Porto walking in the rain

You have to buy tickets to see Porto’s famous bookshop and it is all J.K. Rowling’s fault. She lived here two years and her favourite bookshop and coffee shop have both become literary shrines.

I’d heard Livraria Lello was the inspiration for the library in the Harry Potter series. It is large, beautiful, old and quirky. When we found it we also discovered a 50 metre queue to get in. Tourism can be a terrible thing. We didn’t even try to get in. Instead we wandered the back streets of Porto admiring its tile-fronted buildings. We also found a building with trees growing on the roof.

We also shopped. Lyn wants a new cap and a new handbag. Curiously, many that we found were made of cork! We wondered whether Australian customs would approve.

After lunch and a short nap we did a walking food tour with a local guide. Lyn and she talked and talked. We explored local shops with their exotic displays of smoked cod, ham, sausages and sardine cans. We tasted various nibbles, the local spicy pork roll, ham and weird, local, sweetish, black bread, and drank a little too. We learned a great deal about Porto past and present and wandered streets we would never have found on our own. 

It was a pleasant way to spend a damp day in traffic-plagued Porto.