Oporto was the last stop on our second visit to Portugal and Spain to walk Wellington's battlefields. It started at Lisbon, the first city of Portugal, and finished at Oporto, the second city.
Oporto is a lovely city, but we did not see it at its best. Due to a map reading error on my part we entered the city on the wrong road, and were soon completely lost. I had a city map and the booking slip with the name of the hotel, but I could not find any of the suburb roads we were driving on.
Neither of us spoke any Portuguese, so we had a real problem. In desperation we just stopped at the next road junction, showed the booking slip to a pedestrian and following their hand signals. After about an hour of this we were no closer to finding the hotel, indeed we had passed one square twice.
We parked the car and set off on foot. We soon found the hotel, and that it was in the middle of a pedestrian only zone, which we had been driving around for the past half hour or so.
The rest of the visit was spent on foot. But the hotel was very central, and we could easily find the main locations we were looking for. And there is no better way to explore a city than on foot.
You can read about the visit and see the photographs at:
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