This is how we do it down in Porto

I often refer to the fact that I have a holy trinity of holiday countries; France, Spain and Italy. They're the countries I go back to pretty much every year, with so many different cities and destinations still on the list in each of them. But I'm beginning to think I've been selling Portugal short by not making it a holy quaternity (yes I did have to Google 'trinity but 4' to find that words existance). Because I've been to Portugal a number of times and I've loved every single place, from Albufeira to Lisbon to Madeira. However, my recent trip to Porto has trumped all of them. And to be fair, it's trumped a lot of places in my holy trinity too, zooming its way easily into my list of most favourite cities I've ever been to. Which, when you've been to as many places as I have, that's quite a gold star of achievement. From the blue and white azulejo tiles, to the vinho verde wine, everything about Porto just blew me away. And I had my favourite person by my side to make the trip truly perfect.

Our flight from Luton was horrifically early and since it's a short hop of a flight with no time difference, we were in Porto by 8:30am. Potentially the earliest start to a holiday I've had! It did mean that we got to fully make the most of our first day so after dropping our bags off at the hotel, we went to grab a coffee and a second breakfast. Of course our first stop in Portugal had to be for pastel de nata! We hadn't done much research at that point on where to find the best ones but we struck gold pretty much straight away because this cute little antique cafe at the end of our road served amazing ones.

I'm such a lover of Mediterranean tiles. The abundance of them in Porto was one of the main reasons I was excited to go. Spotting all the beautiful tiled churches was basically priority number 1, and we headed to the Chapel of Souls for our first glimpse. We stuck our heads inside of course but the true beauty was on the outside... and in trying to get Ash to get a decent photo without the top cut off.

The main churches and buildings in a city are always beautiful, but I loved that so many regular buildings in Porto were beautiful too. Lovely tiled corner shops and restaurants and banks. It made walking around so lovely! And after walking down the main Rua de Santa Catarina high street, we found our way to the Bolhão food market. The building for it was absolutely massive and housed row upon row of amazing food stalls. Cheeses, fruits, meats, oysters, drinks - you name it, they probably had it. We were learning quickly that food and drink in Porto is pretty cheap, even more so when you have it in this nibbly style. We got a couple of these cute tiny sandwiches after a sample of jámon that was simply divine.

The next stop on our list was the train station, which is well worth a visit even if you aren't going anywhere. It was a bit chaotic getting to it at the moment because there's mass construction going on to pedestrianise the surrounding area, but once we were inside it was worth doing battle! It's so beautiful with lots of those beloved blue and white tile murals. I was starting to wonder how long it'd be before Ash got sick of me saying 'oh look at those pretty tiles'.

We wandered around a little more, finding a cute hidden little crafts market as we went, and then eventually made it to the church of Saint Ildefonso. Another tiled beauty! By this point we had pretty much ticked off all the spots we wanted to see for the day, so we stopped for a drink in the lovely Praça da Batalha square. I always look out for things that are unfamiliar to me on a menu so I obviously went straight for vinho verde, and obviously my life was changed. It's basically like a very subtly sparkling white wine - the most delicious summery drink! It may have been my first glass here, but it was far from the last.

When I say we had done everything that we wanted to for the day, it obviously wasn't because we'd completed Porto already (far from it). But the itinerary for our trip had started to take shape and we'd divvied the city up into sections. The south of the river (Vila Nova de Gaia) was its own thing, and then the north of the river (the old town) could be split in half quite nicely if you drew a line from city hall down to the Douro. This day, we were tackling the smaller right-hand side since it was our arrival day, and also it was the best weather forecast. We were forecast quite a mixed bag so we were keen to do the fair weather things on the days that made most sense. And drinking wine in the beautiful sunshine is definitely a fair weather thing! I always find my way to a rooftop bar and the PortoBello rooftop blew me away; mainly because it was totally gorgeous and yet we somehow had the place to ourselves. Plus a bottle of wine was only €13! The views were lovely, the music was blasting, the sun was shining - the vibes were immaculate.

When we'd dropped the bags at the hotel, we'd got chatting to the man on reception about our plans and itineraries and he'd offered his recommendations. We actually ended up taking all of them but first things first, the food! Ash and I always like to try the national dish wherever we go and Ash had read that Porto's is the Francesinha sandwich. Steak, ham, sausage, cheese, spicy sauce and an egg. Basically Ash's dream meal! When we'd asked about it, the man at our hotel had said you will find them basically everywhere in basically every restaurant, but for the best and most authentic ones, you should head to Praça dos Poveiros and specifically to Santiago da Praça. So that's exactly what we did. We weren't absolutely starving so we decided to share one and they actually pre split it for us so we didn't have to faff around with it, and it meant we got our own egg, and some extra fries and sauce. It was perfect! They were so lovely there too, the service was amazing. It was especially the perfect meal to have after a bottle-and-a-bit of wine.

Another fair weather activity we wanted to make sure we incorporated in was making the most of our pool. We checked in to our hotel, the Oporto Maison Anselmo, and headed straight down with a couple of drinks we'd got from the shop. When we booked Porto for May, we imagined it'd probably be quite a lot hotter than it ended up being. It's been unseasonably cold and rainy across all of Europe this Spring! But since we'd already booked a hotel with a pool, we wanted to make the most of it. Our hotel was actually more of an aparthotel (you can see how much space we had in the room and we had a full kitchen too), so it had a really nice relaxed vibe. Plus the cooler weather didn't matter at all when it came to the hot tub!

Another experience we'd read about online was watching the sunset from Jardim do Morro on the south of the river, and walking over the famous Luís I bridge to get there. I love a good sunset so it sounded great to me! Some experiences you read about online end up being even better than you imagined. But some end up being one of those things you feel glad you did but you maybe wouldn't recommend to others. This was the latter. Yes the sunset was beautiful. But the bridge was absolutely heaving with people, and it's actually the bridge that the metro goes over too. So every 2 minutes, you're ducking out of the way of people's photos, trying to scoot around slow walkers, and trying to avoid being hit by the train. It was quite a stressful experience to be honest and we ended up ditching even making it as far as the Jardim do Morro because even from the end of the bridge, we could see that the whole place was absolutely packed. You'd only end up having to battle your way back over in even more crowds afterwards! So yes we saw a beautiful sunset, but I'd want to try and find more of a hidden gem next time.

Our extremely early start was finally catching up with us so we decided to have a nice chilled dinner at a cute restaurant called Impar Flores. At this point, we couldn't believe everything we'd already managed to pack in, to say that we started our morning waking up at home!

Our hunt for the perfect pastel de nata had officially commenced and given our luck with a tiny place off the beaten track the day before, we tried to same strategy again. Pasteleria Porto Santo was a tiny little neighbourhood cafe with the loveliest old man running it. The pastel de nata may have lacked a bit of crunch, but they were really delicious. And for 3 natas, 2 coffees, and 2 hand-squeezed fresh orange juices, our bill was £10. We even went through and worked out what the equivalent would cost us at home and we worked it out would've been £25!

Like I said, our itinerary was very much crafted around the weather. Since Thursday was set to be an absolutely beautiful day, we took a break from exploring the old town and instead caught a Bolt over to the Foz do Douro district (literally translating to mouth of the Douro) to spend some time on the coast. Bolts were a great way to get around in Porto by the way, and so cheap that it doesn't make any snese to bother with public transport.

We knew we wanted to spend some time at the coast while in Porto and thought we'd probably just explore that area. But once again, our hotel man came through with an amazing recommendation. He said if we like walking, then we should start at Foz do Douro, but then work our way up along the coast and into the Matosinhos district, which is where the main fishing area is (and also happened to be where he lived himself). He said there's loads of delicious seafood restaurants serving up fish that's been done on an outdoor BBQ. Well, we love walks. And I love seafood. So the plan for the day was set!

We didn't make it very far into the walk before it was time to stop for a little drink. Praia da Luz is a really cute little beach restaurant and the glass of sangria was divine! You can tell who's the professional drinker out of me and Ash can't you? You can also tell I have a labrador boyfriend because it wasn't long before he was up walking around the beach and collecting rocks, leaving me to enjoy my cocktail. There's a funny Reel trend going around at the minute with Next to Me as the song, and the text 'you won't find him next to me because he never sits still'. That's Ash.

The walk was about an hour in total and it was so love; there were forts, and pergolas, and viewpoints, and gardens. I also didn't realise but Porto is actually one of the route for the Camino de Santiago, an anicent pilgrimage that sees people walk to north west Spain from various starting points (some 1,000km away) in the name of religion, spiritualism, or just personal achievement. It's something I'd actually like to do one day since reading a book about it, and the trail is famous for being marked by hundreds of seashell symbols. So you can always spot when someone is walking the camino because they normally attach shells to their luggage or clothing. We may not have walked as far as the length of the camino, but we still felt like we'd put in a decent enough shift to reward ourselves with a nice drink and a few snacky bits overlooking the sea.

When we arrived in Matosinhos, I have to say it wasn't quite what I expected. When it was described as a 'fishing village', I expected the port to be really cute and quaint. But actually, it was a pretty giant commerical port! To be fair, none of the rest of the coast or the beaches had been commercialised at all, and it all felt pretty natural and untouched, so that was the better way round I would say. The pretty and the quaint was actually just set back from the water, with a long line of lovely restaurants on Rua Heróis de França. They all had outdoor kitchens and BBQs where they were making so many different kinds of delicious fish and seafood. We went to A Peixaria II and had a platter because variety is the spice of life, and it had prawns, squid, salmon, dourado (a local speciality), sardines (a seasonal speciality), cuttlefish, and trout. Everything was amazing.

We thought that our coastal adventure would probably take up the entirety of the day, but the day was still young! So we decided to squeeze in a little visit to Vila Nova de Gaia by ordering a Bolt to the south of the river. Gaia is not only home to the cable car and a lot of the famous sunset spots, but it's also the main area for Port! Port is a protected product with lots of hoops to jump through for them to legally call themselves that, so you normally find hotspots for production in these kind of cases (champagne, being a fairly obvious example). It was pretty much wall-to-wall Port places in Gaia and some of them were SO cool. One we went in was like all my Beauty and the Beast library dreams come true, complete with rolling ladder. Ultimately though, we wanted to be outside making the most of the sun. We sat at the sandeman terrace and I tried my first Port of the holiday, along with a Port and tonic which actually worked very well.

I love that me and Ash are very similar with travel; that we want to feel like we've completed somewhere. We want to try everything, go everywhere, and leave no stone unturned. Which naturally meant we weren't content just finishing up with drinks on the south of the river. We needed to see what the north of the river was like too. You could actually walk on a lower section of the Luís I Bridge sans metro, meaning that this walk was a lot less stressful. There were loads of places this side of the river and it instantly felt a lot busier and more crammed in. It lost points for the hustle and bustle, and the fact it was a lot less in the sun, but gained points for delicious drinks and the street performers providing entertainment nearby.

I love that Ash and I so often accidentally coordinate our outfits and tonight we were very chic in black and white! Without as much of a crazy early morning, we were feeling a lot more ready to explore the nightlife, which we'd been told was popping at the Galeria de Paris. Two side-by-side streets lined with bars and pubs and a selection of restaurants. One of those restaurants was Tapas Na Boca, where we had a delicious feast of small plates. It didn't quite rival the tapas we'd shared in Valencia, but it was pretty great. As for the nightlife, it was a bit of a mixed bag. We found some cool bars, including a karaoke bar that we loved! But a lot of them were quite seedy and giving pre-strip-club-vibes. Great if you're a group of rowdy lads. Maybe less so if you're a couple (well, depending what you're into I suppose).

I generally think that independent is best. For everything. But it would be hard to go to Porto and go on a pastel de nata crawl without needing to sample some of the big dog places eventually. We did stay resolute in staying away from Manteigaria which seems to be the biggest chain and had queues out of all the doors. That was not an experience I wanted. On Friday though, we went to Nata Lisboa - the chain from Portugal's south. I kind of wanted to hate it, given my stick-it-to-the-big-guys mentality. However, it was pretty awesome. The natas were super crispy and flaky, and they were served warm too. The flavour of the custard from the one on the first day was still my favourite, but I did love that I could finally get some dairy-free milk options to enjoy a cappucino.

It started raining so we decided to duck into the market for a bit of cover. Having already explored all of the food options on the ground floor, we decided to go up a level and found that they had a lovely little crafts fair winding round the mezzanine. We also went and grabbed a cheeky second breakfast since we spotted this cafe that did teeny tiny natas!

Since we'd divided the old town up by drawing a line down from city hall, we basically made that our first stop in covering the left-hand side of the city. It was a really impressive building and I loved all the architecture surrounding that whole square. Very Parisian!

The next place we were headed to was the Porto Cathedral. For an atheist, I sure do always make sure that the main place of worship is on the itinerary!

I don't always bother going inside the churches if you have to pay, I'm often just content admiring from the outside. But this is one that I'd actually say is super worth it. Yes it's pretty from the outside, but the main beauty is in the inner courtyard with all these amazing tiled walls. The arty ceilings were fantastic and there was also a tower you could climb for the most amazing views! At about 100-150 steps, it wasn't as high as the famous Clerigos tower (more on that later), but I would argue that this one was the better experience because it was more spacious, and had equally lovely views. It's weird actually, I just Googled to try and find exactly how many steps and the search results are straight up trying to gaslight me and saying there is in fact no tower in the Porto Cathedral that you can climb, and I simply must be getting confused with the Clerigos tower. As you can see, there's Ash and I at the top! So ignore Google, and go to the Porto Cathedral tower.

You can probably sense that we were very much letting ourselves and our plans be dictated by the weather. Once the sun was back out in force, we ditched any notion of going round the Bishops palace and the Saint Lawrence church. Instead, we went to find somewhere to sit and have a lovely little drink in the sun. By this point, we were yet to go down the famous Rua das Flores street so we thought we'd kill 2 birds with 1 stone and find somewhere nice there. Something I loved about Porto as a city is that it had so many nice outdoor areas and little pockets of outdoor seating. In a lot of cities, it's a choice between one big main open square, or very narrow (often shaded) tiny side streets. Porto has such an abundance of nice wide streets and small squares that nowhere ever felt too crowded or crazy busy.

We may have already tried the Francesinha but we were far from done on trying the local dishes! In fact, it seems like Porto has quite a few of them. And next up, we wanted to try the bifana; a soft toasty roll filled with thinly sliced marinated pork. The Wine Box did an incredible one, along with a few other lovely snacky bits; octopus and croquettes. Of course the wine was amazing too.

We'd obviously already been in the Mercado do Bolhão a couple of times by this point, but I'd also found a second, smaller market that I wanted to see. Mercado Ferreira Borges called to me because of the cool old iron building, but it actually also ended up having a giant terrace overlooking the gorgeous Palácio da Bolsa and surrounding garden. It was the perfect spot to sit and watch the world go by, and this passionfruit white sangria was incredible. The market inside was quite cute too although much smaller than the building itself. Again, it was more of a crafts fair with some cute gifts and jewellery bits. It was worth a visit just for the building itself in my opinion.

We finished up the day with a soak in our hot tub, knowing it was probably our last chance to properly make the most of it before the weather turned.

Ash is a proper meat lover, so while we'd had my dream meal the day before (the seafood platter), it was time for his dream meal (a steak dinner). I did a little search for some amazing steakhouses and was mega impressed by the one we went to, Cúmplice Steakhouse & Bar. I can definitely see why they have a 4.9 rating on Google! The steak was incredible, the wine glass was dreamy (mega thin stem), and I was thinking about that silky truffle mash for days afterwards. I'm not even normally the hugest mash potato lover, but that was just something else.

The next day it was time for a cheeky excursion! After booking a wine tasting excursion on my rainy day in Sicily with Sophie and finding that it worked really well, I basically repeated the same formula on this trip. It was also actually a very similar excursion day with a visit to 2 wineries and lunch included, but this one included a boat trip too! So after driving into the Douro Valley, we hopped on a boat for a little scenic trip down the river. Some of the other people were much braver than us and opted to sit outside under the cover - we played it sensible and sat inside (which they quickly followed suit with when the wind started blowing the rain under the awning).

I loved it because it was a small group tour again; only 8 people plus the guide. It meant we got to stop off at a few lovely photo stops on the way when the guide noticed there was a break in the rain. This tour was a fun one too because 3 members of our group were French, so our guide was having to work overtime to do all the commentary in both French and English. Probably a ballache for him, but great for me and my desire to get the practice in with the languages I'm learning!

Then we arrived at the first winery! They said to help ourselves to the cherries on the cherry tree and to not be shy with it; what a lovely touch. We just don't get fruit like that in England.

The tour was in a gorgeous old chateau-style building, and we pretty much did each different tasting in a different room. We started off with white wine, then moved onto rosé wine and bread and olive oil, then tried 2 different red wines with some dark chocolate to pair. We also tried an aged white Port which is probably the best Port I've had! They also had some serious money-maker items on display, including an absolutely giant bottle of wine, and some super old Ports dating back as far as 1939. They said they have a 1908 one that they've still yet to bottle; they'll just keep aging it until they're in need of some cash.

The wineries were super different and this one was definitely all about the food. So we didn't get to the vines, but we did get to see the kitchen, which was really cool because they still used the original old kitchen. Everything was smoked and cooked over flames, which gave the meat the most amazing flavour. We were seated in this almost wedding-like gazebo, and shared some starters, had loads of BBQ meats for main, and then finished up with a soaked orange cake for dessert. The wine this time felt less like a tasting or even a pairing, and more of a pouring. They made it very clear that the wine would just keep coming so enjoy it. We also sampled a couple of lovely Ports, and they even gave us a few extra to apologise for a very loud rowdy group nearby. I'd trade noise for extra alcohol any day of the week!

For the last night of our holiday, we went for a lovely cosy dinner at a spot I'd had saved since the day we arrived. ENCAIXADOS felt like classic Portuguese food, and we had the most amazing piri piri chicken. So amazing that we ordered another portion before we'd even finished the first.

It was our last day in Porto and I'd dressed to match the city in blue and white tile print! Our last morning signalled that it was our last chance to find the perfect pastel de nata and do you know what? We managed it. Nata sweet nata was hands down the best. Crispy, flaky, creamy, served warm. Plus the cafe itself was really cute.

Our plan for the morning was to go and climb the 240 steps up the Clerigos tower. However, we didn't realise that you needed a timed slot which were every hour on the hour, so we booked onto the next one and then had half an hour to kill. We wandered down to the Parque das Virtudes to admire the views, and spotted some cute churches, statues and museum buildings on the way.

We'd made the decision early on in the trip that we weren't bothered about going to the Livraria Lello (a beautiful, historic bookshop). It comes up in every 'must-do' list for Porto but a lot of them don't say that you have to book a timeslot, and even with a booked timeslot you have to wait for atleast an hour but sometimes 2 or 3. All to just go inside, take a photo, and leave (probably without actually buying any books). I hate anything that's purely for the photo opp. Don't get me wrong, I love taking gazillions of beautiful holiday photos. But you won't catch me queuing up, just to take a photo. It's why Santorini doesn't appeal as a destination! We're glad we skipped the bookstore but in skipping that we'd accidentally skipped the whole surrounding area, so we were glad we ended up with extra time to wander because it meant we saw the university, the Carmo church, and the Leões fountain.

Then we made it into the tower! It actually worked quite well buying the ticket at a mid-slot point and then coming back, because it meant we got to skip past the giant queue of people waiting and just go straight in. That was pretty much where the smooth part of the experience began and ended though. This tower offered beautiful views of the city for sure. But it felt like it was a tourist attraction that didn't want to be a tourist attraction. The staircase was SO narrow and there was only one, meaning that the traffic of people was in 2 directions. What goes up must come down! It was very cramped passing people, and some poor souls were optimistically trying to let everyone past, clearly not realising that the flow of traffic was never going to end. The disappointing bit though was at the top. The top viewing platform was SO small and didn't really go all the way round, so you ended up in a traffic jam at the top - you couldn't get out onto the platform because people couldn't get past you to come back down. I'm glad we did it but my honest recommendation is to skip this one and just do the tower at the Porto Cathedral instead. You know, the one that "doesn't exist".

We just had time for one last meal before it was time to come home again. Ash didn't feel like he could leave without one more Francesinha, while I decided to try and tick off another local dish, Bacalhau à Brás. Hopefully through my extremely gifted copywriting and storytelling, you can understand why Porto has shot to the top of my list in terms of favourite cities I've been to. It's beautiful, there's loads to do, they have amazing food, the wine is simply divine, and I love the different identities of the different districts and neighbourhoods. Me and Ash had such a fantastic holiday, and while I think we still would've had just as much of an amazing time if the weather had been as bad as originally forecast, I'm SO glad we got away with it and had plenty of beautiful sunshine. You know what they say, the sun shines on the righteous.