Day 5 - Porto

What a beautiful city! Porto is officially my favorite in Northern Portugal (Obidos being my other favorite). Porto's streets are lined with buildings covered in colorful tiles. That, along with their paint pallet for buildings being colorful, every where you look in the city you are greeted by color that makes the city just THAT much more beautiful. 

The city is divided in two by the Duoro River. The one side is Porto proper and the other is a town called Gaia (though they consider themselves living in Porto). Like many cities these days, the cost to live in the city is too high, so that pushes the inhabitants out to the "suburbs" like Gaia. 

Our first tour of the morning was of the Stock Exchange (or Palacio de Bolsa) building. I wondered why this was on the list to be toured, but when I saw the inside, I understood. The outside is this very unimpressive cement looking place - which makes the inside all the more outstanding. 

One of the court rooms

That chandelier is enormous. The photos don't do it justice, but it was huge. The tour guide said they all weighed 2000 lbs. I tried to avoid being under it at any time, in case there was an earthquake or something. You can never be too careful. 

The Arabian room is the reason to visit the Stock Exchange. It was ornate, elaborate, and oh so beautiful. 

 The walls were designed with some intricate work. The workers, though, didn't speak Arabic so the copying of the Arabic isn't accurate in some cases. 

Once we were finished with the Stock Exchange building we walked around the corner to visit the Church of Sao Francisco. Another church we couldn't take photos in, but I borrowed some from the Internet again. 

Interwebs: São Francisco has three naves coated in golden carvings. It is believed that over 300 kilos of gold dust were used to decorate the church’s interior. The temple’s ornamentation was for a time considered too extravagant for the poverty that surrounded it, so it was closed for a few years.

One of the most beautiful altarpieces of the Church is located in the North aisle. The “Tree of Jesse” is a wooden sculpture by Filipe da Silva and António Gomes depicting the family tree of Jesus, considered one of a kind.

We finished with our tour for the day and Janet and I decided to take the Hop ON Hop OFF bus. We got to see some more of this beautiful city. 

The traffic in Porto is a lot like any other big city. We happened to be on the bus during rush hour, not our smartest move, and so we sat in the traffic in the heat for longer than we wanted to. 

The last exciting thing we did in Porto was touring a Port factory. The Ferreira family is one of the three big port manufacturers in Porto. We were greeted by, Carlos, who took us through the winery and explained how Port is made. It's basically wine, that is then combined with a high quality brandy and then it sits. 

Our tour ended with a tasting and my tour ended with buying two bottles to bring home. We tasted their white port and their tawny port. Both were delicious.

We leave Porto tomorrow to head north again.