Porto; Monday, 30 January, 2023

My final breakfast in the hotel and after a very leisurely start to the morning I finally checked out just before 11am and headed over to the open-top bus tour to pick up the bus over to Vila Nova de Gaia.

I hopped off the bus in Gaia and had a wander around the area at top of the cliffs including the views from the Miradouro da Serra do Pilar located in front of the Monastery of the same name. From here there were excellent views across to the similar mirador at the Cathedral over in Porto.

This area is also the upper station for the Gaia Cable Car that links this upper part of the town with the riverside, where the port wine lodges and restaurants are all located, and I’m never one to skip out on a cable car when it’s running so I hopped onboard and head down to the lower town.

When I’d visited Porto about 13 years earlier the Port Wine lodges all offered free tours of their cellars that included a tasting of their products which were popular amongst the small numbers of tourists who made it there.

In the intervening years Porto has boomed as a tourist destination, and – in part due to the number of British stag and hen weekends – the port wine lodges have cashed in and tours now start at €12 and head up from there, especially if you want a tasting. Consequently, I decided that, given the way Port has been produced hasn’t changed in several hundred years it’s unlikely to be significantly different to what it was 13 years ago and I could spend a lot less on a whole bottle of the stuff in airport duty free. I decided to skip the wine lodges and instead just had a wander around the riverside area.

As it was early afternoon I decided to stop off at one of the restaurants on the riverside for a bit to eat and had the local delicacy a Francesinha, a local sandwich made with cooked ham, local sausage, stake draped in copious amounts of cheese, heated until it’s all melted, topped off with a tomato sauce and then – in this restaurants case – served on a bed of chips. I decided against the option of adding a fried egg to the top as probably one step too far.

It was a very nice meal, and enough to keep me fed most of the way to the weekend. Significantly heavier than when I walked into the restaurant I waddled out and headed back to the cable car to catch it back up to the top part of town and pick up the open-top bus back round to the cathedral.

I had just enough time left to do one final circuit of the red route and spend a little bit of time sat out in the beautiful warm sunshine before it was time to head back to the hotel, grab my bags and, because it was only about €2 more than the cost of the metro, grab an uber out to the airport.

A smooth journey through the airport, and a good couple of litres of Port purchased, I caught my flight and headed back home.