Perusing Portugal – Porto

My husband and I often feel like packing everything up and moving abroad. Portugal is one of the places we have considered and we recently made a 2nd visit to the country to scout potential properties – and visit a few of the cities as well.

We began our week-long adventure in Porto. We stayed in an apartment for two nights which overlooked the Ribeira Douro. The river-front area is beautiful and boasts many cafes 

I am an avid seafood eater and have indulged in Portuguese fish dishes before but was particularly excited to dig into some Porto sardines and I wasn’t disappointed! 


Worse luck I cannot remember the name of the

restaurant I had the sardines at but it is one of the ones on the upper part of the walkway besides the river.

Gaia is the other side of the Douro and there is a rivalry between Porto and Gaia although we never found out why. We went on a tour of Porto in a Tuk-Tuk and the driver said Gaia was jealous of Porto and he wouldn’t even drive over the bridge to drop us off in Gaia! 

Gaia is where all the Port Houses can be found and many offer cellar tours and tastings. Port is SO not my thing so we made ourselves busy by catching a cable car and eating a bag of roasted chestnuts instead.

Porto is a big city but most of the action takes place along the river and we spent most of the two days cafe-hopping around this region. I can’t wait to go back!