Harry Potter meets São João do Porto

Our travelling has more than an air of serendipity about it.   We sort of vaguely travel and stumble onto whatever is happening.  That was the case in Porto.  Naively we booked into our modern apartment, hosted by Fabio a Brazilian who owned the local Vietnamese Restaurant and asked if anything was happening during our stay in Porto.

He just about fell over.  Anything happening?  Only the biggest festival in Portugal!  In broken english he explained about garlic flowers, hammers and fireworks and that it was all going to happen tomorrow... We still didn't get it.  We smiled and ate our Pork and Prawn spring rolls, Not your usual Portuguese experience!

Oh and he kindly advised us that we had parked our car in the Police only section and that even though it was the festa of São João we would still get booked... ho hum.

The next day we wandered aimlessly through Porto checking on the sights until we saw a huge queue winding down the street.  I ask inside and they tell me it is a bookshop.  5 Euros to enter but you get it back if you buy a book.  Wow things are looking up for booksellers.  What I didn't know was that this was the place that inspired J K Rowling when she lived in Porto....J K Rowling lived in Porto?  I always imagined her penniless scribbling away so to speak on her laptop in Starbucks!

Check it out on Google an incredible place.

As the day progressed we could feel the city coming alive with excitement.

Sardinahs, peppers and pigs and shellfish !  BBQ's glowed and smoked in every corner.  

We left the crowded river front to climb the Luiz I bridge.  What is so different about this bridge is that you can walk it on two levels.  It links bot levels of the city as well as downtown Porto and Gaia.   Eiffel (of the tower fame) lost the competition to build the bridge to his colleague Théophile Seyrig.