Blogs from Porto, Northern, Portugal, Europe - page 10

It’s the Second Sunday in April, April 10, 2016 and the sun has just burst out after the heaviest rain shower of the trip. The Internet Weather says COASTAL EVENT meaning we have high winds and intermittent sun and rain. We are still in Porto, Portugal until tomorrow. Larry and I like this town a lot. It’s smaller than Lisbon, about half a million. It has old world charm on every street. But Cusack just about did himself in yesterday when he was walking out of our hotel and tried to walk through the unopened clear glass door. BAM. He didn’t fall down but he has a nice goose-egg bruise over his left eyebrow. I was concerned yesterday that he might have a slight concussion, so I watch him carefully throughout the afternoon, and put ice ... read more

Porto Day #4 - Saturday morning in a light rain. Yesterday was quite a beautiful day in Porto and we got to see more of the city since we took a Taxi in the evening to the Casa do Musica. I had found in my research about Porto last winter that the City had a concert hall designed by Rem Koolhass in 1999. I liked his work on the Seattle Public Library and so I found a concert that we could attend, and also see the building. Well, both the building and the concert were very modern and I suppose hip would be a word you would have to use. Quit cringing. First, the concert hall is the most modern hall I've ever been in. The outside is all white, clueing you to know it was ... read more

The sort of thing that all travellers fear struck in the wee small hours of the night! Gretchen awoke with flu symptoms! Just how bad it was going to be might take a day or two to develop and it is fortunate that we have a short run down to Porto and don’t have to check out from here until midday. Our short stay here of 2 nights has been excellent with a nice location at the seaside and good weather even if it was a bit windy. We could have been on Porto in not much more than an hour if we took the highway but as usual we opted for the N13 which would take us close to the seaside practically all the way. With Gretchen’s symptoms starting to show like she was in ... read more

Checked in to the RIBEIRA DO PORTO hotel at 3 PM after a pleasant three hour train ride from Lisbon. We walked for a hour before checking in and grabbed a veggie pizza and two glasses of Douro wine. We were basically sitting in the street on a hillside two blocks above our hotel, which we found out is just one building off the river on a very busy square facing the Steel bridge that is the icon of Porto. We had a nice conversation with an Italian gentleman who lives in the mountains outside of Granada, Spain and sells Italian electrical machinery to businesses in Spain and Portugal. Nice guy. The hotel is great, small, 5 rooms to a floor. We're on the 6th with great views up and down the river. The street musician's ... read more

I set off for another life abroad on September 20, 2015. This time, my end destination was Ourense, Spain to be an English teaching assistant. But the cheapest plane tickets took me first to Porto, in Northern Portugal. No, I’d never heard of it either, even though it’s the second-largest city in Portugal and the namesake of Port wine. Once I booked my tickets, I was pretty chaotically continuing to work my multiple jobs and prepare for Spain, so I wasn’t exactly ‘excited’, just more focused on details. But when I started researching for my 1.5 days in Porto, I truly started to get motivated. And, it was way better than my high expectations! (Although the pictures are sub-par and not really representative of the sum total!) My flights were with an economy Portuguese airline, SATA, ... read more