Skip to main content

Day 5: Porto is Tiny

 

View across the river

Today started like usual with us getting up at 7:00 AM and getting breakfast.  The breakfast at this hotel, in my opinion, isn’t as good as the breakfast in the last hotel.  Also, the air condition in our room basically sucks, when I set to 18C I expect to be cold not lukewarm.    

We started with a walking tour of Porto, thankfully it was rather cool and overcast this morning, and Porto is rather tiny if you are looking at just important buildings. The tour started with a trip across the street to the train station which is very pretty.   From there we walked about a minute over to the Avenue of Allies, then another minute over to the first church of the tour.   We then walked a little more to see the hidden house which is sandwiched between two churches, one we could go into for free and the other we would have to pay for.  From there we walked to the past of the famous bookstore Livrarie Lello, with the fancy staircase.  The line looked atrocious in the morning to go into the store.  Then we walked past the fancy McDonalds and up the Avenue of Allies.  Basically, the tour crisscrossed the city in a wandering route ending at the main Cathedral, which we couldn’t go inside of due to a wedding.  That is where we parted ways with the tour guide.  After the tour we headed back to the hotel to drop some things off before grabbing lunch.  

Streetcar

The Hidden House

City Hall

Open Air Market

Lunch was Francesinha, which is a “sandwich” that contains several types of meat between two slices of bread, which is then covered with 5 slices of cheese, and topped with a beer sauce.  This is a knife and fork sandwich.  It was good, I could only eat about half of it, Jim ate about two-thirds of his.   From there we went up to a chocolate shop to get some port filled chocolates before heading back to the hotel.  I stayed at the hotel while Jim went to the oldest traditional brush making shop in the city to buy a shaving brush.   We had a couple of hours then in the hotel before heading out to our port tasting. 

Lunch

We had a port tasting at 4:00PM at Churchill Cellars, where they sell white port.  White port is just what it sounds like it is a port but very pale in color and a bit lighter than the traditional ruby or tawny ports.   We tried two types of white port, a young ruby, a 10-year-old tawny, and because I actually new what I was talking about and didn’t ask stupid questions on the tour, we also got to try a 20-year tawny port.  The usual tour only gets to taste 4 ports two whites a ruby and a tawny.  The tour of the port cellars was short and really talked more about how port is made and the history of the cellars.  The guide was nice but one couple on the tour was annoying because they just weren’t listening, so asked questions that the guide had already explained.    From there we headed back to the hotel.

White Port

Port tasting

After a bit of deliberation, I broke down and got tickets to see the inside of the Livrarie Lello at 7:00 PM.  So, on the way to bookstore we grabbed a Bafana, which is a simple meat sandwich, street food.  I will say the bookstore wasn’t worth it.  Yes, the inside is pretty and the staircase is unique, but it was way too crowded to get any decent pictures.  I also hate people with selfie sticks; they should be banned everywhere.  Also, I’m not going to wait 5 minutes to walk up or down the stairs so you can get the perfect selfie.  I think the store should sell specific photographer tickets that allow photographers (people with real cameras not cell phones on selfie sticks) to come in before the store is open to get a few nice pictures. As it is I’m not sure, I’m going to like the photos I took, due to the number of people and shooting at ISO 4000 at F5.4 to get a decent exposure.   After wading through the bookstore crowds, we headed back to the hotel to end our day. 

Tomorrow, we head into the Duro valley for a boat cruise down the river and see another church.  Jim is so thrilled about all the churches we are seeing on the trip.  Note I did think about cancelling the boat cruise and going up to Bara for the roman festival, but it is too hot for me to stand outside in a city, and the crowds wouldn’t be good for Jim or I.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cobwebs Everywhere

On October 7 th , I did a studio spooky session with Coralinx Cosplay .   The central theme of this shoot was a pretty goth girl who had a fondness for spiders and decorating with cobwebs, making it a perfect Halloween session.   Note: Cobwebs are defined as abandoned or old spiderwebs that have collected dust.   Many cobwebs are the result of comb-footed spider (i.e., black widows) that make irregularly shaped webs.   Spiderwebs are active structures built to catch prey.   (Source: Western Exterminator Company) For these sessions, I used: Photography Equipment Other Equipment Cannon R6 24-105 mm Lens Transmitter/Trigger 2 Westcott FJ400 2 Phottix Strobes 2 strip boxes 2 rectangular soft boxes 2 c-stands 3 light stands Backdrop stand Black seamless 2 Westcott silicon gels Tether cable Laptop Laptop holder Sandbags A-clamps Spyder Color checker Fake cobwebs Table ...
Post a Comment
Read more

2025 Year in Review and Looking Forward to 2026

This year was a bit interesting especially since during the day, I’m a government employee, which resulted in a lot of stress and a 42-day furlough.  I didn’t attend as many cosplay events with the D.C Cosplay group, now Costume and Camera, as I normally would have, due to schedule conflicts.  However, I traveled up to Poughkeepsie, New York for two photo events, one of which I was a featured photographer.  I attended two conventions, one of which didn’t turn out as expected and the other just confirmed my decision to take a break from it.  Though happily I did a lot of studio work this year, which I enjoyed.  But on the other hand, I lost my dear “studio supervisor”, my dog Teddy.  He liked to great clients and then “supervise” while lying/sleeping in his bed. I also started to work on the business side of my photography work, by investing in a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) site to manage bookings, schedules, and payments. No more trying to juggle...
Post a Comment
Read more

Moon Goddess

On September 11, I did a fantasy moon goddess session with Emma. The inspiration for this shoot was the moon and all the fake cloud tutorials that were flooding my feed.   For these sessions I used: Photography Equipment  Props/Miscellaneous Cannon 80D Trigger 2 strobes 2 speedlights 3 c-stands Bell reflector Beauty dish 2 flags 2 gels (blue & magenta) Grid (5-degree) Backdrop stand Fuzzy white backdrop Printed backdrop A-clamps Sandbags paper mâché moon 2 pillows 8 DVD cases 5 pounds of fiber fill (aka. fluff) silver dress Ewa Jobko silver circlet This session revolved around the love of the moon, and I wanted to make sure the model had a moon to love, thus I made one.   To make the moon, I bought one of those 24-inch round balloons, blew it up, and covered in three layers of white tissue paper using a standard paper mâché technique.  When covering th...
Post a Comment
Read more