Porto, Portugal: The most amazing place ever :)

I loved Porto! I hate to say it, but deep down I think a big part of it was that it was the first time I was in direct sunlight for more than twenty minutes in the past two months, and it was in the high 60s/low 70s while I was there. It just made the city that much more enjoyable. But, in Porto's defense, it was indeed a really cute city regardless.

A lot of the buildings had tile work on the outside, which was interesting and very pretty. This is one of a church, but there was one area of the city that the majority of the apartments also had an entirely tile exterior.

Here's one of the apartments:

On our first day of exploring, we walked from our hostel to the Douro River, which is where a lot of the daytime activity takes place in the city. These next couple of pictures are from a bridge overlooking Porto.

The area of Porto around the river was really fun during the day. There were a lot of people sitting outside eating lunch along the river, which is what we did.

The one, absolutely, must do thing in Porto is get Francesinha. It is basically bread and cheese cooked in a gravy-like sauce, but the sauce is actually relatively spicy, not as bland as a gravy. (It actually also has a LOT of meat in it. Under the bread and cheese are different layers of ham and thin steak-like meats, but I just took them out because it was too amazing to miss out on and they do not understand 'sans carne.')  It is delicious. The deluxe version comes with an egg on top and with fries in the sauce. Even if you are just getting the regular version, you MUST get fries with it because it is soo good with the sauce.

Another reason Porto is amazing: there were tons of kitties!! Honestly, if I were a street kitty I would live in Porto too.

 

I will finish this post at a later date because my internet is horrendous at the moment. Wheee.