Bienvenidos a Porto
Bom dia para todos!
How is your summer lovelies? Where are you planning to travel? What is your dream destination? Who are you planning to travel with?
As I told you before, since I’ve started this year, I planned to visit a new destination each month and to make it as memorable as possible. In June, one of my besties aka Steph, made us a fab surprise and organized a trip to Porto for her birthday. What an awesome bestie, right? ♥️
We made a veritable tradition with our traveling squad.
In the blink of an eye we packed our stuff and called for a cab to take the princesses to the airport for an amazing weekend next to the ocean. We made a veritable tradition with our traveling squad. I have to admit that there’s no better way to travel than traveling with your best friends. It’s probably the 5th time when we’re traveling together and it seems that we’re really soul mates. I mean, who would ever have the patience to take thousands of photos and also the creativity and talent to satisfy my sophisticated tastes. But I’m LUCKY! I found my girls!
Porto is a great destination to travel with your friends or lover. Its latin vibes, their music, the salty ocean breeze, the warm and friendly locals, the colorful mixture of architecture and, the most important, their heavenly tasty food and wines.
This is the place where you will endlessly fall in love…with your lover, with your life or with yourself.
São Bento Station
This is the place where you will always fall in love again…with your lover, with your life or with yourself. This place is surrounded by positive vibes and even if it’s windy or cloudy, it still feels like a beautiful sunny day. It’s not the most luxuriant or glamorous city I’ve seen, but it is genuine…so genuine that you can see their tradition in every little aspect of the city.
In Porto, you can see the discrepancy between sumptuous building like the Palácio da Bolsa (Stock Exchange Palace) or the Church of São Francisco, and the poverty of the people who live in fragile houses, looking mostly like ruins. Despite this, I really admire how those people enjoy their daily life. They all seemed to be so happy, positive and warm hearted. How can you not love Porto?
As a tourist in Porto I recommend not to miss the following attractions:
- Church of São Francisco is the most extraordinary church interior in Porto and unquestionably one of the most fabulously opulent in all of Europe.
João de Castilho designed the chapel of São João Baptista, but only in the 18th-century the main works were carried out, resulting in this magnificent Baroque church, which appears to be covered in gold, due to the abundance of gilt-edged woodcarvings.
The woodcarvings inside the church include the notable altarpiece of the main chapel, dedicated to the Tree of Jessé, reformulated between 1718 and 1721 by Filipe da Silva and António Gomes.
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- Clerigos Tower
The monumental tower of the Cleringos church, located at the back of the building, was only built between 1754 and 1763. The baroque decoration here also shows influence from the Roman Baroque, while the whole design was inspired by Tuscan campaniles. The tower is 75.6 metres high, dominating the city. There are 240 steps to be climbed to reach the top of its six floors. This great structure has become the symbol of the city.
- The Cathedral
The cathedral is flanked by two square towers, each supported with two buttresses and crowned with a cupola. The façade lacks decoration and is rather architecturally heterogeneous. It shows a Baroque porch and a beautiful Romanesque rose window under a crenellated arch, giving the impression of a fortified church.
- Crystal Palace Gardens
Porto’s Palacio de Cristal, or Crystal palace, was once home to Portugal’s very own version of Britain’s London-based construction of the same name. Like the original Crystal Palace, the Porto version did not survive, although it lasted longer than its counterpart, until 1956, when it was replaced by the current construction. Today a huge domed pavilion.
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- The Atlantic
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Holla summer ☀️ #vamosalaplaya // #globetrotter • #lastminutecouture #luanacodreanu
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After so much visiting, a fabulous glass of green wine (Vinho Verde) and tapas is a well deserved blessing! You can find them all over the city, but I recommend you the following places:
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- Quinta das Escomoeiros a very beautiful, welcoming and tasty winery
- Quinta Aveleda, an historic and famous large winery with super beautiful gardens, house and tasty wine
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For a complex description of my Porto experience, don’t miss all the posts about PORTO on my Instagram and YouTube channels:
