We were very pleased to be able to host Ros from NZ for a few days. At the planning stage she suggested that she would like to get to Porto while in Europe and we were only too pleased to include that in our plans.
We arrived around 7:30pm due to the lateness of our Ryan Air flight from Dublin and it was getting quite dark. This is the great view that greeted us from our balcony at our privately-hired apartment.
First thing on our agenda was to find somewhere to eat. We quickly found that it would be wise to book but there were many good places within 10 minutes or less of the apartment. We have very little in the way of photos of restaurants or food as we were so busy gabbling away and eating and drinking but here’s one shot at least. Sadly the ladies aren’t quite in focus but the Red Mosquito beer, a local craft beer, was superbly captured! Great tapas, too, here at Restaurant 7 Maravilhas.
Then a few shots of our locality. This is just around the corner and you needed to be nimble as cars would come belting down this road at relatively high speed. (In fact we noticed this macho driving to be a trait of many Portuguese drivers, including buses and taxis. Ask us some time about the taxi ride from hell back to the airport.) The terra cotta wall was our apartment.
Then in the morning we easily found the steps leading down to the quay. Later, on a boat cruise, we picked up our apartment from the river and it is shown below. It has been modernised, possibly reclad, over three levels and was extremely comfortable and convenient. For any of you planning to visit Porto, we can recommend it as a place to stay.
Back to Porto at night. On our final evening, the very deep low pressure system that had been threatening us all weekend rolled in with some heavy showers. But we did get a nice sunset and these two shots were taken from our balcony.
