Even though we are staying in the heart of Porto, with a massive amount of construction around us, the night was actually very quiet. Waking up, we planned to walk down to the Douro River.

There are six bridges to the other side, but we chose the nearest to us which is the Ponte Louis I. This is a metal bridge that you can either take by foot or by train. It was constructed in 1881 and is about 385 metres above the river itself. Safe to say that Teresa took a bit of convincing to walk across!

The views walking its 172 metre length are very breathtaking, but only Michele was able to look and take photos, as Teresa was just focused on making it to other side alive (she peeked now and again), it is pretty bloody high and even Michele had trouble looking over the very edge.

There seems to be a large amount of abandoned old resident buildings wherever we walked. Reading up, it appears that one in five buildings in the main Porto city is abandoned and derelict, and it seems to be that they blame the growing centralised business in Lisbon.

Once we were (safely) on the other side we took in the view and quickly realised that there was not much else to do, so we made our way back across (again without incident).

The restaurant that our reception had recommended was called Tapabento, and didn’t open until midday (along with quite a few other places in Europe as we have noticed) so we had about half an hour to kill. We walked up and down the main street and then stopped for a coffee and port at one of the patisseries.

Tapabento is attached to the main regional & international train station, Sao Bento, which is right next to our accommodation and is a sight to behold in itself. Very ornate with artwork and tiles that tell the history of the area.

We worried that the proximity of the restaurant to the train station may take away from its ambience, but we were not disappointed. The food was delicious and the wait staff were so friendly. This place had a bit of an Asian twist, Teresa had the creamy vegetable soup and some oxtail dumplings. Michele had wild tuna tataki. This was accompanied with some green wine. Michele had read a few reviews on this place already, so when they recommended the peanut ice cream foam dessert she did not hesitate to indulge. It was a flavour and texture sensation! Of course washed down with some tawny port.

We walked around a little more and tried to explore some more of the city. There are cranes, scaffolding and construction literally everywhere, even to the point that there is a street that is being staffed consistently by policemen to control traffic. Walking down the main street again we stumbled across a lovely little cafe that did port and chocolate pairing and realised that we had wanted to do a port tasting in Porto, so why not pair it with chocolate?

The flavours complemented each other very well and we enjoyed our little tasting.

We stopped by the supermarket on the way back to our apartment and then settled in for the afternoon. Tomorrow we fly to Spain. Boa noite!