over the map that Graça had annotated for us. It was a cool and drizzly morning – a welcome change from the heat of Florence – and eventually we set out to see the neighborhood.
If you turn left onto street where the apartment was it slopes gently upward – as near to level as you’re going to get in Porto, but still a noticeable incline – so we decided to go further uphill to see what was there. Over the week we’d take this route to the “restaurant plaza” since if you turned left at the first intersection and then right you’d find yourself at a fairly large plaza lined with (wait for it) restaurants. If you turned right out of our door then right at the next intersection and dodged all the people waiting for their tour buses on that street – there were usually two or three buses boarding, and none of the passengers understood the idea that pedestrians might actually want to walk through on a sidewalk – you’d eventually get to what we called the “craft show plaza” for reasons that will become obvious in a few paragraphs. It took us a while to find the route that connected the two plazas, which is kind of odd since it was just a couple of blocks on one street and we were on it a lot. But that’s how it goes.
We didn’t turn toward any of the plazas on our first expedition – we kept going gently upward as the road veered to the right and very quickly we found that what we initially took to be a church was actually a school – the Colégio de Nossa Senhora da Esperança Santa Casa da Misericordia do Porto according to the sign on the wall and I hope for the students’ sake there’s some abbreviation of that in common use. There was also a Historical Interest sign with some information in English – you can recognize them in Porto because they’re shield-shaped with yellow and white writing on a black background – and it told us that the building dated back to 1724. It appears to be a high school now, if the brief internet search I just did is to be trusted. It’s on a nice looking street with a park on one side, and we’d walk down it a couple of times on our way to other things.
If you turn left onto street where the apartment was it slopes gently upward – as near to level as you’re going to get in Porto, but still a noticeable incline – so we decided to go further uphill to see what was there. Over the week we’d take this route to the “restaurant plaza” since if you turned left at the first intersection and then right you’d find yourself at a fairly large plaza lined with (wait for it) restaurants. If you turned right out of our door then right at the next intersection and dodged all the people waiting for their tour buses on that street – there were usually two or three buses boarding, and none of the passengers understood the idea that pedestrians might actually want to walk through on a sidewalk – you’d eventually get to what we called the “craft show plaza” for reasons that will become obvious in a few paragraphs. It took us a while to find the route that connected the two plazas, which is kind of odd since it was just a couple of blocks on one street and we were on it a lot. But that’s how it goes.
We didn’t turn toward any of the plazas on our first expedition – we kept going gently upward as the road veered to the right and very quickly we found that what we initially took to be a church was actually a school – the Colégio de Nossa Senhora da Esperança Santa Casa da Misericordia do Porto according to the sign on the wall and I hope for the students’ sake there’s some abbreviation of that in common use. There was also a Historical Interest sign with some information in English – you can recognize them in Porto because they’re shield-shaped with yellow and white writing on a black background – and it told us that the building dated back to 1724. It appears to be a high school now, if the brief internet search I just did is to be trusted. It’s on a nice looking street with a park on one side, and we’d walk down it a couple of times on our way to other things.
On the way back we located the greengrocer, which sat roughly at the bend in the road, and then walked past our apartment, through the gauntlet of tour bus patrons, and into the craft fair plaza.
We used to work the craft show circuit in Wisconsin as soap makers and you get used to the set-up of such things. This was a pretty nice show, with a fair amount of jewelry and more than one booth selling hats – some of which were made of cork, which is something you see a lot of in Porto. We didn’t stop at the booth selling wine at that hour, but perhaps we should have.
When we got to the end of that plaza and turned right there was another set of booths and, more interestingly, the Igreja de Santo Ildefonso. Like most churches in Porto it was covered in blue and white tiles, and we figured we’d go in.
But not before checking out the rest of the outside of the building because it was just lovely.
When you get inside, though, you are confronted with the one inescapable fact about Porto’s style. While Rome is Classical and Florence is medieval and Renaissance, Porto is High Baroque and Rococo. Everything that could be gilded was gilded, and the riotous excess of detail that exists in every altar, every side chapel, and every angel and angle could be overwhelming. If you’re into minimalism, this is not your place.
We spent a happy time wandering around the place, though, and in the end we found our way to the gift shop that is off to the side. It had a lot of things related to the church for those so inclined, and also sold an herbal liqueur that is apparently made by Portuguese monks. Singeverga packs a surprising punch, but it’s very tasty and you can buy it by the shot at the Igreja de Santo Ildefonso. I think my religious upbringing would have been much more pleasant if that had been the case in my church, particularly if they’d offered Singeverga rather than the sickly sweet wine that was standard at Communion, but we were very low-church Episcopal and even the watery 1970s-style stained glass that they installed in the narrow side windows of the nave when I was a kid received howls of “Papistry!” from the elders so I suspect a zippy monastic liqueur probably wouldn’t have passed muster. Alas.
There’s a little observation area off to the side of the church where you can get a view of the streets in either direction and we decided to set off toward the big church in the first couple of photos – we thought it might be the Cathedral but in hindsight we’re pretty sure it was the Clérigos Tower.
It didn’t take us long to decide that perhaps we’d save that for later and instead head over to the São Bento train station to look at the tiles, since we really didn’t have much time or energy to do that when we arrived on the metro the previous day. We were understandably kind of focused on getting out and getting to the apartment. So São Bento seemed a good destination.
It was a bit tricky to get to São Bento because, like much of Porto, the area around it was under construction. Porto is not a wealthy city, and there are a lot of abandoned and derelict buildings. You’d go down a block and there’d be five or six lovely, well-maintained buildings and then a couple of abandoned ones with the roof caving in and the windows missing, and then a few more in good shape, and so on, and these were not concentrated in any particular area of the city. But there seems to be an effort to fix things up these days and everywhere you look there are construction cranes and work being done. Many of the abandoned buildings are being gutted to the point where only the façade remains – which helps the new building blend in better, after all. It’s nice to see the work being done, but it does occasionally make it a challenge to get where you’re going. To get to São Bento from our direction required us to snake around a fairly long walkway and eventually we figured out how to skip it if we were heading to other places. But if you’re going to São Bento from our direction, this is it.
São Bento is justly famous for its tiles. You forget, living in the US where trains are a historical afterthought and deeply unpopular with the oil barons and pathological individualists who seem to have the loudest voices these days, that trains are still the most efficient way to move people or goods over land and in most cities in the world the train station is the urban hub. People put money into those. And in Portugal, “money” translates as “tiles.”
It’s not a big place and it really is a functional train station and not just a work of art, but it’s definitely worth a look if you’re traveling through it.
We had some thoughts about where to go next but by this point in the day we were getting hungry and we ended up stopping at the Estambul Doner Kebap and Pizza shop. We ate a lot of doner kebab on this trip and we regret none of it because it is tasty, inexpensive, and impossible to find in Wisconsin. In Europe, though, it’s everywhere. The kebab here was very good even if they do spell it idiosyncratically, but apparently the french fries were life changing. Kim insisted that they were the best fries she’d ever eaten, and she’s been to the O in Pittsburgh (of blessed memory) so that’s quite a compliment. All subsequent fries were compared to these and found lacking, so if you find yourself in Porto looking for good fries, look no further.
We wandered a bit after that. Porto is a very nice city to do that as long as you don’t mind climbing hills.
One of the things we passed by was the Livraria Lello. It’s a bookstore – supposedly one of the most beautiful bookstores in the world, in fact – but you can’t get in anymore because it’s been overrun by Harry Potter groupies who think the books were written there. The author of that series – who shall remain nameless here because she has turned into one of the more reprehensible people on the planet, a notable achievement given the competition these days – has flatly denied this, as has the bookstore itself, but the mindless crowds still come. There’s always a line outside the door and the bookstore has resorted to restricting admission and charging for entry, but the line never goes away. We didn’t feel too bad about skipping it.
We stopped at an ATM, since Kim’s card still worked and even in 2025 you can’t pay for everything with your phone. It took a while to find one that passed muster, inside a bank, and we initially made the classic American mistake of assuming that the doors would open outward onto the sidewalk the way they do in the US because American fire codes demand that all exit doors open that way. European buildings don’t have the space between the door and the sidewalk that makes that work in the US, and they tend to open inward. This can lead to difficulties.
Eventually we figured out that the door wasn’t locked, waited with the others who had made that same discovery a few minutes earlier, and left with cash. This served us well at a couple of places where it was the only way to pay for things, and in the end I was left with some coins to take home so I was happy.
From there we headed toward the twin churches of the Igreja dos Carmelitas and the Igreja do Carmo.
We didn’t go into the Igreja dos Carmelitas (the one on the left), as it was either under construction or in use as a church at the time – I never did figure out which – but we spent some time in the Igreja do Carmo. Plus, if you look carefully at the center where the two churches join you’ll notice that there’s a little door there – that’s actually a house. It’s only a meter wide at its narrowest point, though it widens a bit toward the back, and you can get to it from the Igreja do Carmo as well.
The Igreja do Carmo, being located in Porto, has a lovely tile design that covers the entire side wall.
And when you go inside you are greeted with intense amounts of High Baroque. Really, quite intense amounts. Enough to fulfill your quota for the day and then some. But if you like that sort of thing, that’s the sort of thing you’ll like.
Portuguese churches also tend to depict Christ as having an exuberantly rayed halo. “Sunflower Jesus” looks down on His flock and all is right with the world.
The church has a couple of levels, with a museum and reliquary in the lower level (what is it with Catholic churches and bones?) and an apartment of sorts as you climb upward. And if you climb all the way up, you can actually get out onto the roof. There’s a very narrow path along the edge, thankfully with a railing, and when you get to the end there’s a little viewing area that’s maybe big enough for two people if they’re friendly – you kind of have to direct traffic a bit if you’re not the only people up there – but the views of the city are really nice from there.
When you come down from the roof the stairs take you into the little gift shop, which is where we first encountered the pilgrims. Porto is the southern terminus of the Camino de Santiago, which ends at Santiago de Compostela in Spain, and if you watch you can see the pilgrims around town. They all have backpacks and walking sticks, and at a couple of the churches we visited the gift shops would sell pilgrim-related items such as scallop shells (natural and otherwise) and would stamp their Camino passports for them. There were a couple there when we came down from the roof.
We left the Igreja do Carmo and headed down toward the river with vague ideas of going to see the Palace that was in that direction. Instead we found a park full of sculptures and students to amble slowly through.
And then we found ourselves in front of the Clérigos Tower.
We never did go in the Tower – it seemed enough to view it from the outside, especially since we had no plans to climb the six or eight thousand steps it would take to get to the top. It is a landmark, though, visible from almost anywhere in the city, and we ended up walking by it pretty much every day we were in Porto.
From there we continued downhill until we found an observation area that GoogleMaps now tells me is called Miradouro da Vitória. It never failed to amaze me how far downhill you could walk in Porto and still be high enough above the city to get some really spectacular views. In the first photo you can see Vila Nova da Gaia – the town directly across the river from Porto – and, on the left, the Dom Luis I bridge that connects the two cities. The lower level of the bridge is hard to see in that photo, but the upper level sits about 45 meters (150 feet or so) above the water. We spent a fair amount of time on that bridge while we were in Porto and the views were spectacular. In the second photo you can see the port wine producers, which sit on the river in Gaia. We’d go there as well, because you can’t really go to Porto and not try the port wine. The third photo shows the cathedral, though in the bottom left corner you can see the staircase that leads down from the Miradouro da Vitória.
We went down that staircase as well, in our quest to get to the river. You see some interesting sights on those stairs, and I’ll get to them when I cover the public art of Porto in a separate post.
After that we continued descending until we got to Prince Henry Park – Praça do Infante D. Henrique – where we found a bench to rest for a bit before moving on. It was a nice quiet sort of park that way.
Rested, we pressed forward until we got to the river. We thought about getting something to drink and even managed to get seated at an outdoor table for a restaurant, but after being ignored for a while we got up and walked over to the nearby McDonalds which is the only place in Europe where you can get an American-sized Diet Coke. We ended up doing that a couple of times over the course of the week. If you ask for the largest size they have, you will get something slightly smaller than an American medium and that was enough. We also tried the pineapple soda, which was interesting.
Our main goal at that point, however, was to take the 1 Tram out to Foz.
The 1 Tram is mostly a tourist thing now. It follows the old tram route that runs along the river out to Foz. You head out to the end of the line, get out and see the sights there, and then you can take the 1 back to where you got on or the 18 closer to our apartment. We figured it would be a great way to see the sights a bit, and we ended up chatting with a very nice British couple while we waited in line. “Be sure to sit on the left side” they told us, since that way you could see the river. And it was indeed a very nice ride.
Until it stopped.
It’s a very old and narrow route, and apparently one of the other trams had lost an argument with a car just ahead of us, so we got out and walked the five minutes or so to the end of the line. When you get to the end you cross the street toward the water and pass a number of schoolgirls in two straight lines. No word if any of them were named Madeline.
From there you go through a big tree-lined park that takes you to a river path, and if you walk along that path long enough you will get to the breakwater where the river meets the Atlantic.
You can also see the fort across the way. We’d see it from the other side a few days later.
On the way back through the park we were just walking along past a group of kids playing in an enclosed area when they started yelling enough for us to figure out that they wanted me to retrieve their ball and toss it back to them. For a moment, I was a superhero in Portugal.
We took the 18 Tram back to the city and then the 207 bus back to the apartment – for some reason the buses in Porto would only accept cash payments despite having the equipment to do tap-to-pay – and spent some quiet time watching Portuguese news and grading assignments.
Eventually it was dinner time and after an unsuccessful attempt at Cachorro Gazela – the Porguese “hot dog” place that Graça highly recommended – we ended up at the restaurant plaza at Casa Guedes, which was pretty much the only mediocre meal we had in Porto. The food was okay but not memorable, the waiters were pushy, and the fries did not measure up after the life-changing experience at Estambul Doner Kebap and Pizza. Not everything is a hit, what can you say.
After a short passeggiata around the plaza we headed back to the apartment to hang out and get ready for the next day.
