Porto Travel Post - My Local Guide!
My first travel post! Don't worry I've got plenty of experience if you've seen my insta highlights from last year. If you like culture this maybe ain't for you... if you like local haunts then OLÁ!
Olá amigos!
This time last week I was in sunny (oh, so sunny!) Porto, our first break outside of the UK this year and MY GOD I can tell you it was good to feel some sun on your face! Even if it was just for four days.
I do love a European mini break for a long weekend, if we had better weather here I would be all for more UK escapes… but we came back to a hail storm last Tuesday, so there you have it. Bloody typical UK spring weather!
We did plan to go to Porto over the long Easter weekend for my birthday, but flights were over double the price (of course). And actually I’m so glad we didn’t now, as the glorious sunshiney weeks Portugal had been having turned to almost two weeks of torrential rain, storms and the same tropical temps as us here in ole Blighty.
But just a few days before we left (the Friday before last) the forecast transformed to weeks of +25 degrees and bright sunshine. GET IN! I could pretend to B cultural but the main reason I wanted a little trip away was for warmth and cheap vino.
I know Porto delivers on both these fronts as we’ve been before, only once, five years ago, the day after we got engaged. So I have fond memories of this little sunny city, probably as I was high on love, life, and yes plenty of cheap wine! Seriously, you can get a big glass for €3! And it is decent.
Another problem with the UK these days, aside from this freezing spring, THE PRICE! (I do keep questioning why we still choose to live here).
Everything is just so much more expensive and you do feel it now. It’s not unusual for a beer and a wine to be £15 in a standard London pub and don’t get me started on the £17 margarita’s at the weekend (yes it was Chelsea, but still, I could buy a whole bottle of decent(ish) tequila for the price of two!)…
Anyway, lets begin! I’ll tell you where we stayed, what we did, where we ate, drank, wandered and shopped (a little). Oh, and what I wore!
Like I said we’ve been to Porto once before, so I did have a reference point, which was basically to stay near our favourite locals bar we found last time - this is how I operate, I go off local finds rather than landmarks. I hate staying anywhere ‘touristy’ it’s like staying in Covent Garden to me. I rarely even go there having lived in London 13 years.
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