Porto, Dia Dois

Porto is a beautiful city with lots of friendly people. We designed our own walking tour to take in some of the sites we wanted to see, of course we had to factor in some short stops for browsing shops. We plotted our path so we would start up on high ground and walk only downhill. First stop was the Clarigos Church and its 250 year old tower. We started with the tower, all 225 steps (so much for only downhill) which took us to excellent views of the city and helped us get an overall idea of the city. After visiting the church we hiked downtown to the Stock Exchange Palace (Palacio de Bolsa). It is no longer used for the stock exchange as that is now in Lisbon. Now it is basically only used by the Chamber of Commerce and some of the rooms are rented out for private functions. It is a very impressive building, especially the Arab Room which was influenced by the architecture of the Alhambra.
We then visited the Sau Francisco Church and its crypt and museum.

Continuing downhill we made it to the river for a quick lunch and then over the bridge to get a river tour. The fellow who sold us our tickets took us over to this tiny restaurant, Dom Pipas, and got us a couple of port tastes and introduced us to the owner. We looked over her menu and promised to come back after our river tour and have one of the traditional Porto sandwiches.

Off on the cruise of the six bridges, where Mary picked up lots of info about Porto by talking full time to the guide. Off the boat and over for our next free sample of port (another perk from the cruise ticket) we made our way back to Dom Pipas where we had our francesinhas...ham, steak and cheese sandwiches covered with a typical Porto sauce. Vera, the owner/cook was very friendly with lots of information about port and food.

We made our way across the bridge again, caught the funicular up the hill and made the short walk back to our hotel.

Another full day. I know Mary's busily planning our day in Afurada tomorrow.

K & M

Location:Rua de Entreparedes,Porto,Portugal