Saturday in Porto - We didn't intend to walk 10 miles

We had the weekend off from our main task (finding a place to live) and the weather was supposed to be beautiful, so Ann and I decided we were going to explore Porto and play tourist so to speak.  So what do a couple of people who hate being around tourists do on a Saturday off in a new city?  Join us and find out!!!

The day started off well enough.  Ann had found a restaurant that looked like it produced something that resembles an American style breakfast - eggs and bacon (without beans like our Cousins on this side of the pond have).  When we got there we found out that, unlike Germany, their coffee came from a real live espresso machine instead of some mechanical, spit out everything device.  So we settled on flat whites (our first) and fresh squeezed orange juice to go with our eggs, bacon (Ann had sausage) and toast. 

Despite our American style breakfast, Ann and I have largely gone Portuguese, which meant we had a very late breakfast by our standards.  It was about 10:15 by the time we were done and we started to head across town at a very leisurely pace to our destination, the Centro Portuguêse de Fotografia (the Portuguese Center for Photography, or CPF for short).

We roughly used Google maps as our guide, taking detours to follow streets we hadn’t been on before, often returning to the same route a block or two over.  However, that wasn’t always necessary.  One of the nice things is that Goolge will try to get you where you’re going as quickly as possible, which means it will take side streets, and side-side streets to get you there.  

The advantage to that is you get to see more of the un-touristy parts of town, and you get views like this if you bother to take the time to look around.

Well, we arrived at the CPF just about when I wanted to - 10:45.  I’d figured on 10:45 because pretty much everything opens at 10:30.  So does the CPF . . . on Monday through Friday.  On Saturday they open at 3 pm.  Oops.  Suddenly the game plan went out the window and we were left scratching our heads.

We decided to head down to the Riberia, the famous waterfront area of the city.  There was no need for Google maps this time, just head downhill till you hit the waterfront, you’ll wind up somewhere along the Riberia!

Given we’d walked so far west to get to the CPF, I figured we’d wind up somewhere on the down-river side and could walk back towards the main bridge that crosses the Douro River.  The route down quickly left any character of “tourist trap” and wound up passing smaller restaurants and shops that clearly catered to locals.  Just the type of route we prefer to take! 

It was nonetheless just as beautiful.  And as we walked downhill, you could see across the river to Vila Nova de Gaia.

And yes, that is a religious shrine you see at the end of the street before the road turned left.  There’s lots of them in Porto.

Eventually we made it to the Riberia and its two-level bridge designed by Gustave Eiffel (of the tower name).  Like us, the crowds seemed to be just getting there.  We walked a bit, stopped for coffee and Nata (Google the pastry, it’s delicious), and by the time we were done the crowds had hit.  What to do?

We decided to walk across the bridge into Vila Nova de Gaia!  You can cross the bridge by foot on either level.  Cars and busses can only take the lower level, the subway runs on the upper level.

Vila Nova de Gaia is the home to all of the port wine houses that, in part, give Porto it’s name (Why isn’t Vila Nova de Gaia called Porto? I don’t know.).  It also offers the best views of historic Porto.

As we walked along the shoreline, it too became more and more touristy.  Then Ann paused and looked up a side road, I stopped too to see what she was looking at and saw . . . whiskers sticking out of a building.  “What do you think that is?” “I dunno?”  “A tiger?” “No, something else?”  “Want to check it out?” “Sure.”

Well, it was a rabbit.  Talk about wall art!

After photographing the rabbit we both looked back to the river front and then up in the other direction, which clearly went uphill.  “Any reason we want to go back that way?”  “No”.   We turned uphill.  

Which, of course turned into its own adventure.  We passed by a few port shops and wine tasting establishments, and kept making our way uphill following signs we though would lead us to a visitor’s center.  At some point we either missed a turn or the center itself, because we wound up on a pathway that kept leading uphill and clearly was not a road.

But as happens with exploring, you wind up in interesting places nonetheless.  And with interesting places comes the opportunity for interesting photographs.

The light along this stretch of the walkway was so fascinating we had to make several images.

The path got narrower and narrower, and eventually led us to one of the older Sandeman port storage facilities. 

The drive from there led to a road, which we turned right on to head straight downhill back to the waterfront, where we stopped in a small shop to have some bolhinos de bacalhau before heading back to Porto.

Once we crossed the river we had the option of taking a funicular up the hill, or walking.  We chose walking.

As you can tell, it was definitely uphill.

And even after you left one neighborhood and entered another, all you needed to do was turn around to remind you that you’ve been going uphill (as if our legs weren’t already telling us that!).

When we were back on something resembling level ground I asked Ann where to next?  Why, the CPF of course, so we headed west again and arrived just in time for the opening.

The Centro Português de Fotografia is interesting for a number of reasons.  Not only does it have the space to have multiple photographic exhibits inside, . . .

. . . to include a really nice exhibit of antique and not-so-antique cameras . . .

if you hadn’t guessed from the images above, it’s housed in the former Relação Prison.  Which, itself, offers a lot of photographic opportunities. 

Given the thickness of the bars, and the fact that pretty much everything in the place is granite, I wonder if anyone truly broke out of there.

It is somewhat strange walking past the iron gates to enter the exhibit halls.

After spending some time in prison, I mean the CPF, it was time for dinner.  Again, Google maps did us a favor by directing us to our destination via the most intricate back-ways possible.  Here, we got an interesting rear-view of the São Bento train station, the inside of which has beautiful tile-work, which we haven’t seen.

Our intended destination was packed full of people, which was not our preference.  So, just around the corner we found a more local place with about 10 tables where no one spoke English well, but we got along just fine and had a wonderful meal just the same.

All that was left was to walk dinner off on the stroll back to the apartment to take in another beautiful Porto sunset.

So that’s how a couple of people who don’t really like being around lots of people spend a day - wandering side streets for the most part.  It does come at a cost though.  As Ann’s Apple Watch explained, that cost was 10 miles and 33 fights of stairs worth of climbing.  I guess I don’t feel too bad about having that glass of wine with dinner after all.