Portugal - Day 6
September 13, 2025: Today we had to say goodbye to Porto. We fell in love with this city and would recommend visiting to anyone interested in Portugal. I will be interested to see if I prefer Porto to Lisbon after our 10 days there. Lisbon had always been the city we had on our bucket list, but Porto turned out to be a gem. As in Ireland, we found the people to be so friendly. There is so much history here and the architecture is has such charm. I love all of the tiles on the building in different color, textures and some with very intricate paintings. For someone who loves art, I have really enjoyed just looking at everything as I have walked through the city. Transportation has been easy to navigate and the only thing we sometimes struggled with that was not an issue in Ireland is the language. When the country you are visiting speaks another language and English is their second language, it is more of a challenge to read signs or ask for directions or things you are trying to buy. Jimm is pretty good at Spanish though and the languages are very similar so we have been able to get by pretty well.
I scheduled a Pastel de Nada cooking class for 10:00-12:30PM today. We had to check out of our flat at 11:00AM anyway and our train didn’t leave until 1:05PM, so it was perfect. They only had one spot open, which I took and Jimm was left to wander about and grab lunch while I was in class. It turned out well that they had only one spot left because it was all women in the class! There was a group of seven women from Australia and England who were friends, most of them teachers, and were all traveling together celebrating a 60th birthday. They were a hoot. They travel all over the world together and it was so fun to chat with them and hear their stories. Our instructor Ana was hilarious and she made the class both fun and informative. She was from Brazil and had originally gone to school to be a lawyer and then changed and went to culinary school instead. She loves what she does and it really shows. We worked together to make the Pastel de Nada sharing the different steps it takes to make this delicious Portuguese favorite. In the end, they turned out really good and we each had one and were able to take a couple with us.
I met back up with Jimm and we headed to the São Bento train station, which was less than 5 minutes away, to wait for our train. We took the first train to Porto Campanha station and then switched to the Alfa Pendular train from there to Lisbon. It is a 2-1/2 hour train ride between the cities. Once we arrived at Santa Apolonia Station, we just had to take the underground metro two stops to Baixa-Chiado where our next apartment was located. Luckily it was a short walk downhill, because wow the streets are steep here! We had great instructions for self check-in and so were quickly inside and settling in. We definitely don’t have as luxurious of accommodations as our last place and we don’t have a view, but it’s clean, well equipped and nicely decorated. It will work great for the 10 days we have to explore the city. The location will be perfect.
We did a walk-about to get our bearings, picked up some groceries and our Lisboa Cards (used for museums and transportation) and dropped everything back at our apartment before starting some laundry and heading out for dinner. Our hosts had recommended an Asian noodle restaurant, so we decided to give it a try. It was a small little place but the food was good, well priced and we had a great bottle of Vinho Verde. I just love that wine! So crisp and refreshing. We both got the pad thai and some mini bao. There is a gelato shop right across the street from our apartment so of course I had to stop there on the way back to grab a small cone. You can see from the picture above they make a rose out of the gelato on the cone. So adorable! That was it for the day! We found out that due to the funicular accident a few weeks ago, they are all shut down as well as the famous Santa Justa Lift for safety reviews, so we will not be able to see those while we are here.