Drinking Port in Porto

Yesterday after walking around town for about an hour we realized how utterly cool the city of Porto is, and we told the hostel we were staying another night.  It turned out to be a great decision.  Here's a little glimpse of our time here in Porto:

This was apparently voted one of the most beautiful bookstores in the world.  Who would've thought that they would have a contest for such a thing?  Either way, a fun fact: this is the staircase that inspired JK Rowling when she was writing Harry Potter  - did you know that she lived here in Porto? Yes she did, folks.  And I'll say that the bookstore does in fact have some very Hogwarts-ish features to it.

Lunch. Typical Porto food of francezhina, which is a sandwich with steak, sausage and ham, topped with melted cheese and slathered in some sort of unidentifiable sauce that was downright delicious.  Mine was also topped with a fried egg.  This is non-vegan food at its finest, friends.

Porto has hilly cobblestone streets, and there are lots of old-fashioned tram cars ready to pick up the slack when your thigh muscles finally give out.

Also, we are in Porto, so clearly we needed to do some port-tasting, otherwise my parents the wine lovers would have disowned me.  We took a tour of the last wholly Portuguese-owned wine cellar, and drank lots of different kinds of port.  In the end they all tasted like...port.

Porto.  Most underrated travel city in Europe?  If you're planning on checking out the Iberian peninsula anytime soon, take a stop in.  I don't think you'll be sorry at all.

Tomorrow we'll start the trek homeward, and we'll be stopping in to see our friends in Extremadura (remember them?), which I'm super excited about.  Won't have any internet, so I'm signing off until next Monday. Until then, drink some port and think of me.