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Perfectly peaceful Porto…

I’ve been to Porto a few times before, so this trip I simply wanted to chill out and enjoy the various neighbourhoods of Porto. Nevertheless, there was one thing on my list that I simply had to see: The Lello & Irmão Bookstore! Seeing as though I’m a huge Harry Potter fan, I just had to see it. BOY WAS IT AWESOME! The only thing was that there were too many people in here, this was all the time… Our Airbnb was close by, so we’d always have to go past the book store when going into town, we’d peek inside to see if it was full, sometimes we wouldn’t even have to peek given the huge line out front… In any case, it was still awesome – you should definitely check it out!

We hung out along the river Douro quite alot, and the night shots are taken on the city side of the river. On one of the days that we were just walking around, we crossed the Ponte Luis I bridge and there was a young man preparing to jump off the bridge and into the water. He was gathering a crowd before doing so…. he was fine. We then crossed the bridge and saw a whole bunch of people jumping into the water (disclaimer it was boiling hot!!). There was even a group of men dressed up in weird outfits, continuously jumping into the water – it was actually quite funny!

We stayed in an Airbnb on Rua de Cedofeita, our hosts were really nice and the apartment itself was bright and spacious. Great location as it was where the locals mainly lived, so there was also local bakeries and grocery stores. The end of the street towards the city was pedestrianised and was a shopping street.

In terms of food, we found amazing restaurants on Rua das Taipas. The first one we discovered was called Tia Orlanda, which was food from Mozambique. The staff were amazing and the restaurant was VERY FULL! it seemed as though alot of people had booked prior to coming for dinner, we were lucky that there was one table for two. The food was simply amazing, plus it was cheap! The second place we discovered was at the bottom of the street (I can’t recall the name) but we had fish and rice – was amazing! We sat at the back, outside, where we had a view of Porto – truly amazing! I would definitely recommend exploring this street as the restaurants were cheap yet also really good!

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Tile (Azulejos) painting in Lisbon

When you’re in Lisbon, the first thing that strikes you is the tiles – they’re EVERYWHERE! they are beautifully painted and cover the facade of apartments in the city. The most common colours I saw were the blue and white ones with geometrical patterns, so so nice!

So my friend who is a local, booked us in to a tile painting class (teacher’s details are below) or Azulejos as the Portuguese would say… The class only cost 15EU where we painted two tiles. She had drawn the pattern on with lead pencil and she demonstrated how we should paint and how dark each section should be. It was really nice in that it was only us three and the teacher. Her English was good enough and she had even researched the correct English words to use – which impressed me, it showed that she cared…

In the end, we all painted a village woman and for my second one I chose to paint a yacht (I love boats!). She had to put them into the kiln so we didn’t get a chance to get them back as we were leaving the next day. However, the teacher dropped them off to my friends house and has them safely (soon to be picked up on another trip to Portugal…). I filmed a bit when the teacher was instructing/demonstrating (apologies for the low light…) and I’ve inserted this video below.

I definitely DEFINITELY recommend attending a tile painting workshop! It’s not difficult and it’s alot of fun – plus it’s actually relaxing. Plus it’s a cultural thing – so go for it!

Azulejos Artisticos

Marie Caroline Vidal

mariecarolinevidal@hotmail.com

No: 934 144 520

Facebook: Workshop-de-Azulejos

 

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