Now that we had a good night’s rest, it was time to explore Porto more. Falling in line with our usual modus operandi, we booked a walking tour to help us get acquainted with the sites and history.

Our tour took us around the center of Porto, which was fair as there was a lot to see. However, before we really set out, we did take our first stop down one of the side alleys to catch a fantastic view of the city from the top; even though we’d gotten a good view from above the previous day, it was still awesome getting a second, phenomenal view. One thing that Raquel told us about was where to find good shops that sell port wine, which were on the other side of the river: this is a specialty wine that was developed to help English sailors bring the stuff to their homeland. Now that we had literally set the scene for the rest of the tour, we walked down to the heart of Portugal’s second city. One highlight was stopping by the world’s fanciest McDonald’s restaurant, which was located in art nouveau-styled building. We were allowed to go in to snap pictures, but no Big Macs for us as we were moving along. At this point we were in the central square of the city, where we had more history explained to us. During the civil war they had, one camp made Porto their base and since they won, they had a statue built in their honor. Another interesting yet morbid fact was how the heart of Pedro I, king of Portugal and the first emperor of Brazil, was preserved at the church we were able to see in the background. And yes, Raquel had pictures she’d taken of it to show us. Porto meant that much to him, being the aforementioned winner in the Portuguese Civil War, so in gratitude he literally left his heart behind but was actually buried in São Paulo. There was a bit of a discussion between the Portuguese and Brazilian governments about who’d get to keep his heart since he meant a lot to both of them, but ultimately the former won. Not that it prevented the South Americans from seeing it on display at one point. The more you know, right? Raquel dispensed fun tidbits like this for the whole tour, so like with many other ones in the past, we definitely came away enriched.

By this point, it was time for lunch, and my mom and I stopped at one of the recommended places, A Regaleira, to try the famous francesinha (lit. “the little French girl) dish. Before I talk about the food itself, it is worth mentioning how this particular restaurant has been in place since 1934, meaning they really know their stuff. Despite that and the waiters wearing immaculate white shirts and bowties, it didn’t feel stuffy at all! Having said that, we didn’t see people who were wearing shorts and t-shirts per se, so I’d probably recommend being mildly formal. Now, what exactly is a francesinha? It’s a sandwich made out of roast pork leg, thin linguiça, fresh sausage, and a few slices of ham stuffed underneath two bijou rolls topped with melted cheese and slathered in sauce. Does that sound too much? Absolutely not-it’s completely worth it! I ordered this and my mom ordered the tripe (as Porto is known for the dish), and the two of them were scrumptious! The portion sizes weren’t the biggest, but the two of them packed a mighty punch, and it’s honestly quite easy to image somebody just chowing down on several of these. Sadly, we wanted to do other things, so we paid and headed out, feeling full and satisfied.

We still had some room for dessert, and my research had told me about a highly-rated confectionary story. As with most of our destinations in the cities, it was about a fifteen-minute walk, so with the small amount of carbs we burned off, we earned our treat. Confeitaria do Bolhão is a cafeteria or sorts that serves pastries, sweets, and other snacks, where you order and they bring your order to you, so we did just that. My Portuguese wasn’t quite up to snuff (as I missed out on the lesson about sweets) but fortunately, as with most of the country, they spoke English well so letting them know what we wanted was a cinch. I got a slice of chocolate cake and my mom got some pastries, so we probably had a bit too much sugar at that point. We disagreed about the rating of the place, as she thought the stuff was too sweet/maybe not quite as good as the other places we’d been to, whereas I’m simpler and thus thought everything was a-okay. I do think that we suffered from the issue of having too many options available, so if I did come back there I’d make sure I’d try other things. Not that you can really go wrong with what they have!

Next on our list of things to do was visit the famous Livraria Lello, which is one of the world’s nicest looking bookstores (and definitely inspired Hogwarts’ design). Because of its ornate interior, you had to buy a ticket for a certain timeslot to enter, and staff was outside to ensure there wasn’t an overflow of visitors. The timeslot doesn’t limit you to a certain time before the next batch of visitors, so you can spend as little or as long there as you desire, if that makes a difference. We paid ten euros per person and our slot was at 3:30, which gave us some time to walk around a bit, where I ended up getting a nice, locally-made sweatshirt. Once it was about ten minutes before the slot, we got in line, and the time honestly went by in a jiffy. The first thing you notice, not that it’s hard to do so, is the gorgeous staircase taking you to the second floor, and unfortunately so many people were taking pictures that it led to a brief congestion; there also were people posing on the stairs, so that made actually trying to get up mildly annoying. Upstairs resembled a more traditional bookstore, so people were properly looking for books there. What was nice was how your ticket served as a mini discount of sorts, as it whatever you paid for would have the entry sum deducted from it, and I took advantage to buy Neil Gaiman’s Norse Mythology. To be honest, given the size of the store as well as its relatively small selection (which were primarily classics, as well as in English, French, German, and Spanish), it was slightly overrated for the price of admission, but it is something that is worth checking out. In its defense, it appeared that the basement was closed off, so maybe there could be more to explore. As a book lover, you’ll just have to fight for space with the people who are there for the social media posts. Still, I was happy to have gotten the opportunity to visit.  

At this point of the day, we didn’t really want to do much other than get dinner and turn in early. We did retrace our steps from earlier in the day to get some food at Mercado do Bolhão that we’d passed by, since my mom was very excited about it. At that point of the night there weren’t as many stalls opened, so both of us were wandering around until we found something that suited each of our fancies: I ended up getting some bacalhau, and she got some seafood. No matter, the next day would be an all-day excursion I was very excited about!