{"id":1726,"date":"2018-05-15T12:42:12","date_gmt":"2018-05-15T19:42:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/?p=1726"},"modified":"2018-06-20T17:26:55","modified_gmt":"2018-06-21T00:26:55","slug":"porto-port-markets-graveyards-and-moby-dick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/porto-port-markets-graveyards-and-moby-dick\/","title":{"rendered":"Porto \u2013 Port, Markets, Graveyards, and Moby Dick"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u201cHalf Rabbit\u201d by Bordalo II in Vila Nova de Gaia (2017)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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As I mentioned, many tourists here, a lot more than we had expected. I seem to recall a few internet vacation sites recommending Porto as the number 1 destination place this year.\u00a0 I guess everyone took that to heart.\u00a0 It really is a great place to visit but we haven\u2019t exactly done a whole lot here other than just poke around. There\u2019s the usual things to see of course, fortifications, monasteries, and old churches but there\u2019s also interesting geography and culture here.\u00a0 The city hills wind down to the river docks south and to the Ocean on the west.\u00a0 The old houses built on top of one another with their reddish roofs make for great photos from the numerous bridges that cross the Douro river.\u00a0 And across the river in Gaia, the old buildings work their way up the other embankment, this side being a mix of housing and, more importantly, all the well-known port wine houses.\u00a0 Taylors, Grahams, Warres, Offley, Burmester, Cockburn, and\u2026you name it, they are all here to tour and taste.<\/span><\/p>\n

We did not partake in that.\u00a0 Instead we wandered through the streets and along the river bank watching all the people, the interesting boats on the river, and soaking up some sun.\u00a0 We would like to have done a couple of port wine tours, but the lineups to get in to any of them were long and they do in fact charge for the tours.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been on wine tours before and I kind of get the idea on how it\u2019s made and bottled, so after weighing the pros and cons we decided to avoid the hordes, save time, and just buy a really nice bottle or two somewhere.\u00a0 It\u2019s the drinking of it that\u2019s the point, right?<\/span><\/p>\n

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The Dom Lu\u00eds I Bridge spans the River Douro between the cities of Porto and Vila Nova de Gaia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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View from the lower deck of the Dom Lu\u00eds I Bridge<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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View from the upper deck of the Dom Lu\u00eds I Bridge<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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We also wandered through a couple of markets on Saturday, like the one in Lisbon, but much smaller.\u00a0 The markets were part of a long walk to another graveyard which we\u2019re kind of getting in to (it\u2019s a bit concerning if you ask me). \u00a0it was like Barcelona\u2019s Mont Juic, but again smaller.\u00a0 Along the way we strolled down the main avenue which has a central park and monument, the Rotunda da Boavista, a 150-foot column with what looks like a large very angry lion on top of it smashing an eagle.\u00a0 It is dedicated to the solders of the peninsular war with the French back in 1808-1814.\u00a0 The lion symbolizes the alliance of the Portuguese with the British forces and I\u2019m guessing the eagle is what\u2019s left of the French after running into some tough troops in Porto.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Rotunda da Boavista<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Across the street from all of this is the Casa de Musica, which is as you guessed, a house of music, concert hall, and auditorium. \u00a0It\u2019s an interesting piece of architecture, looking like a floating cube with a red painted hand at the entrance.\u00a0 So, there you go, old, new, and weird.\u00a0 We like it here.<\/span><\/p>\n

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When Casa da M\u00fasica opened to the public in 2005 it immediately became a city icon. Featuring a 1300-seat auditorium suffused with daylight, it is the only concert hall in the world with two walls made entirely of glass (Wikipedia).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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On the way back from the port district I decided to go for a Francesinha, you know, the Moby Dick sandwich.\u00a0 The best place in town was closed so we found another place that had some variations and I decided to ease myself into that experience.\u00a0 No fried egg and no beef but add the chicken.\u00a0 It was actually OK, but probably not the best representation of the genre since the restaurant looked a little like a Denny\u2019s.\u00a0 Teresa thought it was just disgusting and that was one of her nicer adjectives.\u00a0 The search continues.<\/span><\/p>\n

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    As I mentioned, many tourists here, a lot more than we had expected. I seem to recall a few internet vacation sites recommending Porto as the number 1 destination place this year.\u00a0 I guess everyone took that to heart.\u00a0 It really is a great place to visit but we haven\u2019t exactly done a whole lot here other than just poke around. There\u2019s the usual things to see of course, fortifications, monasteries, and old churches but there\u2019s also interesting geography and culture here.\u00a0 The city hills wind down to the river docks south and to the Ocean on the west.\u00a0 The old houses built on top of one another…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1690,"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\/1726"}],"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=1726"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1726\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3021,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1726\/revisions\/3021"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}