Sadly, our first breakfast in Porto was restricted to indoors. Mother nature decided that some rain was appropriate, and wow, can it rain here!
We enjoyed a slow breakfast, multiple (adequate) coffee then grabbed our rain gear and headed out as the rain died down. We had a port tour booked for 3:00 pm, but decided to just wander town with no plan.
There are old buildings… lots of them! Stacked up it seems 🙂
And churches? Perhaps a few. We don’t like to pay for churches unless they are spectacular, but here’s a few free ones, and even some of those are amazing. Baroque. I always thought that meant “broke”… but not with all the gold spread through those facilities!
We stumbled into a shop that had exhibits and an artist doing Portugese Filligree. Wow, the detail is absolutely stunning! Some of the nicer pieces were for sale @ 20-30,000 Euros!
Need a new rug? This shop was amazing. They are a Portugese style, which isn’t a normal knotted rug, these are embroidered! And of course, the prices reflect the amount of work that go into an embrodery of that scale!
Our port tour was to 3 smaller port houses. Trying to break into a long established industry. Some are making wine as well. Lots of education and a wee bit of drinking. Lots of socializing with the other people on our tour. It was a fun couple of hours! Two of the 3 port houses are below. I’m not sure what the third one was. Quevedo had some very nice product!
A full day, followed by a very delicious dinner at a small local resturant buying a bottle of port, and back to the hotel and a great nights sleep!
April 30, 2026
Having enjoyed Taylor Fladgate port in Canada, I wanted to tour their facilities. I had read they have a self guided tour through their facilities followed by a port tasting! That was our plan for the afternoon.
What did we find on our tour?
Blue Tiles 🙂 Various churches and the train station was completely adorned in the blue tiles depciting “real life”. Adele has more photos of the train station as I was busy buying tickets for the next day (which turned out was a holiday and insanely busy on the trains!)
Lots of old buildings for some strange reason!
And of course, Taylor Fladgate!
The audio tour was excellent, though started to drag on towards the end, in anticipation of actually tasting some! 🙂
It was very interesting to learn climate change is impacting the port/wine industry here, and the various approaches to reducing the impact on the environment, from reducing water usage to new and innovative terracing techniques to reduce erosion and control water better.
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