Porto
After visiting Portugal in February and enjoying it, I decided to come back and visit Portugal’s second biggest city: Porto.
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Clerigos Tower
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Igreja do Carmo
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Dom Luís I Bridge
The metro runs on the top level of the bridge.
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Metro on the bridge
While kids jump off the lower level, which is 15m high. That’s high.
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jump jump jump
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long drop
Porto is full of hills, stairs and bridges.
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Levels
The Clerigos Tower is one of the symbols of Porto visible throughout the city.
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City
Unfortunately, the national flag is rarely seen in Portugal. And I haven’t seend the city flag at all. Crosses are abundant, which is great, but why no flags?
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Church
Many buildings are decorated with traditional colourful tiles. This is exactly what I love about Europe.
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Colourful houses
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More tiles
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Stack
Some tiles have beautiful art.
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Art
Some buildings are shabby or weird, but I appreciate them no less.
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Semi-cylinder
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A drop of pink
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Old neon sign
An interesting and bizzare thing is the fancy Imperial McDonald’s.
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Imperial McDonald's
A very nice old building with a peacock. It’s a department store.
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"Novelties. Armazéns Cunhas. We sell cheaper".
By the way, there’s a park with all sorts of birds, including peacocks.
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Peacock
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Peacock showing off
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Palm trees
The city center of Porto is full of mysterious poles. It turns out, they are used for deformation monitoring while a new metro line is constructed.
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Deformation monitoring device
And right there by the metro a cat is panhandling. It plans to buy fishes.
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Panhandling cat
The metro in Porto is actually a tram (like in Antalya) and it’s great. It runs to the airport. Unlike in many European cities, like Athens or Paris, the fare to the airport isn’t overpriced and costs like any other metro ticket, like in Moscow or Istanbul. But unfortunately, the ticket price depends on the number of zones travelled (starting from €1,40), which should be calculated in advance while buying the ticket, making things more complicated.
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Metro of Porto
One of the places the metro can take you is the beach in Matosinhos.
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Matosinhos beach
It’s situated on the outskirts of Porto and has all the properties of a big cities outskirts: a factory with smokestacks and dull suburbs.
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Porto outskirts
But I came here for the beach. The ocean is refreshing.
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Refreshing
On one of the nights, I enjoyed the sunset at the Virtudes Park with other travellers, discussing why Porto is better than Lisbon.
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Virtudes Park