Porto; Thursday, 24 February, 2011

In spite of massive queues at security, the whole process through the airport was amazingly smooth. I don’t quite know what Gatwick’s done, but it’s worked. The queues may be long, but they move like the clappers.

I arrived at the gate with plenty of time to spare, which was good as they very quickly started boarding people. With ten minutes to go before our scheduled departure time they were already closing the doors and getting ready to do the safety briefing.

By the time we touched down in Porto a steady tail wind had added to the smoothness and we touched down 25 minutes ahead of schedule. A quick trip through the terminal, with the bags taking only slightly longer meant that I was sitting on a Metro train heading into town at the same time I was due to land.

I walked the short distance from the metro station to the hotel, checked in, and then headed down into town for a wander around.

I had a bit of a wander around the riverside area, before heading towards the Tourism office to buy a Porto Card. From there it was a simple step across the road and onto the penultimate open-top tour bus of the day to go round the city centre taking in the sights.

The tour route includes going out to the Atlantic coast and then coming back into down along the bank of the Douro River. The bus arrived at the coast at the same time as the sun started to set and it made for some very beautiful scenes, especially with the Atlantic being quite lively.

By the time I got back into town it was starting to get a dark so I headed back to the riverside and grabbed a bite to eat, before hiking back up hill (the funicular railway was closed for no apparent reason) to the hotel.