It’s finally sunny and warm! The best weather to head out and explore. Our plan for the day starts with a half an hour walk to 📍Bufete Fase, an establishment that focuses on one thing and one thing only: francesinha. One might ask what is francesinha? Imagine you’re a sandwich maker in Portugal. You want to create a sandwich but your executive function (ability to decide and act) isn’t the best. Instead of deciding what to put in your sandwich you just put everything you have. bologna, cooked sausage, steak and more bologna to top it off. You close your sandwich then realize you still have cheese lying around so you wrap your sandwich in cheese. It’s early in the morning so you might decide to add an egg on top for good measure. Finally, you’re a little hungover, which might explain why an everything sandwich with the cheese outside felt like a good idea, and heard of the myth that gravy cures hungovers. You drown your sandwich in gravy and add fries around it. Congratulations you’ve invented the francesihna.
As you might have understood, that type of food is an experience. A little like the poutine in Quebec, it hasn’t really crossed the frontiers; making it an experience to have here or miss out for ever. We will be walking all day, might as well fuel up properly and the half-hour walk uphill to 📍Bufete Fase made for the perfect warmup for that meal. As we arrived at restaurant we’re greeted with a line. Not surprising and it’s only a couple of people. One of them encouraged us to let the restaurant know we’re in line as they are a very large group. Actually the entire line ahead of us is one group of people. Karine let them know and we started to wait. 20 minutes later not a single move in line, nobody has yet to exit the restaurant. We’re starving but conflicted. The place specializes in the one thing we truly want to try. 10 minutes later we give up and walk another 20 minutes (downhill this time) to another place that’s known for their francesihna 📍Café Santiago F.
Upon arrival at the 📍Café Santiago F we’re greeted by another line. As good Canadians we get in the queue and wait our turn. Within 5 minutes someone from the restaurant goes through the line and notes down names and party size. 5 minutes later, despite being behind about 20 people, we’re called to sit down. As a well-oiled machine, our orders are taken in minutes and sandwiches show up within 10 minutes of sitting down. All I can say: it was an experience… that we’re happy about having but that we will not be repeating.
Without the shadow of a doubt, we’re properly fueled up for our walk, and so we head out to the 📍Jardins do Palácio de Cristal about 20 minutes further west from our breakfast. When visiting gardens in Europe you’ll either be deep in flowers or deep in vegetation. The crystal palace gardens are very much latter. On top of that, as we arrive we’re guided to the entrance of a book festival. We managed to stumble into a surprise book festival of all things. They’ve setup rows of book kiosks from different publishers in the first level of the garden. I can confirm we much prefer surprise wine festivals. Walking around the kiosks, fowls and crowd of the festivals we managed to make our way deeper down in the gardens, away from the crowd. Surprisingly, all of the wildlife (roosters, ducks and peacocks) are happier in the crowd and none are to be found on the lower levels of the gardens. These are some weird birds for choosing crowds over peace and quiet. The garden itself offers good views of the south shore, plenty of shade and a couple of water features. Nothing to write home about but beautiful none the less.
We could have continued our way from the crystal palace gardens to the botanical gardens about 30 minutes further west but gave up on the idea to go sit our ass next to the river and do some day drinking under the warm sun. We did our best to follow the Douro river shore to get closer to downtown and the restaurants and bars offering drinks with a view but it seems like the urban planners for the western side of Porto preferred to put restricted parking on the shore instead of sidewalks. We were almost by the 📍Pont Louis I before we could walk by the water. We plucked our ass down on the first table that was first row, ordered some wine and did some people watching. It was glorious, relaxing and warm. All the things we were looking forward to after a number of rainy days.
After drinking our share, we got back to the apartment, relaxed some more and made our way to dinner at 📍Patio 44. The restaurant was small, casual and executed the food well enough. Nothing outstanding, nothing bad either. We were happy with our meals but nothing to dethrone our top pick for the city.
Tomorrow we’re picking up the car and heading up the Douro river to Pinhão.