Thursday 9 May 2024

Day 3, Porto, Portugal May 8, 2024

Our place is so comfy we slept in untill 9:30. We made a few espressos then walked down to the store and bought fixings for lunch. Penne pasta with pork sausage in a tomato, white wine and shallot sauce with some pirri pirri. Hard to believe we could enjoy a reserva red wine for 1.99 Euros. Great with our lunch. 

We headed out to meet our walking tour guide through parts of Porto we have yet to explore. We gathered at the university where some students were protesting in support of the Palestinians. I’ll hold myself back from commenting, as this is a travel blog :)  Our tour guide, Diogo, was awesome. So full of the history of Portugal and how it got to today with only 50 years of democracy. It was a fabulous tour, lasting 2 and a half hours and hitting all the highlights of this UNESCO designated city. Our second last stop was the Sao Bento train station. The walls of the entrance hall are adorned with 20,000 hand painted blue tiles depicting various scenes of the history of Portugal. One side of the entrance hall illustrates the marriage of King John I of Portugal to Phillippa of Lancaster in 1386 via the Treaty of Windsor, forming the longest lasting alliance in the world, still strong to this day. Then off to our last stop, the cathedral where John and Phillippa were married. We got to the cathedral via escalators to save our legs. By this time, our backs were hurting, as were our calves. The walking tour was over. 

We soldiered through our pain to get home via the grocery store where we bought olive oil, vinegar, chicken schnitzel and a huge red pepper for dinner and more Super Bock beer. We were not anxious to do anymore walking and decided to eat in. We finished off our meal with some tawny port and chocolate. What a day!


































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