Kay has wanted to go to Porto for ages, so every time I searched for weekend trips, I always kept an eye on flights heading there. Usually prices to Portugal from Zurich are too expensive, nearing 500CHF a ticket, but finally I found affordable tickets for late September, booking a short Friday evening to Sunday evening trip.
In order to keep the flights cheap, we did need to transfer in Frankfurt on the way there, which ended up being horrible because our flight from Zurich was delayed and we ended up having to sprint through almost the whole airport in Frankfurt to get to our connecting gate. I nearly died and after the time difference (1 hour) we didn’t arrive to our bed and breakfast until almost one in the morning Swiss time.
The weather was covered on Saturday and we had hopes that it would open up, but it remained foggy and grey. Still, we made our way around markets and walked around the city until it was time for our port cellar tour at Ferreira.
With the weather still cloudy, we made a stop at Lello & Irmão Bookstore, a famous bookstore considered to be one of the most beautiful in the world.
…and it was pretty darn magnificent.
It is rumored that JK Rowling was inspired to start writing Harry Potter in connection to this bookstore. Who knows if that’s true?
The unique staircase is also thought to be an inspiration to ones described in the Harry Potter books.
Next it was on to a couple churches.
We were a little sad that the weather was so gloomy, but you can’t always be lucky with the weather on these short trips. Well, or our long ones either. We actually seem to do better weather wise on weekend trips compared to proper two week holidays…
The port winery tour at Ferreira was OK, but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it. The tour guide was alright and the information was good, but it was a large group and the tour was a bit rushed before we were all dropped at the end to try our port selections.
After a very quick introduction to our five selections, the guide took the bottles away and left and we were left trying to remember which port was which within our little group doing the larger degustation. We still had a nice time, but next time we will try a different winery just because! 🙂
After the port, we were rather tipsy and tired and the weather was not doing much to energize us. The day ended with weather like below…
We ended up walking around for quite a bit looking for a place to eat that inspired us.
At least the city looked nicer at night when it was lit up.
The next morning though, the sun was out and we were enthused!
After breakfast we stopped for a better coffee and Kay was really excited when the sky opened up completely with sunshine and warmth.
Who is excited about the day and wants to do everything we skipped on Saturday?? This guy!
We decided to head back to the Clérigos Tower and actually climb it this time. It hadn’t seemed worth it the day before, but below was exactly how we imagined Porto!
It was a bit funny though. I’d made Kay wear his dress shirt on Sunday because I made lunch reservations at The Yeatman Hotel, a five star hotel with a Michelin-starred restaurant. The dress code was “smart casual” and we were both worried that we would be turned away in our jeans.
Well, climbing up the tower without an undershirt under his dress shirt completely soaked Kay. It looked really horrible and I couldn’t help laughing. Before we left the church, he changed back to his T-shirt and we tied his dress shirt to his backpack to try and dry it out before arriving at the restaurant.
Wearing just a sweaty tank top myself, I put on a light long sleeved top in front of the hotel while Kay put his dried dress shirt back on over the T-shirt. It ended up being fine for lunch and we managed to fit in all right.
Above was our view from the table at lunch. The entire experience was pure heaven! 
Me and my handsome man. 🙂
After a very long lunch, we made our way back down to the river.
We didn’t have that much time before we needed to get to the airport for our flight, but we soaked in a couple more sights.
We were also pretty full of food and port by this time!
At the airport it was important to buy some port based on what we’d sampled in the winery and restaurants. We had some good advice and decided to pick up four different kinds which I’ll mention in the food post soon.
Oh Porto. You tired me out. Our flight back was also delayed, although we didn’t have to transfer on the way home, we also only arrived home after midnight. It’s making for a tired week, but worth it to enjoy these last weekends with Kay before school.
Only five weekends for Kay at home before he’s off to study!
Clothes: jeans, two long sleeved shirts, two pairs of socks, two pairs of undies
On the way there we had emergency exit seats, so I was not allowed to keep the bag under the seat, but here it is on our way back. I have fit this bag into a very small Canadair CL-65 aircraft on the way from Columbus to Philadelphia as well. 
You do have to turn the bag on its side to fit it under, but in the Swiss aircraft below, I still had room to put my feet stretched under the seat as well if I wanted.
Moreover, I am also really happy with all the pockets in this bag. It makes organization a breeze (there is even a shoe storage pocket!) and I feel more secure storing my wallet in the inner pockets on city trips with the additional inner zipper pockets.
5:30pm I head home on the train and read some more.
7:20pm Kay and I sit down to eat. I’m having fish and green beans tonight. He’s having pork meatballs and rice.
7:45pm We put the dishes away and I take the now-dried recycling bottles out of the kitchen and put them in our containers in the pantry. I also take the apple slices out of my brown sugar and stir it up before I forget about the apples. My brown sugar always goes hard because I don’t use it fast enough, but it’s important to keep it soft because it’s almost impossible to buy here!
Thank God for detailed measuring notes in my planning book! I didn’t have 100% all the details down, like the important part of trimming 10cm off the sides of the blackout fabric on the back so that the patterned fabric would wrap nicely around to the back, but after 8 hours of intense labor, these babies are done!
Not to be underestimated, the bobbin did run out in the home stretch, and I had temporarily “forgotten” how to rewind it quickly because it had been months since I’d used my machine which I am still getting used to. And the needle broke after that. Why do all these problems occur after midnight?
Still, I was able to wrap them up and put them up before we went to bed and I have to say… the effect is awesome. It’s sooo dark in here now.
We ended up hiking in the Monte Tamaro region of Tessin, where we visited the St. Maria degli Angeli Church designed by Mario Botta at Alpe Foppa during our little bit of sunshine on Saturday afternoon.
Overall, the weather was a little chilly and pretty foggy. The hike was misty and soggy all day, but made for cool walking, which is not the worst compared to a scorching mountain side.
The hike was not too strenuous, but I could still feel my legs struggling after a new training routine at my gym the previous Thursday. The weather was also getting more and more misty and wet the later in the evening it got.
When we finally arrived to the “hut” that our friends had booked, which was more of a chalet I believe, we ran into these friendly, fuzzy cows. How cute!
I loved their furry faces.
Kay tried to pet them, but we didn’t have any food, so they were not that interested actually.
In the lodge, we all took showers. Wow. This is glamping to me. I didn’t even bring any soap or change of clothes with me, so I used the hand soap and put my sweaty clothes back on. No one noticed, I swear.
The next morning we woke up to the scene below. We’d already decided to get up early because the next bus home after the 7:45 one was at 12:45, and we didn’t want to hang around or hike through the rain, especially because my friend’s husband had rolled his ankle and it was hurting him pretty badly.
Not lying when I say I was also looking forward to go home and relax after traveling the previous weekend. I was sooo tired.
We didn’t actually make it to the top of the hike, ironically. We were saving it for the second day, but we all still enjoyed the hike we did, especially because we chose a more back country path that was more rugged and interesting.