After a couple nights on one side of the river, we moved to city center on the other side. It was good to have the experience of both. It’s a great city to just walk around in and I seem to have a knack for finding quiet places where locals walk or cycle, or walk their dogs. The local dogs are often off leash, but well behaved. They will run up to Mango and we have never had a problem. She really liked one dog this morning—he was a very happy perky dog and kept running up to her as we walked along.

Here are photos of our morning walk today. Just gorgeous. And quiet. And not yet the heat of the day.

There are sculptures sprinkled throughout the parks and in random places like this one I took a photo of.

I’m so funny because this is what I like to do. And then after this I searched “things to do in Porto” and entered in a site to see. But that puts us into the thick of the tourist areas and I don’t enjoy that as much. There is a library I really do want to visit. A woman from Madrid told me it is spectacular, but I’ll end up waiting in very long lines to see it. So, we’ll decide in the morning.

In the touristy areas today at least, it was hot and very crowded. The woman from Madrid also told me that it’s a holiday for Spain so I think that is part of why it’s so crowded. But also, Portugal is popular.

What I’ve noticed in the city center in my small data sampling of 2 days is that mostly people are sitting at cafes drinking beer and smoking starting in the morning, or enjoying food under an umbrella. And there are a lot of tourists walking all over the place.

The shopkeepers are super friendly and if they don’t speak English they are happy to interact with a translator app and also, will coo and pet and bring water for your dog.