Project BIG APPLEstrudel: Porto

A few weeks ago we flew to Portugal for my birthday present. We usually try to do something fun for our birthdays and I chose to fly to Porto (for Ben's birthday went to Dublin in June).

Ryanair (again) brought us there on cheap tickets and Ben had found a simple and reasonable hotel in the city center. And my family was sweet enough to watch our kids for 2 days!

We left Thursday night on a 9 o'clock flight and got there late. But with the time difference of one hour we could still take the metro into the city and we found our hotel right away. After a good night of rest (with no kids bothering us or waking us up), we set out to explore Porto. We went to the market and bought some souvenirs, we walked through the old part of town and then crossed over the bridge to visit the wine caves where they make port wine.

We chose 2 port wine makers we wanted to visit: Taylor's and Graham's. We went to Taylors first and had a great tour. Our guide was short, informative and really nice. We had tasted our ports before the tour as we had some time to wait.

After a great lunch (in a little restaurant by the river) we went to visit Graham's. There again we did the tasting before the tour as we had some time to spare, but we did not enjoy the tour as much as we did at Taylors.

By then the sun had come out and we walked back to the river and crossed over to the other side. But we were tired from all the walking by now and took a little tram up the hill and went to take a short nap at the hotel.

For dinner Ben had found this great unique Portuguese restaurant and we had a nice and very interesting dinner. The food was great and the wine too!

The next day we had breakfast at a little local bar around the corner and it was super yummy and cheap. We then set off to do some shopping, exploring the city, visiting a great old bookstore. We also found a cute crafts market along the way and we went back down to the river to have a little rest. There was also an art show held by students of the local university and we found some nice things there.

For lunch we found this great little "hole in the wall" and we had a nice last meal: a huge 2 course meal with bread, coffee and 1/2 litre of wine for 5 Euros! Amazing.

We then had to pack up already and head back to the airport as our plane left in the early evening. While waiting in line outside on the runway for the plane to be ready we enjoyed the last warm sunshine, because when we landed in Memmingen we had to uncover our car from ice and snow!

Great short escape to a beautiful city!