Today we did a walking tour with Porto walkers with Fiel. Once again, we were very lucky to have an extremely knowledgeable guide. He took us around Eastern city. We started off at the Square with City Hall. It’s a very large square in the building surrounding it are quite ornate within headed south towards the river along the way we went into a McDonald’s which had gone out of business in the 1990s.
It used to be an art deco café Now it’s one of the fanciest McDonald’s we’ve ever seen . We went into the train station which has 20,000 handpainted tiles that were done 100 years ago.
Two parallel walls were covered with cloth to protect them from the drilling outside the panels all told stories, and at the very top there was a mural that went around, showing the history of transportation it was a very beautiful train station, we walked down by the river which is lined with beautiful outdoor cafés and many outdoor market stalls. We walked halfway across the bridge and field took us a bit about the bridges and the boats that bring the port wine out of Porto. Once again, we learned the bittersweet truth of tourism to Portugal. Tourism only became popular within the last 10 years, and that has provided many jobs for many of the citizens , the influx of foreigners into the country though has made the cost of housing rise and locals can often not afford it. Our guide for example has been a tour guide for the past 10 years although he went to school for physics. He also knew three different languages, Portuguese, French, and English, and a little bit of Spanish. After our walk we walked up flower Street, which is a shopping street lined with cafés and boutiques, we ate at tapas 58 which was absolutely excellent. To drink we each had 2 Shandies. And then our different tapas dishes included calamari, olives, kettle chips, a mushroom and chicken, puff pastry, and a mixed salad. All of that was €38 , there was a lot to eat and it was all very good .
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