Porto—October 8, 2018

Guess what we did today?

Pretty light day. After doing laundry we needed to get a SIM card for my phone, find a liveria that sells English language books, and find the famous pastry shop Paula told us about.

Cedofeita, our street in the morning.
The only traffic allowed along most
of it in the AM are delivery vehicles.
The rest of the day it's pedestrians only.

We were in search of a SIM card
for my cell phone and a bookstore
that sold English language novels,
but if we didn't find either, we knew
it would be a fun walk to the center
of Porto.

We figured we'd have some luck
along Catarina Street, a main
shopping street for tourists and
Portuguese natives. This mall
proved to be just the ticket.

The guy on the right in the red shirt is the Vodafone person
who helped me. Within 10 minutes, he'd replaced my SIM
card with one that has 500 minutes of talk, unlimited, texts,
and 5GB of data. 

It's a pretty impressive mall in
the heart of Porto along an already
popular shopping street.

This public pay phone, ya you
read that right, actually works.
They're imitation British phone
booths and we've seen them
sprinkled around.

Like all malls, the food court is on the top floor, but unlike
many, all the food stalls look like traditional tiled homes.

We didn't have any luck with a
bookstore, but we did get directions
from a bookseller here.

The Bolhao Mercado is being renovated, but the bookseller
in the mall said we might find liveria that sells books in
English, so we tried La Vie and viola!

It was a small but adequate selection at Bertrand's.

The street art is fun.

A lion gazes down at shoppers along Santa Catarina.

If you looked at pictures from last fall the Ale Shop cow
will be familiar. We actually walked inside and discovered
the chain is kind of like Bed Bath and Beyond.

Porto has sidewalk tiles just like Lisbon.

Enlarge this picture and enjoy the
strawberry sculpture decorating
this already pretty store.

We dropped down to Bento Train Station, famous for its
20,000 azulejo tiles (1905-1915) representing historical events.
We, however, were on a mission to put money on the metro and
intercity rail cards Paula gave us. We're going to visit a few
towns north of Porto on the metro and Aveiro, considered
the Venice of Portugal, via intercity train.

Success!

It was nearly 1PM so we started back to our place, but took
a peek at Ribeira Pastry, famous for eclairs since 1878. We
passed on them. Weren't feeling it. Maybe tomorrow.

Awesome tile decoration on the Steak-n-Shake joint.

We ate at Tapas 'n Friends in Lisbon last fall and really liked
it, so chose the Porto restaurant for our midday meal.

Sausage medallions with caramelized onions.

Potato skins with garlic mayonaise.

Pork and potato stew.

The pork was fork-tender.

Salmon and feta salad wrapped our linner.

More street art on our street.

Back at Paula's we took our laundry off the line and then just hung out, reading some news and emails while enjoying looking out over Paula's garden patio from our large and open window. October 8th and it's 76F (24C) today and is supposed to be sunny and warm until Thursday when we might have a little rain.

To wrap up our day, we decided to watch the sun set from the Dom Luis Bridge and Morro Garden, a park at the end of the bridge on the Vila Nova de Gaia side. Gaia is where all the port wine cellars (i.e. caves) are located. The cellars line the river and offer tours and tastings. 

Morro Garden/Park overlooking the river is a popular hang out.

Even for us.

Serra do Pilar Monastery (17th century) overlooks Douro River
and the Old Town.

Dom Louis Bridge. The Metro
tram uses this bridge, competing
with pedestrians day and night.

Took our short cut back home up
Avenida dos Aliados, the central
plaza surrounded by impressive
buildings/businesses and capped
at the end by Paos do Concelho,
the Town Hall. This building is
a bank.

This is Cedofeita Alley; it cuts

over to Cedofeita Street where

our home is, cutting about 5 

minutes from our return.

Although settled by the Romans, Gaia today has a newer suburban feel even though the municipal population is about 180,000. This is probably because it offers homes with yards and easy access to long sandy beaches. But unless someone told you, you'd think you've crossed the Douro to the south side of Porto.