Carnival Pride Europe Cruise Review: Day 9 – Portofeatured
There are some places we’ve visited where I knew, even before we visited, that I’d be absolutely obsessed with them.
Porto is one of those places.
With it’s brightly-colored building facades and richness of culture, there’s so much about Porto to love. There are a few things that I knew I wouldn’t love (the intensely sloped streets, mainly), but I couldn’t wait to take all the pictures I’ve seen online and turn them into memories of my own.
The Pride wouldn’t dock in Porto proper. Instead, it would dock in the nearby town of Leixoes, about a half an hour away. The ship offered many tours, but we figured it was another good day to just explore on our own since back onboard wasn’t until 6:30 PM.
We grabbed a quick breakfast up on the Lido deck, opting for the Blue Iguana Cantina instead of the standard buffet line. The made-to-order breakfast burritos are one of the better items available and they never had a line, too — another bonus.
The ship was given the all clear around 10:00 AM and we headed down to deck 3 to disembark. The cruise terminal in Leixoes was absolutely stunning — it felt very Scandinavian with the tile work, minimalism and neutral tones.
There were many options for our port day: we could book a tour, we could hire a Tuk Tuk at the pier (which ranged anywhere from €40/person for shorter tours to €400 for a full day Tuk Tuk experience) or take a taxi into Porto. There were Hop On Hop Off buses we could grab at the entrance. We could spend the day in Leixoes, which was very charming as its own destination. There was a sign for a shuttle to the Porto city center but a bus never showed up and after more than 50 people had queued and waited for nearly a half hour, the port concierge announced there would be no shuttle service today. So we decided to just head into Porto…on our own. The Hop On Hop Off buses were crowded with long lines, we’d already waited a half hour for a bus that never existed and we just wanted to get going, so we hopped on the shuttle bus to the front of the cruise terminal, pulled up Google maps and found our way to the nearest bus stop.
The bus stop was about two blocks away — it was an easy walk and it was easy to find the bus stop and identify the bus. Carnival offered a Porto On Your Own tour for $54, which included transportation for four hours of free time in Porto before meeting at a designated spot at a designated time for a return. We took the 500 bus from the port to the middle of the city center, a service that runs every 5-15 minutes (so we could return whenever we wanted to), for €4 per person round trip.
Once we were in the city center, we discovered that if there was a port to take the Hop On Hop Off bus, it was probably Porto. Porto isn’t particularly friendly for on-foot exploration — the slopes of these streets are extreme. You can skip leg day if you visit Porto because it’s an exercise just walking around.
We hopped off near the Sao Bento train station, pulled up the Google map where we’d saved the places we wanted to visit and just started walking. We started at McDonald’s for a quick hydration stop and it’s was just about the most opulent one I’ve ever seen. Marble floors, crystal chandeliers, stained glass — it was a thing of beauty. A McDonalds! Who knew?!
Once we were properly hydrated (which is so key when you’re traveling and on the go a lot!), we set out to see as many spots as we could. We visited the gorgeous azulejos at the Capela Das Almas, the Sao Bento Metro Station and Igreja do Carmo. We snapped about a million and a half pictures of the gorgeous tile work that adorns the facades of the buildings here. I was absolutely obsessed with the facades.
We shopped for local delicacies like Port Wine and oils and honeys and bought these gorgeous silk scarves that will forever remind us of our first visit to Porto. We visited the Livraria Lello, one of the oldest bookstores in Portugal (it inspired JK Rowling’s vision for Hogwarts when she was writing Harry Potter!). We got quite the workout traversing from one side to the other, uphill and then down, but to be able to experience the city so intimately and see all the nuanced details that fill its personality was so memorable.
The one downside to our time in Porto was the construction. Well, the construction and the fact that we only had a few hours here. The construction made it difficult to get to some of the places we wanted to visit because multiple blocks would be shut down and blocked off for Metro construction. There was a cake shop I was dying to try — we passed up bakeries all day because we were going to visit this particular cake shop that had all kinds of delicacies. We put it off as our last thing to do and we couldn’t even get to it because the street it was on was shut down and going a few blocks over, up and around is such an exercise when the streets slope so extremely. So we skipped it, which meant that our breakfast was the last thing we ate around 9:30 AM, and it was nearing 4:00 PM and I had minutes left before I had a massive personality shift from my hanger.
We made a hydration stop at a nearby Starbucks and then settled on the one place we knew the location of: McDonald’s. As much as I try to stick to new places when we travel, I’ll never apologize for my love of International McDonald’s. The offerings are just so much better (or maybe they’re just different enough), but there’s a sense of comfort in McDonald’s, too. No matter where in the world I am, I can have a taste of home. I know someone there will speak English. I know they’ll have restrooms. I don’t have to worry as much about social customs — the experience is the same wherever you go. And that’s really nice to fall back into when you need a little familiarity (or you just can’t find a cake shop and you’re about to become a new, less patient version of yourself).
After our late fast food lunch, we walked back towards where we had come off the bus to find the bus that would take us back to the pier. The same 500 bus, at a stop a block away, picked us up in the city center and had us back in Leixoes about 40 minutes later.
We’ve been stopping in local grocery stores at just about every port to see what they had and to pick up little odds and ends that we needed or that would make us smile (chocolate bars for Mom, Coke Zero for Stephanie). There was a Lidl not far from the ship, and we stopped in for some after sun because even though we had some moderate temperatures across our trip, Stephanie and I both were nursing sun burns that probably needed some aloe. Lidl is a European version of Aldi and this one was, like, the biggest, coolest Aldi I’ve ever seen. They had a fresh bakery section with all kinds of local treats (including Pasteis de Nata!), a huge selection of organic produce and really, a huge selection of everything. I picked up my after sun and a bag of my favorite Lidl cookies. I could have bought more but I was saving luggage space for when we visited France.
The walk back to the ship couldn’t have taken more than ten minutes through the quaint streets of Leixoes. There’s a shuttle bus at the entrance of the port area that will drive you to the terminal, but they sure pack those buses in tight! Thankfully, the ride only takes five or so minutes.
We were dropped off right at the terminal entrance. The terminal is gorgeous and we kind of hung back and took it slow to get some pictures of it. Who takes pictures of a cruise terminal, right? But I’m telling you — this one is really pretty!
Back onboard was 6:30 PM and we came back on with about an hour’s grace to that. We dropped our bags in the room, freshened up and headed straight down to dinner. We noticed the earlier we got in, the better the service tended to be and we don’t mind eating early, anyways.
After dinner, we headed back to the room to watch sailaway from the balcony and then took a walk around the outer promenade on deck 3. This was becoming a bit of a tradition for us every night, but we just couldn’t get enough sea views!
Once we were out to sea, we came up into those choppy seas again. We were planning on going up to watch Love, Simon at the Dive-In Movies or catching tonight’s headliner, but instead we retired to the cabin with a Food Network Beat Bobby Flay marathon. Part of me felt unsettled — that maybe we weren’t taking advantage of the ship as much as we should (or could) have, but the other part of me knew that we had another six ports to go on this trip and we all needed all the rest we could get!
