The two highlights of our Porto trip.
If you’ve read my blog post on Porto, you’d know how much we enjoyed this beautiful city. And there were two places that I left out from that post because I thought they needed a separate mention: Livraria Lello and Porto wineries.
Yes, Harry Potter may be the first thing to comes to mind when you visit the famous bookstore Livraria Lello and yes, it’s also one of the main selling points, but I have to say, it’s nothing like the image I personally had when I was reading the series. If you want that old, rustic, mysterious kind of vibe, I would go for the Long Room at Trinity College in Dublin.
(But if you are a Harry Potter fan, you’ll find more everything Harry Potter here as it was indeed frequented by JK Rowling herself while she was living in Porto and it’s said she was inspired by the library. There was even a small back room showcasing Harry Potter books, merchandise and history.)
The Livraria Lello is technically a bookshop, not a library and it’s PACKED. You need to buy a ticket, you have to wait to go in and even if you do make it inside, you have to fight for the best photo spot and also forget about being the center of your photos. You’ll be in everyone else’s and everyone will be in yours.
However, it is stunning.
It’s one of the city’s oldest bookstores, dating back to 1906. The architecture and interior is stunning. Stained glass ceilings, wood carvings everywhere, the wooden staircase, the ladders and even the rails have style.
Moving on to Port wine, one of the highlights of the city.
I have to admit, I’ve heard a lot about Port wine, but I’ve never tried it. And this was the perfect opportunity. Port wine is technically not really a wine, but a fortified drink produced with distilled grape (this part is wine) spirits (this part is not) exclusively in the Douro Valley in northern Portugal. It’s normally a sweet red “wine,” so mostly served as a dessert wine.
It’s basically produced from the grapes grown in the valley, and then a spirit very similar to brandy is added to stop the fermentation and boost the alcohol content. There are numerous wineries along the city, both big and small, and if I may, I would suggest to try to book a tour around the bigger ones like Taylor, Ferreira and Cálem. They tend to be longer, more in detail, the wines tasted a bit better and was simply a more enjoyable tour overall.
An interesting fact that we learned was how the English were involved in this history of Port wine. The Douro region is the third oldest protected wine region in the world (along with the Tokaj-Hegyalja region in Hungary and Chianti in Italy) but yet, most of the wineries bore the name of Englishmen. In fact, Port wine became very popular in England for various reasons, one being that the merchants were permitted to import it at a low duty and another being that the war made it difficult for the English to drink French wine. British importers obviously gushed over this opportunity, and now most of the names of the wineries are still English; Croft, Graham, Osborne, Sandeman, Taylor’s. The British involvement was strong enough to build trade associations, tennis clubs and schools all around the city, most of them also standing to this day.
We visited the Taylor winery and it was beautiful and entertaining. There’s a museum, really nice photography, cellars, and at the end of the tour you can taste their wines in a beautiful rose garden. We also went to a relatively smaller winery, but it wasn’t worth it. I would suggest to pay a bit more (the smaller ones were 8-10 euros while Taylor’s is 15 euros), spend more time inside and you’ll really get to learn and enjoy the famous liquor.
- Livraria Lello: Tickets cost 5 euros (adults) and if you have a baby or toddler, you get to go in without waiting in line. So be sure to show them your little one. You also get a discount if you buy a book, so that can be handy too.
- Taylor’s: Beautiful. It’s a bit tricky to reach because it’s high up on the hills, especially with a toddler and stroller, so I would recommend taking an Uber. The roads are also a bit bumpy, so be careful walking up, down and through the many wineries. Tickets are 15 euros.
All photos by rachelsanghee. April, 2019.