Hi there,
When we bought the house in Porto, I had planned to tour the city again and then visit the nearest cities by train.
I thought that in a month we would have finished all the pending things in the house, but 4 months later, we still had things to do, especially due to the difficulty of finding decent people capable of doing the job well.
So, when we had the house almost ready, we started touring on the weekends.
These were the visits:
- Porto
- Matosinhos
- Vila Nova de Gaia
- Parque Oriental
- Route by the river
- Serra Santa Justa
- Serra do Castiçal
- Serra da Boneca
- Parque Natural Senhora do Salto
The first Saturday we had free we toured Porto. We walked from the house and in 50 minutes, we were already at the Don Luis I Bridge.
Since we moved to Porto, we couldn’t believe there were so many abandoned houses. The most incredible thing is that even in the center you also find a lot of abandoned houses falling apart.
For me the city has a special vibe, and the architecture is beautiful; Also, there are parts that are horrible.
Just that weekend coincided with a holiday, and everything was full of tourists.
We stopped by the Lello Bookstore, but there was a long queue, so I decided to come back on a weekday.
In my opinion, the Lello Bookstore is overrated, and you spend more time queuing than inside. Also, it’s all full of people taking photos, so you can’t walk around quietly either.
If you buy a book, they deduct the money from the entrance. There is not a great variety, so we did not buy anything.
The first time we visited Porto in 2021, we had walked from the accommodation to Matosinhos beach. This time we did the same, but our house is further away, so it took us around 2h30 to get to Matosinhos beach.
There is a point on this route where the area is beautiful and there are some spectacular high-end houses. But then you see that the architecture changes and there are only ugly and massive buildings like the ones you can find in the south of Spain.
Although Matosinhos is one of the most expensive areas, I particularly don’t like it because it is not green like other areas of Porto. Also, I don’t like Matosinhos beach either because it’s too urban for my taste.
Another weekend we went with bicycles, and we also toured the Parque da Cidade do Porto.
We visited Vila Nova de Gaia in two days because in winter it is always raining, and it is almost impossible to have the whole day without rain to be able to visit.
The first day we did what all tourists do, we crossed the Don Luis I Bridge and went directly to the Sierra del Pilar Monastery. In June 2021 when we visited Porto for the first time, I didn’t like how my photos turned out and I wanted to repeat them.
I was not 100% happy with these photos either, since the day was gray, and my face was swollen because the previous week I had had radiofrequency.
We toured the tourist part and as it was going to start raining, we continued walking to Arrábida Shopping to have lunch at Da Terra.
In this tour there is a very nice part without tourists.
The next day we walked from the house and crossed Puente del Infante, which is just before the Don Luis I Bridge.
Before crossing the bridge, we found a black cat and it was the first time in 4 months that we had come across a cat that allowed itself to be petted.
We crossed the bridge, and we found the ugliest thing imaginable; In addition to abandoned houses that are falling apart, the entire journey to the Municipal Chamber of Vila Nova de Gaia was very gloomy because the streets were full of drug addicts and on various corners there were people selling drugs.
The architecture of Vila Nova de Gaia has nothing to do with that of Porto. There are only massive and ugly buildings there.
Apart from the pedestrian street that starts where the Municipal Chamber is and ends at the Lidl, there is nothing else that is moderately decent.
We kept walking because we thought that there had to be some part of Vila Nova de Gaia that was beautiful, but we all the streets looked like they were out of a Wild West movie.
Imagine walking through streets where absolutely all the buildings are abandoned and falling apart.
My friend who lives in Porto had already told me that Vila Nova de Gaia was horrible and that only marginal people lived there. I didn’t imagine it would be so extreme.
We arrived at the train station and decided to go back to the tourist area.
This part behind the tourist area was already made up of abandoned factories and warehouses. I think there was only one working wine cellar.
We got to the tourist part, we saw the “Half rabbit” and we called a Bolt to go to the beach area that I had been told so well about.
From the car one could already see some spectacular houses and closed and guarded residential complexes. There we understood where the investments were going in recent years.
We got off at The Restinga and began the tour along the beach promenade. Although the promenade seemed new and was immaculate, I did not like the area in general to live because it is overcrowded.
We got to where La Madalena began, and we took a taxi to go back to the house.
Then we did our two closest walking routes.
There is one that starts in Parque Oriental, and we use it to go to Leroy Merlin which is in Parque Nascente.
The route goes next to a river and after Parque Nascente, it becomes more urban, and we go next to the subway tracks. We got to the Campainha station and returned by the same route.
The route that we did next to the Douro begins 5 minutes from our house in the Marina de Freixo. I like it better than the one in the Eastern Part, but it is short, since in less than an hour you get to the end.
Regarding hiking, we started with Serra Santa Justa that is in Valongo. By bus or train you can arrive relatively close to where the routes start.
The first day we took the 801 bus, and the stop is half an hour walk from our house. The bus left us in a place where we still had to walk a long way to start the trail. In fact, when we had been walking for 2 hours, the route we had planned to do that day had just begun. We wanted to get to the Roman chair, but we weren’t going to have time, so we left it for another day.
Another Saturday we went in Bolt to avoid wasting so much time.
At 8:30 in the morning of February, everything was still frozen there, and it was 0ºC.
Something bad about this area for hiking is that people are doing motocross on the same trails that are for walking and it becomes excessively annoying due to the noise and the smell of smoke.
Another Saturday we went to Serra do Castiçal which is part of the Serras do Porto circuit. The landscape is like that of the two previous routes.
This day it rained and when we were finishing the route, around 10 dogs ran towards us and one of them bit Diego on the leg. The owner of the dogs took us to the medical center, to the pharmacy to buy the antibiotics and then to the house.
The experience was traumatic, and this was already the 4th accident that Diego had had since we bought the house in Porto. I will tell you about Diego’s accidents later.
We finish with the Serra da Boneca and Senhora do Salto.
These two places were further away and going by Uber was very expensive. We investigated prices to rent a car, but it was also expensive for only two days.
In the end, my friend Andrea lent us her car and we took the opportunity to take Luna with us.
The Serra da Boneca is 30 minutes by car from our house. We did a 16km route and there are several points with spectacular views.
This day was very sunny, and we ended up with our necks roasted.
The next day we went to Senhora do Salto which is almost the same distance by car. Here we did two routes (Trilho dos Moinhos + Trilho de Alvre) that added up to a little more than 10km. We fell in love with the place, and we walked almost all the time in the shade of the trees, which we appreciated after the sunbath of the day before.
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