Let me begin by saying that Porto, and Portugal in general, is underrated. Should you ever have the opportunity to visit Porto I highly recommend it. Everything is Porto is cheap; I believe I spent a grand total of 70 euros for three days in Porto. This included a winery tour and wine tasting, pub crawl with my hostel, two meals a day, and gifts. Besides Porto being ridiculously cheap it is an incredibly beautiful and relaxing city. For some reason I have a natural affinity for cities with rivers that run through them and Porto did not disappoint in that regard. The Rio Douro runs through the center of Porto out to the Atlantic ocean and is crossed by some huge bridges as well as playing host to cute ships that carry wine barrels. Porto is known for their delicious, and pretty strong, Port wines.
Part of the beauty of the trip was that there isn't anything to see in Porto, it's really a city that you take in and experience. That being said Porto is by no means boring. There was still plenty to do. Really, it means that we did a create-your-own tour rather than having to stick to a list of places to see. There were only three places that we knew of ahead of time. The first was the Majestic Cafe and the decor and hot chocolate lived up to the name. Our draw to the cafe was knowing that J.K. Rowling would sit there and write out the early outlines for Harry Potter. This knowledge led to a great deal of Harry Potter discussion throughout the trip. The second place was the Livaria Lello & Irmao; a really beautiful bookstore in the center of Porto. The final must-see place was the beach and Atlantic Ocean. There, despite 50 degree weather, we saw many surfers and stuck our feet in the ocean to discover that it was considerably warmer than we had anticipated.
By far this trip was my favorite. Not only do I love the city of Porto but it was smooth trip, for the most part, and I had some great company. There were only three of us, which seemed to be the perfect traveling number. So far if I had to choose a European city to live in I would, hands down, choose Porto. Barcelona is great, but it is too much of a city. Porto had that perfect combination of city mixed with rural/countryside feel. The people in Porto are also very friendly and speak excellent English. Apparently the Portuguese aren't really happy when people try to talk to them in Spanish so we were more than happy to stick with English.
The only problem came at the end of the trip. We learned that Porto's metro schedule is more similar to a train schedule than Barcelona's metro. In other words we arrived at the metro station to discover we would have to wait about 25 minutes for the next metro to the airport. We arrived at the airport 40 minutes before the flight left and had to sprint through the airport only to discover that the boarding line was still ridiculously long. You may be thinking, "40 minutes isn't ideal, but it takes you almost 40 minutes to check-in and get through security? What did you pack?" So let me explain. We flew Ryanair to Portugal which is very cheap, but also requires that you check-in online, print your ticket, and, if not from the EU, get the ticket stamped. So roughly 15 minutes were spent trying to find where we could get our tickets stamped since check-in for our flight had closed. The next 10 minutes were spent in security and running to our gate. But all in all a good trip and a great experience.
