Porto

Porto has a wide range of accommodation, though many of the older pensions are dog-eared, noisy or dodgy, or all three. Nearly all the cheapest accommodation is in the city centre, rather than in the medieval streets nearer the river – there are concentrations along Rua de Cedofeita, Rua do Alamada, around Avenida dos Aliados, and near Praça da Batalha. There’s a fair bit of boutique accommodation in and around the city centre, while the upmarket suburbs of Boavista and Serralves, west of the centre, contain most of the city’s four- and five-star hotels, but the suburban location is a drawback. Only a few hotels have their own parking, but a handful have negotiated deals with nearby car parks.

There are hundreds of places to eat in Porto, from old-town tascas and Art Nouveau cafés to riverfront designer restaurants. However, on any lengthy stay you might struggle for variation, as menus are broadly similar, with grilled fish, seafood and bacalhau as staples. The local speciality is tripas (tripe) – the story goes that the inhabitants selflessly gave away all their meat for Infante Dom Henrique’s expeditions to North Africa, leaving themselves only the tripe, and it’s been on the menu ever since, cooked à moda do Porto (stewed with chouriço and white beans). Courtesy of returning emigrants, meanwhile, is the francesinha (“little French thing”) – a mighty doorstep of steak, sausage and ham between toasted bread, covered with melted cheese and a peppery tomato-and-beer sauce.

Both sides of the Douro have become the default places to spend the evening. Along Porto’s Cais da Ribeira a dozen largely touristy fish restaurants are installed under the arches, with more simple places hidden along the backstreets. Over the bridge in Vila Nova de Gaia there’s a mix of traditional fish places and international restaurants and bars. For cheaper meals look in the city centre, around the university (facing the Jardim da Cordoaria), up Rua do Bonjardim, south of the Clérigos church (on streets such as Rua dos Caldeireiros) and near Praça da Batalha. In the main market, the Mercado do Bolhão, you can also eat a very cheap lunch at a couple of little cafés amid the flower stalls. For the best local fish restaurants, you need to take the metro out to Matosinhos, a half-hour ride from the centre.

Porto’s ever-changing bar scene is spread over three distinct areas: down and around Ribeira, across the river in Gaia, and – unsurprisingly – around the university (near Praça Parada Leitão and on “Bar Street”, Rua Galeria de Paris). There are more bars out to the west in Massarelos (particularly the floating pontoon bars of Rua do Ouro) and in beachside Foz do Douro, but most of the city’s best clubs are fairly central (though the hard house and techno clubs tend to be further out, in Ramalde). For port wine tasting in refined surroundings there are two main bars, the official Solar do Vinho do Porto (city centre) and the Vinologia wine bar (Ribeira), both excellent in their own way.

Most bars don’t open until 10pm and stay open until 2am, later at weekends (often until 4am). Clubs open (or really only get going) at midnight, and most stay open until 4 or 5am or later, with a standard €5–15 admission fee, more for special events and top guest DJs. The entrance ticket acts as a voucher for free drinks, not that it’ll last long as prices are pretty high.

There will be something worth catching in Porto almost any night of the year. The Casa da Música concert hall has a wide musical remit, but it’s also home of the Orquestra Nacional do Porto, one of the country’s leading symphony orchestras. Otherwise, concerts of all kinds are held at a variety of venues, while in summer there’s usually a series of outdoor concerts in the Jardim do Palácio de Cristal and at Serralves. Local theatre is almost always in Portuguese, though there’s a strong tradition of contemporary dance and other visual and experimental genres. On the whole, though, visitors are more likely to go to the cinema, as films in Portugal are shown in their original language. There are multiplexes in the suburban shopping malls, such as NorteShopping (Senhora da Hora metro).

One of Porto’s abiding pleasures is its surviving traditional shops, often in beautiful Art Nouveau or Art Deco premises, in which you’ll find anything from bacalhau and dusty bottles of vintage port to filigree gold jewellery. Even right in the city centre, people still do much of their day-to-day shopping at small, independent shops – in the line of shops below the Clérigos tower, for example, you could, if you so wished, buy an apple, a pair of shoes, a pig’s tongue or a bucket. The main market, Mercado do Bolhão, still sees brisk business too, though most of the other neighbourhood markets have been eclipsed by the city’s modern shopping centres – the biggest is NorteShopping, in the northwest at Senhora da Hora (on the metro).

Porto’s two main shopping streets are Rua de Cedofeita and the more upmarket Rua de Santa Catarina – these are where you’ll find high-street fashion chains, designer boutiques, jewellers, shoe shops, and electrical and phone stores. Rua de Santa Catarina also has its own mall, Via Caterina, halfway up, as well as a few stalls selling beads, cheap jewellery and accessories, and some secondhand and “vintage” shops towards the top end. Rua de Miguel Bombarda (off Rua de Cedofeita) is at the heart of Porto’s “gallery and arts” district and is the place for designers, delis, and urban arts and crafts.