Day 13 Friday 19th April

 


Star off in the usual way with bacon and eggs (scrambled) fruit and coffee. We have a routine and we kind of stick to it. Get the laptop out and purchase vouchers for the Livrarvia Lello. It calls itself the most beautiful beautiful bookshop in the world and who are we to argue? Supposedly an inspiration for Harry Potter set designs. We have to pre-book because the line yesterday was so long that we didn’t even attempt it.


We arrive there at 11 am and surprisingly we just walk in the door. The queues are still very long and it makes me wonder why they don’t buy a ticket online for the time they want to come in. The bookshop is extremely cool especially the staircase in the middle of the shop. From below and above. A
nd the whole place does have a Harry Potter feel. There is even a sorting hat on one table. It cost us 8 euros for a voucher so we could enter the place. 8 each. And the voucher can be used as a discount on a book. And only a book. No tote bags or fridge magnets etc.  All the books are about 22 Euros or more which means they get you both ways. I find one I like I think. So I spent a bit there that I wasn’t intending to. Oh well.
Next up is the Cathedral at the top of the hill which is highly decorated with Gold and such with lots of statues of Jesus on the Cross. Not sure if it’s cool but it wasn’t bad to visit.
From there we walk down to Porto station and buy our train tickets to Faro for Sunday. First Class all the way. Look forward to that since it is a 6-hour ride.
Stroll the streets and pick up a FC Porto shirt for Remi. There is also a cool sound DJ shop I check out mainly because the front looks so good.
We’re going wine tasting in the afternoon so we need a bit of food in us. We found a place called Honest Greens. The food is outstanding and we will try to get back there before we leave.

We walk across the bridge to the South side of the river and look for a place that does wine tasting. We find an affiliate of Santa Cruz and order a tray of sample ports. 4 glasses of port wine and 4 chocolates that go with them. Unfortunately, neither Liz nor I like port that much but we had to give it a go. This is the home of port wine. I finish off my glasses but Liz only drinks half of one. The white one. We walk back to the hotel for a siesta. 
A few hours later we get up and go look for some food. We find a heavy metal bar that serves burgers and such but the burgers look massive so we share a platter of samosas, chips, lamb crochets and more. It’s alright but doesn’t come close to the lunch we had. Also, the heavy metal turns to Oasis once we are in the beer garden (which is large and quite impressive) Sated by food we walk back to the hotel to get some sleep.









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