Porto - A Much Needed Vacation!

After completing the Camino de Santiago we were ready for a “vacation.” We took a bus from Santiago de Compostela to Porto, Portugal where we spent an entire week in one place. It was pretty exciting having our own mini-kitchen (Ricardo sure misses cooking), our own bathroom, and just a consistent place for 7 days in a row.

I loved Porto. We were welcomed to our Airbnb by an excellent host who gave us plenty of recommendations of sites to see and food to eat. She even provided us with a nice sample of port wine! We took some of her recommendations and of course tried most of the food. We fell in love with Portugal’s bread (sorry Spain!) and became friends with the local restaurant owner around the corner where we had a 3 course meal and drink for €6 each! OK, we may have gone here a couple of times.

One of my favorite things we did the entire week was renting a couple of bikes down by the Douro River for a few hours to cruise all along the coast out to the surfers beach. We were so happy to see the water (enjoy those Great Lakes, friends!) and had a great day taking our time exploring the area. We did this twice - once during the week (highly recommend) and once on Saturday (the weekends are crazy with people and it was hard biking).

    

A lazier activity we did was taking the 6 bridge Douro River boat cruise. We had a 50 minute boat tour up and down the river and then we were rewarded with a free port tasting ticket to enjoy anytime we wanted. We spent another afternoon visiting some of the port caves and did our tasting. It was a lot of fun just walking up and down the river because there were so many good places to eat and always a street performer or vendor after you. Walking along both sides of the river was definitely the place to be.

 

We had a relaxing time in Porto, and we would love to give our recommendations if you're thinking of ever visiting. The places we explored and the food we ate were fantastic, which were all primarily  based on the recommendations of our friends and our Airbnb host. We left Porto on a Sunday night bus for one final stop in Spain.