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!