Discovering Porto

Porto is truly a magnificent city. Though unmistakably Portuguese, it is pretty different from Lisbon. Porto is much smaller than the sprawling Metropole in the south, but that’s the apparent difference. While Lisbon is more polished and colorful, Porto has a more rugged feeling – ochre color tones being much more prevalent in the city’s architecture. The narrow streets of Porto are every writer’s dream city for the location of a suspenseful historical thriller set somewhere between the 16th and 19th centuries.  And then there are the churches, covered in pure gold; they are monuments of the town’s past glory. It was a time when Porto was literally the country’s principal port, and all the riches of Brazil poured through the city, bringing previously inconceivable wealth to the citizens. Finally, the British conceived the Port Wine to ship wine from Northern Portugal to the British Islands. While it is solid and heavy, at the same time, it tends to be sweet and gentle. It’s much like the city itself, actually.