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The next day we decided to do something we rarely do: take a walking tour1. I’m glad we did, as we got to see parts of Porto we probably wouldn’t have visited otherwise. And learned a bunch of interesting things about some of its neighborhoods and buildings…most of which I’ve already forgotten :).
The tour started at a point overlooking the Douro where we got a nice view of the monastery over in Gaia.
Since Porto was, for a long time, ruled by a bishop of the Catholic Church, it has a lot of churches. I particularly enjoyed this dramatically backlit one we passed on the tour.
Many of the churches, like this one sporting a lot of tilework, are no longer houses of worship.
Our tour guide explained that using tilework on buildings is common in Porto for a simple reason: long ago, one of the ruling bishops declared that every building in the city had to maintain a beautiful and clean exterior. If you painted it, you had to repaint it at least once every five years.
But if you used tile, you didn’t. Which cut down on your maintenance expenses, a lot.
There’s a similar economic explanation for the narrow buildings you see throughout Porto: at one time, property taxes were assessed based on the linear frontage of a building. That meant you could lower your tax burden by building long, tall and narrow buildings.
Porto is nothing if not colorful. As someone who perhaps likes colors too much, I was impressed by the variety of colors I saw on its buildings.
There clearly wasn’t any kind of rule about keeping them locally consistent, either.
An interesting tidbit I didn’t know and hadn’t read in our guidebooks is that J. K. Rowling, of Harry Potter fame, wrote most of the first book in the series in Porto, in this particular cafe2.
Cafes, in Porto at least, were very personal: you typically picked one when you reached adulthood and spent most of your socializing time there for the rest of your life (or as long as the cafe lasted, I presume).
One of the things I didn’t know Porto hosted, but should’ve realized it did, was a farmer’s market. It was stuffed to the gills with all sorts of interesting foods and condiments. We thought we’d return for a later visit, and buy some stuff, but, sadly, we ended up not doing that.
Fortunately, we didn’t lose anyone from the tour group as we passed through the market.
This building is the residence of the bishops who once ruled Porto and still oversee its various Catholic churches. At one point after control passed to civil authorities, the city wanted to acquire the building and turn it into city hall, fronting a major downtown thoroughfare.
The Catholic authorities refused to sell. So, the city government built their city hall right in front of the church property, shaped to completely hide it from view along the new thoroughfare.
Partway down the main thoroughfare, heading towards the Douro River, there’s a McDonalds. A very special McDonalds.
It occupies the old Imperial Cafe, constructed in the 1930s. McDonalds got a sweetheart 100-year lease deal for the property…but had to promise not to touch the eagle or the decor inside the cafe.
Our next stop was the railroad station, which we’d struggled to find early on during our stay in Porto when we needed to buy transit passes.
Its lobby is decorated with very large and very beautiful tile “paintings”.
Our last stop on the tour was the Sé do Porto (“Porto Cathedral”), which overlooks the Douro River. It’s “guarded” by a magnificent statue of a knight on horseback.
Off in the distance we could see the Torre dos Clérigos, and how it dominates Porto’s downtown. That’s not by accident: when it was constructed, back in the mid-18th century, the then-bishop decreed its top would always be the highest point in Porto.
After the tour ended we had a tasty lunch in an open-air cafe along the main downtown thoroughfare, the one that city hall bookends. Our waiter told us we were enjoying an unusually warm and dry October…for which we were glad :).
We then went back to our hotel to relax by the pool for a bit. While we were there, we spotted this newly-married couple walking through the hotel with their photographer.
I thought about wishing them good luck. But the bride looked a little stressed, so I decided not to risk embarrasing her.
Later that afternoon we decided to hike down to the Douro and take a sightseeing boat ride. Unfortunately, everyone else had decided to do the same thing — I think there’s a regulation in Porto requiring all tourists to ride at least one boat before they leave — so there were no seats remaining.
No matter. We got to enjoy shopping in a nice outdoor market, where Barbara bought a nicely decorated canvas bag to use while grocery shopping.