Well, it’s been <mumble, mumble> months since our Portugal trip (long enough that I’ve been on a few other trips since!), so I figured I should FINALLY wrap it up with another post about our last day in Porto. Even though this trip was only a week long, I think as we’ve gotten older, we’ve gotten more ready to go home at the end of any trip (maybe the rain on this trip made us feel that even more this time), so this final day was a bit of a low-key one, but we did still enjoy it. And, once again, the weather played nice with us during the day, which we needed since we booked another food tour! Even though we’d already done one in Lisbon and figured there may be some overlap in the foods we’d eat in both cities, because we like to eat AND walk, food tours are always a good idea for us. 🙂

It should come as no surprise that we once again used Viator to book this tour, should it? In all the years we’ve used them for day trips, food tours, and other travel-related stuff, they’ve always come through. Of course, there was the little kerfuffle we just had with our Pena Palace day trip, but that was down to the tour operator having to deal with an unexpected situation, so I can’t be mad at Viator (or the rain that plagued that trip!). Of course, I have to say that we also had a bit of an issue with this food tour. Oops! And actually, it was kind of a similar problem, in that we were at the right place at the right time, but no one was there to meet us. Thankfully, our group was actually there and I had even seen our guide (which I knew based on the shirt he was wearing, which had the name of the tour company on it), but they were in a separate room in the building we met at, so we were left twiddling our thumbs until a nice man who worked in the building noticed us and thought we might be part of that group, so he took us back to the room and connected us with the guide. Of course, he was also confused because he had only done a headcount of the group rather than checking everyone’s name and it turned out we were on his list and two other people who were there were NOT on his list, so while the headcount balanced out to the NUMBER of people he was expecting, he didn’t have an accurate list of WHICH people were actually supposed to be there. It was a little awkward for us as they had already started with the tour, so it felt like we were “interrupting,” but our guide called his company and confirmed we were supposed to be there and, as it turned out, so were the two people who were already there, but weren’t on his list. So, it all got sorted out pretty quickly, thankfully!

As for the food tour, it was another enjoyable one! While we were right about there being some overlap in the food we ate, it was all still tasty and we enjoyed the company. Our guide wasn’t quite as good this time, maybe because I was low-key annoyed with him for not getting a proper headcount of the group, but he still had some good info to share and was clearly very passionate about his country, which is important for any tour guide.

As with our tour in Lisbon, here’s a rundown of what we ate and where, followed by photos and more info:

• Tea and egg tarts (yep, more of those!) at C’alma Coffee Room. This was our meeting place, but it was also where we got our first “taste” (see what I did there?) of this tour. Since we’d already had egg tarts in Lisbon, we knew what to expect and, based on our limited experience with them, they delivered on that expectation! We also used our time here to learn more about Porto from our guide (whose name I’m totally forgetting now!), which is always a really enjoyable part of these tours. I mean, food is good and all, but I love learning more about the places I’m visiting, too. 🙂
• A walk down Rua Santa Catarina and a brief stop in the Café Majestic. We didn’t actually eat anything here, but this is a historical site and is always pretty busy, so it was fun to stop in and see the Art Nouveau architecture. It originally opened in 1921, so it’s a nice piece of local history!
• Bolinhos de bacalhau (codfish cakes) and green wine at Confeitaria Império. Okay, so maybe this food tour was more duplicative of Lisbon’s than I thought because both the food here and the food at the start were also on our tour there. But hey, it was still tasty! And we were having nice conversations with our fellow travelers, too.
• A selection of meats and cheeses at Queijaria Amaral. Although not fancy in the slightest (none of the stops were), we really enjoyed the goodies here. And our nice conversations continued with a younger couple from the US, who were also in Porto for the first time.
• Remember the bifana we had in Lisbon? We tried more of it at our next stop in Porto, Sol e Sombra. This place felt very much like a mom-and-pop place in any town or city in the US, so it had a neat, lived-in vibe. The bifana was tasty, though I don’t recall that it was any different from what we had in Lisbon.
• Port wine in Mercado do Bolhão. Our last stop was in this nice, newer food market that was full of lots of stalls and vendors selling food, drink, flowers, and more. We had actually strolled by it earlier in the day when we were walking around before the food tour started, so it was nice to explore it more fully. We stopped at a family-owned stall to try a few different varieties of port wine, none of which were to my personal liking (I’m not a wine drinker, so I’m the wrong person to judge such things). But it was a nice way to end the tour as we got to walk around to see more of the vendors afterwards.

That covers the “details” of the tour, so let’s look at the visuals now, shall we?

A couple of photos from our walk to C’alma on our way to the food tour.

These are actually from Rua Santa Catarina, as mentioned above. Since we still had more time to kill when we arrived at C’alma, we wandered down the famous street to take in some sights. The church with all the blue tiles is the Chapel of Santa Catarina, which dates back to the late 1700s (though the blue tiles weren’t added until 1929).

A photo from the entrance to C’alma and another inside it.

We were sitting in a room in the same building as C’alma, tucked away at the back. In the left photo, our guide is on the phone with the tour company to clear up the attendee issues. On the right, he’s sorted that out and is educating us on the history of Porto. The couple in the left side were visiting from Germany, but the husband had spent a lot of time in the US because he was really into bluegrass music. He said not many German people are even aware of it!

The line to get into Café Majestic (left) along with a view of the interior (right) as we popped in. Again, we didn’t stop in or get any food here, but it was nice to see.

Next stop, meats and cheeses at Queijaria Amaral. And then more history/education from our guide once we sat down.

If that tube TV at Sol e Sombra doesn’t shout “old school” to you, I don’t know what does!

I didn’t mention this above, but we did walk by Manteigaria to watch egg tarts being made.

The last few photos from this tour, which was all about port wine. I don’t think I’ll ever have a taste for it (or any wine, for that matter), but as I said above, it was a nice way to end the day.

And that puts a bow on our Porto food tour. As compared to the Lisbon one, it didn’t feel as robust in terms of the food, though I may at least partially feel that way because the food was mostly a repeat of what we had there. It was also more expensive ($160 for the two of us vs. $125 in Lisbon). Although the current pricing directly through Blue Dragon looks to be about the same, keep an eye out when you’re planning your own Porto trip to see if you can snag a better deal. Honestly though, whether it’s this food tour or another one, I think you’ll enjoy walking (and eating!) your way through this nice city.

As if we hadn’t eaten enough (hey, it wasn’t actually THAT much food, plus we did a lot of walking), we made one more food stop on our way back to the hotel, this time at Leitaria da Quinta do Paço. They had some tasty-looking eclairs and it would have been rude to not buy one, so we did. 🙂

Yum!

The rain that held off throughout the day didn’t continue to hold off and we started getting some drizzles on our walk back to the hotel. Thankfully, we were prepared with umbrellas, so we didn’t get soaked.

Two final dark and drizzly photos on the walk back to the hotel.

We had to be out the door around 6 AM for our ride to the airport the next morning, so it was an early night for us, but the rain neither soaked us while getting our luggage into the car nor prevented our flight from leaving on time. In fact, we got to the airport early enough that check-in wasn’t even available yet, but I’d rather be safe and sound at the airport than worried about traffic and/or weather delaying us on the way there.

Overall, we had a nice time in Portugal! While the rain was a bummer, there’s nothing anyone can do to control the weather, so you just have to roll with it. Both Lisbon and Porto were fun, but I appreciated the vibe of Porto more, maybe because it was smaller and more quaint (though it had MORE than its fair share of hills and steps!). Definitely consider adding this country to your travel itinerary!