Port in Porto, Portugal

Despite various daunting maps and reviews describing driving a rental into Porto old town as "dangerous", "intimidating" and "something I wouldn't wish upon my arch-nemesis", we made it into the old town hassle-free, thanks to signs for our hotel beginning immediately as we exited the freeway (Hotel de Bolsa - highly recommended). We parked the car, dumped our bags, and caught a beautiful sunset along Porto's Ribeira, a UNESCO heritage site, overlooking Vila Nova de Gaia, which is where all the old port houses are located.

We wandered around and had a reasonable dinner with this view overlooking the river and the Ponte de Luis (built by Gustev Eiffel). We began and finished the meal with Port (white to start and red to finish off). Following dinner we slowly walked back to the hotel and got some good sleep for the following day of hard-core sightseeing.
In the morning we woke and hiked up to the Porto Cathedral (Sao Francisco Church), the highest spot in the city. The cloisters were very impressive in the church and we were smart to go early in the morning as the tour buses flood in not long past 10. The cloisters were full of the beautiful blue pained tiles very characteristic of Portuguese 19th century art.

Following the cathedral, we made it to Mercado do Bolhão and checked out the stalls. The entire market wasn't open, but the stalls we did see impressed. Next to the market however, was one of the coolest food stores we have been to on our travels in Europe called A Perola do Bolhão. We bought some great eats for a picnic that we had on the other side of the river after crossing the dramatic high part of the bridge.

As you can see below, the bridge offers an excellent view over the city.

Following lunch, we wandered down to begin our afternoon Port house crawl. Definitely the only place in the world you can say that! Below is another angle of the old town of Porto from Vila Nova de Gaia.

Though not in use today due to less glamorous trucks, traditionally, all the grapes that were picked in the nearby Douro Valley (which we would go to the following day) would be loaded onto the boats below and make the journey down the river to the port houses.

We first went to Calem port house for a tour, then to Ferreira, which was our favorite of them all. The Ferreira property was massive and the old barrels were really great. The Ferreira mascot is the Emu, so naturally I had to get a photo of my wife, formally an EMU. The Emu's knees are backwards, which makes them never go backwards (hence the animal as a mascot...always moving forward).

Following Ferriera we went to Taylor's, which is up the hill from the river and had remarkable views of Porto across the river. We missed the tour, but were impressed with the port house enough to have dinner here later on in the day.

After the tasting, we walked back to our hotel and on the way weaved through the snake like roads in the Ribeira and eventually back to our hotel after a stop in the tile store for some souvenirs.

This was a nice lookout we stumbled upon during our building-maze walk.

That night it was back across the river to Taylor's, where we capped over the Porto phase of the trip (and my birthday) with perhaps the best meal of the trip, and also sampled some amazing port!