May 16
Today we are doing a walking tour of Porto. Our guide started with a history of the country itself, and then we set off on our walk.
Porto helped inspire J K Rolling in her Harry Potter novels.
College clothing inspired Harry Potter wardrobe, and the historic bookstore also inspired the books. It is a popular tourist, destination, although we do not have time for tickets today. There are long lines of people waiting to get in and street performers out front .
The Tower of the Clergy is tallest structure in Porto. 240 steps to the top. The church it is attached to was the original structure. It was used as an infirmary to care of the sick and the poor. The artist who was contracted to build the tower learned of the churches purpose, and when completed donated all costs of the tower to the church. He was buried on this location, however, did not want any acknowledgment, and the actual location of his burial is not known. Our guide joked that the locals say its location is unknown because because “they lost his body“
Our next stop was an overlook of the Duro river. The other side of the river is actually a different city, Gaia. Looking out to the far left is the Cathedral of Porto. The big white building to its right is the Bishops Palace. Continuing to look to the right and down is the Louis bridge. It was built by an associate of the architect of the Eifle tower. Above it is the monastery which has been converted to the military barracks still in use today. We had another street performer at the overlook location playing his guitar.
As we enter the old part of the city, the streets are cobblestone and become narrower, most of the buildings have small balconies and are built on fairly steep grades. Tiles on the building are another cultural part of Portugal. Many of the buildings have them. They are hand painted and often placed in a designed pattern. Blue and white is the most common color.
The San Bento train station is translated Saint Benedict. It used to be a monastery, which eventually was converted to the train station. The train station walls are covered in 20,000 tiles. The color blue was considered a very valuable status symbol. The minerals to create the color were imported and very expensive.
Tour ended just below the cathedral of Port. This was shown in yesterday’s blog post.
Once the tour was completed, Rob, Sherri, and I went back to our lodging locations, picked up our luggage, and returned to the train station to store them in a locker. We are traveling to Tui at 4 PM. In the meantime, we returned to the tower of the clergy, toured the cathedral, and climbed up the stairs to the top. The view was amazing 360° in all directions.
After our tower visit we headed back towards the train station. There is construction on one of the buildings. The inside gutted and rebuilt with iron framing, but the exterior is preserved. We stopped for lunch. The francesinha is a popular Porto dish. It a sandwich made with layers of beef, sausage, linguiça, and ham covered in cheese, which is melted over its entire service. The sandwiches then served in a bowl of sauce made for beer and tomatoes. It’s called the heart attack special, but it is delicious.
We met up with the rest of our group at the train station for our trip to Italy where we will sleep tonight.
We arrived in Valencia, which is a town just on the southern side of the border of Spain and the Camino de Santiago is a couple blocks from the train station. Rob, Sherri, Eric and I chose to walk the 2 miles to the hotel on the trail.
We wind through narrow cobblestone streets corner, and wow, an awesome cathedral stands before us.
We leave the trail and take a side street up to our hotel and meet our group just as they are about to head out for dinner. The food was amazing an end to a great day.
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