Our second walk around Porto, featuring a visit to Palacio Bolsa - the headquarters of Porto's Commercial Association, and a boat ride on the Douro river.
 |
| One more source of coffee and pasteis |
We wake up late, and are out of the house around 10:30-10:45. Heading towards Sao Bento, but taking a different route than two days ago. Stopped on the way for coffee and breakfast of pasteis. Mine is a different take on pasteis de nata, with the same custard filling but a different tart. Tasty.
 |
| Pasteis. Sorry, I already took a bite. |
We took a southward route to Sao Bento station - passing by the Batalha square, and then taking some side streets until we hit the street just south of Sao Bento, and walked it all the way down to the suare. There, we spent some time asking around the tourist booths about the walking tours. Did not get any satisfactory results, so walked to Rua das Flores and took it all the way to its end. This street is lined up with a lot of stores, so did some window shopping along the way.
 |
| Sao Bento Square. |
 |
| Rua das Flores. |
Past the end of Rua das Flores, we continued our descent towards Ribeira, passing by the Porto Wine Association building (walked in checked it out, used restrooms, left somewhat disappointed, because the promised access to see the wine testing labs did not materialize) and eventually reaching through a big square (Praca do Infante D. Enrique) with a large palace on it - which turned out to be Palacio de Bolsa, a 19th century palace housing Porto's Commerce Association. The palace has tours - we stood in line watching as the number of available tickets (they had a running tally) for the nearest English-language tour dwindled - until we got extremely lucky and snatched the last tickets for it. The tour was at 1pm, we had another 30 minutes to kill before it. Went down to Ribeira, seeing a couple museums on the way, but deciding against visiting them (gotta leave something for the next time we are in Porto), but buying tickets for a 2:30pm boat tour along the Douro River (the so called "6 bridge cruise").
 |
| Palacio de Bolsa. |
Took a short walk along the embankment to find the location of our boat landing, then took one of the side streets (apparently a very old passage) back towards the Palacio.
 |
| Ribeira. |
Walked back up to the D. Enrique praca, and while crossing the street to get to the palace, discovered a tram - which I honestly thought was some sort of a monument/non-working unit - as it was just standing at a dead end all the time I was taking pictures of it. Later, I discovered it gone from the very spot - apparently, there is at least one - possibly two tram lines in Porto.
 |
| This turned out to be a working tram. |
Another thing I found around the corner?
 |
| McDonalds in a historic building, overlooking Douro river. |
We then proceeded with the tour. We got to see the large hall on the ground floor of the palace (actually more like the second floor, as we had to climb the stairs to enter the palace). It was devoted to some sort of "friendship of the nations" theme, with seals of countries friendly to 19th century Portugal covering the ceiling.
 |
| Entry Hall as viewed from the upper floor. |
Past the entry hall the tour moved upstairs through a set of grand stairs, where we proceeded to circumnavigate the palace room by room. As the building's "technical" function is to host the Porto's Commerce Association, the formal rooms of the palaces relate to this purpose. They have a portrait gallery of the Association's presidents, a courtroom - apparently the building was used for legal proceedings and they kept the room in its historic form, several offices, a Board of Director's meeting room, a meeting room for the full association, and finally - the crown jewel of the palace, the so called Arabic room - a large hall fully covered in Arabic art-inspired decorations - very rich and beautiful.
 |
| Palacio da Bolsa: Arabic room. |
 |
| Palacio da Bolsa: Arabic Room: Interior detail. |
We left the tour with about an hour before our boat trip. We decided to sneak in a quick bite before the trip, so, as is customary in our prior trips, we went to check out McDonalds. It is, as seen above, located in a great place, in a very nice building. The menu is a mix of staples, and some dishes we've not seen elsewhere. It is expensive - about double what a similar item would cost at a regular tashkinhia. We settled on sharing a Big Mac (4.40 Euro - one of the cheaper signature sandwiches), just to check the box.
 |
| Why does it have to be McDonalds? |
After this, we still had time to go to Ribeira, walk past our boat landing, and find an ice cream place with little traffic, and sangria on tap. Ordered sangrias, and a weirdly flavored ice cream. Ice cream was good. Sangria - white, fizzy, served with a stick of cinnamon inside a glass was by far the worst I had in Portugal - cinnamon made it bitter to my taste. Olga did not mind as much. We took the sangria to go and went to stand in line to get on the boat. We came earlier than most, so when the boat came and the boarding started, we got to take some of the best seats on the boat on the top deck, in front.
 |
| Our boat, arriving. |
The cruise took about 50 minutes. We first went in-land, passing by most of Porto's bridges. Got to make some nice pictures of the riverside neighborhoods on Porto side.
 |
| About to pass under a bridge. |
 |
| Gustav Eifel Embankment, and the neighborhood above it. |
Eventually, we turned back and went towards the mouth of the river. Immediately we went from no wind, and hot weather, to a really nice at the beginning (and eventually quite annoyingly cold) cool breeze. We passed back under all the same bridges, went by Ribeira (giving me a chance to take more good pictures of the neighborhoods above it), and went towards the last bridge on the western side of the city.
 |
| Just passed under the D. Louis I bridge. |
 |
| Ribeira and the Bishop's Palace. |
I was able to also take some pictures of the Vila Nova de Gaia side - despite essentially shooting into the sun.
 |
| Vila Nova de Gaia. |
By the time we reached the last bridge, we felt real chill, but as the boat turned around, the wind immediately subsided and we got warmer.
The tour took about 50 minutes, as advertised. We disembarked, and went up the Rua de Sao Joao and then Rua de Muzhinho da Silveira to reach Sao Bento again. From there, we decided to check out the City Hall - I read somewhere that one might be able to climb the tower, so we crossed over to the Aloidos square, where we stopped by a clothing store to buy Olga a pair of pants (to be featured in tomorrow's report), had some pasteis do nata and needed rest, before heading out to check the city hall itself.
 |
| My orange juice came in a jar. |
We were able to go inside the city hall, but only one side room was open to visitors, all other locations were cordoned off. So, we left, went around the city hall to discover another church (apparently, there is a apocryphal story about the bankers not wanting a church on their square, and making the City Hall tower tall enough to obscure any views of the church from the Aloidos square.), after which we turned towards our house, and made slow but steady progress (between window shopping, and taking a fairly long detour on Santa Catherina street - adding about a kilometer total to our walk) towards our place.
 |
| Porto City Hall. |
Back in the apartment, I prepared for our zoom business meeting (final presentation for a year long sponsored project), we did the presentation, after which, we made some food, ate it and called it a day.
 |
| View from our apartment. |
Alcohol. Well, that sangria was aweful.
Steps. 16,503 according to Google Fit. The watch was largely in agreement - don't remember the exact number. Not bad, considering that we did not cover too much of a linear distance.
Tomorrow. A small group tour to Douro Valley.
