Porto is in Portugal. It is a port. In Porto you can buy port. Lots of port. I spent four days in Porto drinking port. Here’s a wayward guide to Portugal’s second largest port city. Port!
- Porto is located on the mouth of the Douro river. The Douro valley is the wine producing area where the grapes that make port are grown. It’s super pretty.
- A trade treaty in the 18th century established the first English trading post in the area. This led to the establishment of several English port firms such as Taylor’s, Croft’s, Cockburn’s and Graham’s. Narratives about trade treaties are boring, so I’ll leave it at that.
- Port isn’t just for Christmas. There’s all types of ports for all types of occasions and prices, which we learnt during a highly-recommended tour of the Ferreira cellars. Along with the history, science and naming convention of port, we found out the makers don’t really understand maths – the ‘age’ of the bottle is calculated as the difference between the ages of two ports mixed together to fill the bottle – for example, if you pour 30 year-old port in a bottle with 10 year-old port, they call that 20 year-old port… sure. Also, we’re still not sure what the difference between white port and sherry is.
Good job there’s plenty of port to be had in Porto. Just about every bar/restaurant serves SuperBock lager which is fine I guess, but it’s like they have a beer-baron style monopoly. It’s not fine that every bar/restaurant serves Somersby Cider, which is made by Carlsberg and tastes like chemically flavoured pee pee.
The local cuisine is dominated by seafood which is excellent and includes sardinhas (yes, that means sardines), bacalhão (dried and salted cod) and grilled octopus. Then there’s francesinhas – a toasted sandwich filled with wet-cured ham, sausage AND steak covered with melted cheese and a hot thick tomato sauce served with french fries.
Transport options in Porto are numerous. The metro is cheap and reliable, running from the airport and all over the city centre. Then there’s the cable car, the aptly named ‘bone-shaker’ tram (American tram cars from the 19th century), a funicular railway (you can’t spell funicular without…) and various river transport options.
Fado is Portugal’s traditional folk music characterised by mournful tunes and lyrics. We dined in a particularly touristy but atmospheric fado themed restaurant. As a style of music, it’s pretty full on. Raw emotion was on display in abundance. Sometimes I wished that the singers would take a break so I could appreciate the intricate guitar accompaniment.
The city is right on the coast, which in this part of the world means nice beaches. One of my favourite things about Porto is that you can be having a city break in an interesting historic town then jump on a bus and be sunnying it up on a golden beach in 10 minutes. It’s good for surfing too, if your soon-to-be francesinhas riddled arteries allow you to do physical exercise.