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Arriving in Porto

June 25, 2018

Kevin, our friends and myself left Toronto shortly after midnight (after a two hours flight delay). We had a smooth seven hours flight to Porto I’d like to say. One thing we didn’t know about Air Canada Rouge, they don’t have an in flight entertainment so you have to download the app before boarding and watch the entertainment through your phone/tablet during flight.

Anyways, we booked a car service from our Airbnb (a service I have never thought existed before but super convenient!). Lois brought us to Simon Guests Apartments, a twenty minute drive from the airport, for Euro 25 for all four of us. We checked online, it’d cost us Euro 48 by taxi.

We made a reservation at Antunes before leaving Toronto but because of the flight delay, we didn’t make it 🙁 Places here have siesta time/break before dinner so they usually close down between 3 or 4:00PM to 8:00PM and we missed it by just 15 minutes. We ended up having some lunch at an intersection close to our Airbnb called Ocumcaneco Restaurant. It was a pretty good experience and we ordered White Sangria that is still the best so far we’ve tasted in Portugal. Oh and get the Superbock beer as well, it’s their local beer – very tasty!

We decided to hit Livraria Lello right after lunch. We paid Euro 5 per person to get in to just basically take photos. You have to be super patient with the amount of people in there! This bookstore is an inspiration to Harry Potter’s library in the movie. The red staircase really caught our eyes 🙂 Oh and the fact that there are a bajillion Harry Potter books in Portuguese haha!

The above is the serene version of the real Livraria Lello which looked like this:

The day we arrived was pretty warm and after the very humid bookstore visit, we had to find a place that sells smoothie or iced coffee. We ended up in McDonalds, wanting to check out their Portuguese menu but walked out with the most delicious Mocha Frappe. I can see this is our go to drink for the rest of our trip!

We stopped at Sao Bento for some photo opps. It was crazy busy!! It’s a festival day in Porto and apparently that day, they had over a million people from all over Europe (and the world!) visiting the city. We are thankful for the opportunity to experience it but for photos.. yeah, very challenging! sao joao festival

Look at these two and their perfect apartment, they’re watching the crowds gathered for the festival:

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Our host at Airbnb suggested Chez Lupin for dinner. They opened at 7:00PM and we arrived at 7:41PM; however, we couldn’t get in and we planned to go for another day!

Another restaurant that we got recommended but couldn’t get a spot for the weekend is Brick Clerigos! Send them an email to book a reservation 2-3 weeks in advance!

We ended up at Galeria Do Largo Restaurant after almost an hour of wait (and 30 minutes of navigating busy streets of Porto) and couldn’t be happier with their set menu: soup, sardines, pork, dessert.

We finished dinner after 11:00PM and walked over to the water to watch some fireworks. People were still partying as we tried to get home afterwards. They said the party would end around 7:00AM. But we’d been awake for close to 40 hours and needed our shower and beauty sleep after our first day in Porto! 🙂