Hey everyone we have arrived in the beautiful country of Portugal. Today
we're gonna share with you how we spent one perfect day in the lovely city of Porto.
We started our day in Porto with probably the best pastry I have ever had
so it's a yummy Portuguese croissant and it was filled with like a yummy egg
custard and we had that as well as the pastel de nata and delicious coffee we
had ours at Confeitaria Sao Domingos. Awesome. So after coffee we walked up
the beautiful pedestrian mall of Rua dos Flores and it empties out at the train
station Sao Bento. Now normally you wouldn't go to a train station unless
you're catching a train or arriving by train but this one is worth popping into
even for a few minutes it has beautiful mosaics and beautiful tiles from floor
to ceiling essentially that tells some of the history of Porto. After we were
done checking out the tiles in the train station we took a short little walk over
to the Cathedral or the se. It's pretty big it's quite grand but it has a very
sort of cold austere feeling to it however when you'd go inside and check
out the cloister area it's completely worth it. It's kind of this neat
combination of big stone arches and walkways with more of those beautiful
blue and white azulejos tiles. Okay from the Cathedral it's only a few
steps away to one of the most iconic things in Porto and that is the Luis I
bridge. The bridge was designed by one of Gustav Eiffel's proteges
right yeah so it's from the same era it has the same feel and it's really
cool.
So we were all done checking things out on the bridge we wanted to take a look
at the older medieval neighbourhood in Porto so check that out there's a lot
of really old buildings some of them are still quite rundown some are totally
being revamped and renovated or made into new spaces. There's a lot of these
really narrow streets and narrow walkways and places to check out it's
just a really cool part of town. Okay so once we got down to the water we were
pretty hungry a lot of walking a lot of looking at old stuff does create
a hunger. So the water is a perfect place to grab a bite to eat there are a ton
of restaurants we don't recommend any in particular we just found one because it
was a nice table available and we had a nice lunch there.
I had a wonderful glass of rosé port by the river for lunch with lunch and
it was like one of the best glasses of wine I've maybe ever had.
So once we were fed had a drink we were feeling a little bit rested, had a nice
time by the water and the next thing we did was we visited the Se Sao Francisco
or the Church of st. Francis and that's a very unique very cool church it
is completely stone on the outside it does not look like much, it looks kind of
scary a little bit very sort of austere like the other churches as well. Dark and foreboding.
Very dark and foreboding thank you and then you go inside into the Cathedral portion
of it and it's just gorgeous it's filled with all of this intricate wood carving
work yes and all of that wood is covered in gold leaf so it's just like kilograms
of gold leaf in there it's sparkling and it's beautiful and it feels warm and
inviting and like just really comforting to be inside there I actually didn't
really want to leave. This is definitely one of the most unique churches I've
ever been in so it wasn't just another church it wasn't just another cathedral
it was kind of mind-blowing in its own way definitely worth it there's also a
small Museum and a catacombs so if you're into kind of morbid stuff head
down to the catacombs.
Okay so right beside the church is another great site and that's the
Palacio de bolsa or the stock exchange palace. With your admission, you have to
go on a guided tour it's a 40-minute guided to her it's pretty interesting
you learn a little bit about the history of that building and a little bit about
the history of Portugal too but there's one room in particular, the Arab room,
that i think it's worth seeing. The guide calls it the most beautiful room in all
of Portugal. mm-hmm It was basically inspired by the Alhambra and it's built
in that Moorish style so those beautiful mosaics those beautiful geometric
patterns it really is a sight to see. So the last site that we checked out was
kind of a spontaneous decision in our day we heard about this bookshop in
Porto, Livraria Lello, which is apparently the most
beautiful bookshop in the world it has been quoted as being so we decided we
needed to check that out we are book lovers literature lovers. It's five euros
to get in and visit the bookstore it's not very big so it's kind of cramped in
there yeah but it is gorgeous. And if you find something there that you want to
buy it you do get five euros back. It's apparently one of the places that
inspired JK Rowling the author to write the Harry Potter books.
Okay with our sightseeing done it was definitely time to eat again we love
tapas so we found this place called Tapas 65 very modern restaurant and it
has a modern take on tapas. The dishes there were awesome. So good some of the
best eating I think that we had in Portugal. It was food so nice
we went there twice.
So another option and one thing that we definitely enjoyed doing was we headed
over to the Majestic Cafe which is a perfect place to cap off your evening
with a cup of coffee a tea or what we decided to do which was to have a little
bit of dessert and a drink, a beverage, a nightcap if you will. So it's like it's like
a Grand Cafe in the old Parisian style I would say. What makes it a little
interesting is that it's another place that JK Rowling used to go to work on
the Harry Potter books so it also has that kind of charm to it. Well that's it
for this video everyone, thank you so much for tagging along on our lovely day
in Porto. If you have other ideas for things to do here in this city
please let us know in the comments below and make sure you subscribe to the
channel and give it a thumbs up if you enjoyed the video!