In case you missed it, you can read here about three dreamy days in Algarve...
I’m back from our awesome Portuguese adventure, but I needed some time to recover from my post-travel depression. Yes, it’s a real thing, google told me! 🙈
1400km by car, about 200+km walking and a gazillion floors. Well, hills... and maybe not a gazillion, but surely felt like it! My goal was to talk about Obidos, Porto, Lisbon and Sintra and to keep it short. Because I couldn't manage to keep it short, I'm going to talk about the first two in this post.
I'm going to start with Porto! Oh, Porto! Wonderful town, dreamy and perfect to eat seafood, drink wine and wader around. I know that I’m not that much help when it comes to recommend exact places to visit, but that’s because you can find those on any travel website.
First: parking! They have a lot of private parkings and the pricing goes from 35€/24h to 10€/24h. We found one with 15€. We spent about 45 minutes searching for an affordable one. Oh! And also some of them are not open on Sunday so if you leave your car there and you want to pick it up on Sunday, you can't... Just don't forget to ask. 😉
On our first day we had a Francesinha! A traditional Porto meal. It’s a super sandwich with all kinds of meat and sausages, with melted cheese, in a beer sauce and served with frech fries. It’s basically a caloric bomb and, as any other unhealthy thing, it’s surprisingly tasty! 😋 Santiago was our choice to try it because we had read a lot of good reviews about it. It’s a one time meal so we don’t have another one to compare it, but it was good! Put it on your must taste list!
Another place to eat: Zenith - for an awesome brunch. Don’t be discouraged by the waiting line, worth the wait! 😉
For a nice dinner I recommend Ora Vida.
Dalva Beira Douro - for live music, good wine and great atmosphere!
Livraria Lello - must see, especially for Harry Potter fans. J.K. Rowling got started on book one while she lived in Porto so many urban myths about Porto and Harry Potter started around this fact. But the college students from Porto wear uniforms that resemble Hogwarts uniforms and that was pretty cool to see.
If you want to sleep at night, try to avoid the area around Livraria Lello. People from Porto know how to party until 6am. We found out the hard way...
We didn’t visit any house wine, mostly because we didn’t had so much time but also we don’t really like Porto wine, a little too sweet for our taste. Vinho Verde on the other hand, that’s another story! 🙈 A story to be told face to face.
Obidos: a one night stop (can be less if you don't have time), small village, old medieval town where you can walk on the walls of a castle! Must do: drink Ginjinha (some kind of liqueur that comes in a small chocolate cup), admire the sunset from the wall and wander around. Not impressed with the food, so no recommendation there.
Keep in mind that you are not allowed to enter with your car inside the old town, so it’s recommended to find accomodation that has a private parking. We stayed outside Obidos, just a 10 minutes walk from the city center.
Sorry for the long post, thank you for reading it and don't forget that you can message me with any questions! ;)
