Porto

After visiting Portugal in February and enjoying it, I decided to come back and visit Portugal’s second biggest city: Porto.

Clerigos Tower

Igreja do Carmo

Dom Luís I Bridge

The metro runs on the top level of the bridge.

Metro on the bridge

While kids jump off the lower level, which is 15m high. That’s high.

jump jump jump

long drop

Porto is full of hills, stairs and bridges.

Levels

The Clerigos Tower is one of the symbols of Porto visible throughout the city.

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?

Church

Many buildings are decorated with traditional colourful tiles. This is exactly what I love about Europe.

Colourful houses

More tiles

Stack

Some tiles have beautiful art.

Art

Some buildings are shabby or weird, but I appreciate them no less.

Semi-cylinder

A drop of pink

Old neon sign

An interesting and bizzare thing is the fancy Imperial McDonald’s.

Imperial McDonald's

A very nice old building with a peacock. It’s a department store.

"Novelties. Armazéns Cunhas. We sell cheaper".

By the way, there’s a park with all sorts of birds, including peacocks.

Peacock

Peacock showing off

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.

Deformation monitoring device

And right there by the metro a cat is panhandling. It plans to buy fishes.

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.