Porto

Porto is yet another UNESCO site, tracing its origin to 300BC.

We left our hotel on the outskirts of Porto and climbed into our bus. Our first stop was to pick up our guide, Ana, who will be with us for the 5 days we will be in Portugual. Our driver, Robert took us on a bus tour of Porto with Ana describing the sights.

The old walls

The Christmas tree of New Zealand, Matarosa.

This bridge over the river, Ponte Dom Luis 1, was built by a friend of Eiffel, Teophile Seyrig between 1881 and 1886.

 

Our first stop was the cathedral which, comparatively speaking, is quite small and not particularly impressive.

 

The altar is made of silver and is in great need of cleaning, but the cost is astronomical and so it remains tarnished.

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Our next stop was the old build of the Stock Exchange (Bolsa de Porto), a magnificent building, later the Chamber of Commerce.

Here we saw the office that Gustav Eiffel used when he was building bridges in Porto

The once iconic Majestic cafe, still stands in the square outside the Bourse, but sadly is no longer noteable, unless you are a Macdonald's fan.

We moved on to the station, not to board a train, but to admire the architecture. The entrance hall has many tiled murals in the entrance hall.

As we had seen in Lisbon last year, many buildings in Portugual are decorated in the same style.

Our final appointment of the day was a tour of a port celler. We had a tour of the barrels full of maturing port

This was followed by a tasting of both white and red port.

As we left Porto, we passed the bridge which was designed by Eiffel himself in 1843, the Ponte D. Maria.

We will be based in one hotel for the next four nights, so at last we could unpack

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted with Blogsy