Porto –

Porto is beautiful but I was smacked in the head not once but twice by huge fat pidgeons ! I love birds but this is why I’m terrified of them. I do not have great experiences with birds!

However, I do have such fond memories of Porto and I wanted to share the experience with my group.

We were met by Vanessa, a guide I engaged for this portion of the trip, who turned out to be my new very best friend. We had been chatting online for many months, trying to get to work out a great itinerary and it turned out to be a most fantastic couple of days. Her hilarious husband Mario drove us from Lisbon to Porto, stopping at Coimbra and Aveiro along the way.

Coimbra is home to the oldest university in Portugal, one of the oldest in the world, built on the grounds of a royal palace. It is famous for its beautiful library with magnificent walls and ceilings.

The interesting thing here is that there are bats living in the library, and they keep them there to preserve the books by eating all the insects. Every night they roll out covers over the tables to stop the bat poop from damaging them.

From here we moved on to Aveiro, the dubiously named “Venice of Portugal”, mainly because it has a canal and gondolas. There is a bridge with coloured ribbons instead of padlocks, the meaning of which is that you will return if you tie a ribbon on the railing.

We tried the local treat called tipas, a cross between a crepe and a waffle filled with whatever you want. We had chocolate and Nutella. Surprisingly Vanessa had never had one before.

The next day, in Porto, we visited the Lello bookshop with its beautiful staircase and then went to a cooking workshop to learn how to make pasteis de nata. What a highlight this was

The rest of the day included a delicious lunch and more wanderings, followed by dinner down by the river under the famous Dom Luis 1 bridge that looks a bit like the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Great ending to a wonderful visit to Porto!