{"id":1629,"date":"2018-05-14T11:29:29","date_gmt":"2018-05-14T18:29:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/?p=1629"},"modified":"2019-09-28T17:48:18","modified_gmt":"2019-09-29T00:48:18","slug":"porto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/porto\/","title":{"rendered":"Porto"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Porto is, how can I best say this, really, really nice.\u00a0 At least for us.\u00a0 It has a great feel, it\u2019s not as big or hectic as Lisbon, and it\u2019s very pretty.\u00a0 Being an old working-class port town, it has some rough areas, but it looks like for the past 5 or 6 years there has been a rebuild and an attempt at reinventing itself.\u00a0 It\u2019s being gentrified as we say; many old places in various stages of renovation, lots of modern stores and malls next to derelict buildings, and hordes of tourists wandering around.\u00a0 There is a good energy feeling here.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Porto is about 3 hours train ride north of Lisbon.\u00a0 The day was overcast and a bit foggy so not much to report on interesting countryside on the journey up.\u00a0 Like Lisbon, it sits right on the Atlantic and has a great river, the Douro, running through it.\u00a0 The Douro area being famous for wines and port.\u00a0 If you haven\u2019t tried a Douro wine, you should.\u00a0 It\u2019s quite tasty and the one we\u2019re drinking right now as I write this, is a reserve and costs all of $5.\u00a0 We\u2019ll be picking out a few more to try but the port bottles are starting to call out.\u00a0 Hard to fit the beer in.\u00a0 Sigh.\u00a0 So much cheap wine, so little time.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

We\u2019ve been for a couple of short walks in between the mandatory grocery shopping and as we wander through the town for the next week, I\u2019m sure we\u2019ll find some interesting things to write about.\u00a0 One of them is already on my list and that\u2019s something called a Francesinha.\u00a0 Our host here (as well as a colleague at LD) told me about it and it\u2019s basically like a French croque-monsieur but more so.\u00a0 As far as I can tell it\u2019s a giant Dagwood type of sandwich stuffed with cheese, ham, chorizo, beef, and god knows what else, covered with a melted cheese\/b\u00e9chamel sauce, topped with a fried egg, and sits in a shallow dish of spicy tomato beer sauce.\u00a0 Often surrounded by a battalion of French fries.\u00a0 YUM!\u00a0 The Moby Dick of sandwiches!\u00a0 I\u2019m told there is a vegetarian version of this but really, what\u2019s the point.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Porto is, how can I best say this, really, really nice.\u00a0 At least for us.\u00a0 It has a great feel, it\u2019s not as big or hectic as Lisbon, and it\u2019s very pretty.\u00a0 Being an old working-class port town, it has some rough areas, but it looks like for the past 5 or 6 years there has been a rebuild and an attempt at reinventing itself.\u00a0 It\u2019s being gentrified as we say; many old places in various stages of renovation, lots of modern stores and malls next to derelict buildings, and hordes of tourists wandering around.\u00a0 There is a good energy feeling here. Porto is about 3 hours train ride north…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1635,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1629"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1629"}],"version-history":[{"count":62,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1629\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5347,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1629\/revisions\/5347"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}