Friday 8 February 2008 Our bus arrived at Porto bus station early afternoon. The ‘bus station’ was basically a big shed which was half way through being renovated. There being no signs in sight to direct us anywhere, probably because of the renovation, so we enquired at the information desk. The instructions from our hostel advised catching a Metro to it. In Barbara’s best attempt at Portuguese she asked “Metro? Por favour”. To attempt Portuguese probably wasn’t a good idea because then the man proceeded to rattle off Portuguese instructions to us at 1000 words per minute. Our best interpretation of his hand signals was to go outside, turn right, then at the plaza walk down the stairs. Easy?!....maybe not. We followed these instructions to the letter, but when we got to the plaza there were no stairs. We had a quick look around to see if we could find any sign to a Metro, but to no avail. We asked for some more instructions from a passer by who instructed us to walk around the corner, along four blocks then down the stairs. We did this and guess what...there were no bloody stairs! Asking for more directions, we were
then instructed to go around another corner, two blocks along and - you guessed it - down the stairs! Nothing again! Getting slightly disgruntled and having no metro stations at all on our Lonely Planet map, we harassed the nearest policeman for directions. He had no idea where the metro was, but thankfully his colleague did. We finally found the Metro! It only took about an hour and a half! Exhausted from hauling our luggage around town all afternoon and not being thoroughly impressed with Porto’s apparent unsuitability for tourists, we dragged ourselves onto the metro and headed off to our hostel.
Black and white hostel is situated outside the city in the middle of the burbs with absolutely nothing else around except houses and a metro station. This makes its location nice and quiet but terribly inconvenient with no nearby facilities. The hostel itself is clean and beautifully decorated with fantastic murals on the walls and ultra modern funky decor (photo). Oh, and they also have a cute doggy (photo). Unfortunately, the doggy is the most hospitable member of staff. The staff hovered over all of the guests for the entire time we were there. The staff actually
live in the hostel in a room on the top floor so they watch you constantly while your using ‘their house’. Their kitchen is your kitchen. Their bathroom is your bathroom. Your luggage storage is THEIR BEDROOM! Not knowing this, Barbara tried to get something out of her bag one morning and the owner was standing there IN HER NEGLIGEE! Very bad form! But the doggy was cute!
With only one night in Porto and wanting to escape the view of the hostel owners, we headed back to the city. We were starving so we stopped at the city market for some bread and cheese (photos). The cheese was delicious and creamy and CHEAP! The bread was as heavy as a brick! We asked for four slices of brown bread so she carved up a rye loaf and weighed it - it weighted about half a kilo! It was delicious and moist but too heavy to eat as a sandwich so we crumbled chunks off to eat with the cheese and saved half of it for later. While we sat munching on our lunch on a bench in the street mall we admired the old style buildings still present
in the busy mall (photos).
We wandered down to the train station to purchase our train tickets for the following evening. Michael attended to the tickets while Barbara admired the gorgeous walls of the station (photo).
With advice that the best views in town were from the church on the hill, we strolled up there. The church (photo) was, like most buildings in the city, also covered in the beautiful painted tile murals. The views from the courtyard outside were definitely a sight to be seen. Looking over the city, we could see the tiny winding streets, the tall thin buildings leaning against each other and stacked up the steep hills and the harbour which was tranquil at dusk (photos).
We caught a bus from the station down to the waterfront where the Museu Do Vinho Do Porto, being the Museum of Port Wine (photo), was located. Unfortunately, the opening hours advised to us by the tourist information office and the hostel were incorrect so instead of being open until 7pm as advised, it had already closed when we arrived at 5:30pm. In an effort not to waste the journey, we strolled along the waterfront admiring the
views by night (photos). Across the river along the banks and up the side of the hills we could see the names of the various port wine cellars, for which the region is famous, up in lights.
Exhausted and slightly disgruntled by the incorrect instructions, we headed back to the Black & White Hostel in the backsticks of nowhere to be hovered over while we cooked and ate our dinner in THEIR kitchen - which we pay for the privilege to use - and then tucked in for the night.
Saturday 9 February 2008 In another effort to visit the Museu Do Vinho Do Porto, we once again caught the bus down to the waterfront only to find - you’re not gonna believe it - it was shut again. To be exact, it actually hadn’t opened for the day. The times told to us were wrong again - it wasn’t due to open for a couple of hours. By then we had really had a bar of this museum and, given this was our last day in town, we really didn’t have time to wait around for it not to open. This was just another GONG to
an otherwise beautiful city which was not proving to be very tourist-friendly.
Having put the museum aside, we decided to try some REAL port wine so we headed to the other side of the river. Along the way we spotted a number of staircases, which were considered to be ‘streets’ in this town (photo) and lots of lovely historic buildings. Along the waterfront were numerous nice cafes and restaurants (not yet open because it was too early for them too) and many ‘port boats’ lines along the shore (photos).
We crossed the bridge over the Duoro River (photos) which separates the towns of Porto and Vila Nova de Gaia and were immediately faced with a tough decision: which port wine cellar should we visit? (photo) There were so many to choose from. With some of them being an number of kilometres steep walk uphill, we opted for those which were relatively close. We took the scenic route to the Sandeman cellar, along the ‘high road’ instead of along the waterfront. The views from up here seriously rivalled those from the church we had seen the day before (photo).
We strolled into Sandeman cellars (photo) trying to look
as non-backpacker-ish as possible to be advised that the next tour in English would not be for another 1.5 hours....grunt! Basically, the system was that the first person to book the tour gets to choose the language. It may cater for demand, but unless you book in advance there is no guarantee there will EVER be a tour in your language. We booked tickets for an English tour - which cost a whole 3 Euros each - and headed straight back outside to look for another cellar which would amuse us in the interim.
Calem was the next cellar along the waterfront so we gave it a go. Again we strolled in trying to look as dignified as possible and happily booked for a tour starting in only a few minutes time. Our tour guide taught us about how port is made, the difference between it and other wines (basically that the fermentation process is stopped early with the addition of sugar and then the port is stored to mature immediately after this, as opposed to regular wine which is allowed to ferment for a longer time before being stored), why the Duoro region in northern Portugal is the
most ideal place in the world for making port wine, and a tour of the cellars where the port is stored (photo). Our tour guide was most passionate about the product and this made for a fantastic tour. As if the tour wasn’t impressive enough, at the end we were offered tastings of Calem’s range of port wines (photo). Though they were just giving us ANY port wines, we were offered a selection of three ports of fine vintage (photo). Wow! Barbara had never really been a port drinker before, but our visit to Calem changed all of this! Michael was in port heaven! The ‘tastings’ were actually three FULL glasses of each port! Unable to actually purchase any to take with us because we would have to carry it the rest of the way around the world, we thanked our guide and headed back to Sandeman for our tour of that cellar.
Slightly merry for the delicious port we had just sampled, we tried not to stumble into Sandeman, and pretend to look like we hadn’t just been to another cellar. Our tour guide arrived dressed like the Sandeman logo in the black cape and back hat -
looking a bit like Zorro actually. This tour covered much of the same material as the last but was a bit too commercially focussed - our brand this, our brand that....! The guide was also not nearly as keen as the guide at Calem had been. Zorro proceeded to show us around the cellars (photo) and the offer us tastings of the product (photo). The nips of port we were offered were of very young ports and not nearly as delicious (or large) as those we ‘sampled’ - read ‘drank’ - at Calem. Sandaman obviously didn’t have the same customer strategy as Calem. Sandaman was too busy imprinting its brand and logo in your mind and not so busy impressing you with the product itself.
We stumbled back across the river and had lunch at one of the restaurants along the waterfront which was now open for business. We both ordered different variations of ‘burger and chips’ - there wasn’t much authentic Portuguese fare available - and we certainly received very DIFFERENT meals. Needless to say Barbara wasn’t very impressed when the chips which came with her burger were actually ‘mini fries’ and were ON her burger! (photo) The
service was also so slow that if left us no time to do anything other than go back to the hostel for our bags and catch our train.
We caught the funicular railway (photos), which was slow and not very exciting at all, back up to the top of the hill and caught the metro to the Tardis stop (photo) - as we called it because the entrance is an elevator leading to nowhere. We dashed back to our hostel, grabbed our bags, bid a not-so-fond farewell to the owners, and dashed back to the railway station (photo).
When planning our journey out of Porto we realised that it is very difficult to get from Porto to anywhere but Lisbon. From our experiences in the place, it also appears not to be a city frequently ‘touristed’ - they certainly aren’t well equipped for tourists anyway. Accordingly we had to catch THREE trains just to get out of the place.
We watched the sunset from the train window, and a crazy paraglider flying a little too close to powerlines at dusk (photo). We then secured our luggage by padlocking it to the luggage racks (photo) and settled in
for our night train back to Spain.
Port boatshistorically shipped port wine from the vineyards to the cellars
Portugal's Flag
Map of Portugal