Portuguese Voyage - Stop 1: Porto (Day 1)

After collecting many many maps from various cities over the years, I have finally decided to write a blog. Share my travels with netizens and hopefully it may serve as a guide for your future travels.

Why did I decide to start a travel blog, you may ask. Well this was fuelled by my mother, "Why can't you share your travels??" she nagged one day... my reply, "Why can't you let me be!" Funny thing is I had the idea to blog about my trip to Portugal, and with her nagging in the background... I thought let's just do it... Hence, you are now reading this...

You may also be wondering why is the title of my blog such. Well after almost 29 years of living in this world (not yet, few months away!!),  I want a partner who shares the same passion in travelling and exploring as I do! Who will fly away with me and at the same time will root me down when needed.. just as I would. Click here to apply.. jokes!

Ok, I have gone way off tangent! Back to my very first post: My first stop in exploring Portugal....PORTO! 

Ponte D. Luis I

Praca de Ribeira

Clerigos Tower

View of Porto from outside the railway station

Railway art

View of Porto

My thoughts on Porto: it is a scenic beautiful city, history rich .. but I found it a bit too cramped up... I need my space :S 

Beautiful, nevertheless & the food - delectable! 

The place I stayed was located in an amazing location, the Virtudes area. It was central enough, walking distance to most places within historical Porto, but far enough to find local treasures (restaurants)! and the view from my bedroom is the scenic Rio Duoro.

On my first night, I had dinner at O Caracas. It is run by a pair of twin sisters and their mother. The mother is the local chef of the restaurant. There is no set menu. Each night the dishes change based on what's fresh in the market - and there is always 1 fish dish and 1 meat dish. The dishes are local traditional Porto recipes. On that night, the options were cod (bacalhau) fish balls and venison.

As I LOVE cod - the obvious choice was the bacalhau.

OMG! The food - sublime!! It tasted like home-cooked food and it was so tasty and fulfilling!! I wanted to hug the 'mother'!! The portion....HUGE! (I later found out that ordering for 1, can actually feed 2!) And the price I paid for my meal, 1 bowl of vegetable soup and a glass of wine... less than 10 Euros!

A few things I learnt from my first dinner experience and more:
1) The Portuguese eat loads of rice! It was picked up from the countries they conquered way back then (15th/16th century) - Malaysia (or Malacca to be exact) being one of them!
2) They also adopted tea and cinnamon!
3) They have amazing coffee, wine, and cheese - SO IMPORTANT!
4) Huge portions (as mentioned above)
5) There is hardly any vegetables :( - I missed my veg a lot during this trip!
6) However, most of them people are slim - possibly due to the uphills they have to go through every day (every city I went to in Portugal is so hilly! hardly any flat land)

See... that's why I love travelling... you learn new things every day which you can bring home with you (just as the Portuguese did.. lol).

That's a wrap of my first evening in Porto... as for the rest of my Porto trip..to be continued...


P.S If you do want to ask me any questions or leave comments.. please fill in the comment box below :)