An alternative title: Learning The Hard Way That Porto Cannot Be ‘Done’ In A Day.

By the time I’d realised that taking the public transport to Portugal’s second largest city, Porto, and planning to return to Lisbon the same day was not a great idea, it was already too late. I was already halfway through the three-and-a-half-hour journey to Porto on the slow train, with no return ticket, and no means to book any accommodation in the city for the night. It hit me, rather belatedly, unfortunately, that I’d made a truly poor decision, and that I’d perhaps taken that ‘YOLO’ spirit a tad too far. And yet, the worst part of the day hadn’t even come yet. How did this happen to me?

Let me take you back to the start. After booking my flight and accommodation for Lisbon, I planned out my itinerary and realised that I would probably have one full day to spare. After a bit of checking things out online, I found out that I could possibly fit another city, Porto, into my itinerary. And so I started looking for things to do and see in Porto. I actually had a really solid plan to maximise my time in Porto, but I’d forgotten that I tend to be a bit too ambitious with my plans.

The morning of that fateful day, I took the train to the most convenient option within the city, the Santa Apolonia station – just about three metro stops from Cais do Sodré. At the Santa Apolonia ticket booth, I was told that I’d just missed the train, and the next one would be almost two hours later, around noon. Did I still want to go? Hell, why not! It’s my only opportunity to see Porto. Right at that moment, I had the brilliant idea of only buying a one-way ticket so that I could have the flexibility of booking a later train if I wanted to stay longer. This was where it all went downhill.

With some time to spare, I decided to visit the nearby National Pantheon of Lisbon, also known as the Church of Santa Engrácia because it was originally a church in the 17th century. It’s a beautiful, white building that towers over the shorter three-story buildings beside it, and is the final resting place of some of the great people who helped to shape Portugal’s history. Though I don’t know much about Portugal’s history, I recognised Vasco da Gama’s name from my history classes a long time ago. He was the first Western navigator to reach India by sea, and one of Portugal’s most famous explorers.

Stepping inside and looking up, the building’s height and sheer vastness seem to echo the greatness of the national heroes immortalized inside, reminding one of the scale of their accomplishments. It is partially because of this reminder that I’ve often sought out pantheons and such national monuments – though it is not my country’s history, reading about how far they’ve come ignites in me a small surge of pride. I am reminded of how small we are in the grand scheme of things, and yet, also inspired by how much a single person could possibly achieve, and how much more we could achieve in unity.

I happened to strike up a conversation with one of the friendly staff members, and he informed me that I could go to the rooftop to get a nice view of the surrounding buildings for free. Upon learning that I’d be heading to Porto, he also gave me a few tips about the must-see places, which later more or less served as my trimmed-down itinerary.

And so with that, I boarded the train to Porto. I’m not sure if it was my sheer excitement or that the train truly made a lot of stops, but the journey felt excruciatingly long. We seemed to be barely inching forward with every stop we made, and yet the hands on my watch were steadily creeping closer and closer towards three in the afternoon. I understood that my ambitious plans to conquer Porto in a day would never come to fruition. I narrowed down my list of attractions and headed straight for the ticket booth when the train finally came to a halt at Campanhã.

“Hi, can I get a second-class ticket for a train to Lisbon today?” I asked the person manning the booth.

“There are no more second-class tickets for today. Do you want to get a first-class ticket?” he replied. I felt my heart sink with dread at the thought of having to spend more than expected to get back, but I had to get back.

“Yes, okay. What are the available timings?”

“We have… 1745… 1930…” Five is way too early – that’s just about three hours from now, I thought to myself. Night time might be a bit dangerous. Sevenish would be perfect.

“OK, can I get a ticket for the seven o’clock one?”

“Do you have a passport?” Oh, crap. I’d left it behind in Lisbon on purpose for safekeeping since I thought it would be safer if it wasn’t on me in case I lost it en route.

“No, I left it in Lisbon…”

“You have no identification?”

“I do, I just don’t have it on me now. I have a photo of it, is that okay?”

“Normally no… but I’ll just give you the student discount. Here you go.”

I was honestly so pleased that the man had so nicely helped me to get a cheaper first-class ticket back. It seemed that despite everything, it was going to be a great day after all. Then I checked my ticket and stopped dead in my tracks. It was a ticket for 1745. When I said seven o’clock, had he heard it as… seventeen as in 1745?

I should have gone back and asked him for a change in timing. Any rational person probably would have. But at that moment, already feeling slightly indebted to the ticket booth man for being so kind and doing me a favor with the discount, I decided to just run with it. Factoring in travel time and a bit of a buffer, I had about two hours to check everything off my list.

So here’s how you see (a glimpse of) Porto in two hours: you run like hell.

 

TWO HOURS IN PORTO

Stop 1: São Bento Train Station

To reach the heart of Porto where most of the attractions I wanted to see were concentrated in, I hopped onto the direct rail from Campanhã for São Bento, arriving surprisingly quickly. The São Bento station is an attraction by itself, and quite unlike what you’d expect a train station to look like. This is also supposedly one of the best places to see the famous azulejo tiles, or painted blue ceramic tiles, of Portugal. I didn’t have much time to take a closer look though, so I just snapped a few quick photos as I walked out.

Stop 2: Clérigos Tower, Museum and Church

Located just a short distance from the São Bento station is one of Porto’s landmarks, the Tower of Clérigos and its church and museum. It’s one of the tallest buildings around, and offers one of the best views of Porto. I bought my admission ticket and made a quick tour of the church first, a small yet ornate space with a lot of gold.

Speeding through the museum, I ran up the 225 narrow and winding steps to the top of the tower, eager to at least get a good view of the city. After climbing up a few landmarks like the Notre-Dame Cathedral and the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, I’ve discovered that this is something that I enjoy. Most of the time, the views are worth the climb, but emerging from the staircase and feeling a little out of breath, I was slightly disappointed that the 360-degree lookout was a narrow stretch meant for just a few people to stand on, and we all had to squeeze past each other, pressing against the walls and other bodies just to move. With few other prominent landmarks that I could point out, the view was pretty much the same all around – a sea of brick red rooftops in every direction.

Stop 3: Livraria Lello

Livraria Lello (quite a mouthful to say) was my number one reason for coming to Porto. Opened in 1906, it’s well-known as one of the most beautiful bookstores in the world. It is also famous among Harry Potter fans as one of the places that inspired JK Rowling in her writing when she was teaching English in Porto. As a major tourist attraction, this bookstore will always be crowded with tourists trying to get good photos of themselves with the iconic red staircase. Thankfully when I was there in early May, I managed to purchase the entrance ticket and get in without having to queue at all. You can get the price of your ticket back if you choose to purchase a book, though it seemed like most of the books were in Portuguese so I didn’t buy anything.

The stained glass ceiling lets in a lot of natural light, and without so many people walking around, one can imagine how this bookstore could potentially be a cozy and peaceful sanctuary to spend hours in. With the knowledge that my time in Porto was running out, I pushed any feelings of awkwardness to the back of my mind and bravely approached a few fellow tourists for photos, and got a few that I liked.

Stop 4: Leitaria da Quinta do Paço

Established in 1920, this traditional pastry store has some of the best éclairs in Porto. As it’s just a stone’s throw away from Livraria Lello, I made a quick stop to get some éclairs for the journey back and got a cup of coffee to go. These éclairs were pretty cheap, at less than two euros each! You might not be able to tell from the photo, but these are decently sized éclairs larger than my hand, not those tiny bite-sized ones which disappear in a mouth.

I also stop by a little store along the way to get a magnet and a tiny bottle of port wine, since that was something that I wanted to try in Porto.

Stop 5: McDonald’s Imperial

As a final stop, this was planned to help me close the loop and get back to the São Bento station. This was one of the recommendations that the man from the National Pantheon in Lisbon gave me, so I decided to check it out. Formerly known as the Imperial Café, this McDonald’s has a high ceiling, glass chandeliers, and stained glass right above the counters, earning it a reputation for being the most beautiful McDonald’s in the world. I wish I could say that it was amazing, but it was pretty average for me, especially having just come out of the much more impressive Livraria Lello. It is still a McDonald’s after all, and a very crowded one at that, so expect to queue to order your food and to find seats.

Burger and éclairs in hand, I made it back to Porto São Bento station at about 5.10pm, as I’d planned. I’d be back to Campanhã in about fifteen minutes, with time to spare. Just as I was feeling a little proud of myself, I looked up at the train schedule for the same line back to Campanhã that I’d taken earlier and froze. The next train would only be here at 5.30pm. Even if it arrived on time, by the time it reached Campanhã, I would have less than five minutes to find the right track and board the 5.45pm train, cutting it too close for comfort. I would have to find another way to get there in less than half an hour.

You know how sometimes you feel like your entire life has been preparing you for this one moment? Most times it’s major examinations, like the A Levels – having studied your entire life, you’ve reached the critical juncture where your performance here could drastically change the course of your future. This was one of the more unexpected make-or-break moments for me. I was hell-bent on not being stranded in a foreign city while carrying practically nothing.

5.11pm. I asked someone wearing the rail uniform about alternative ways to get to the station, and he told me to take the metro instead. Running down the street, I quickly found the metro station, but there were already a few people queueing to talk to the man in the booth so I tried to use the automated booths instead. To my despair, all the options were fully in Portuguese, and in my panic, I couldn’t figure out if there was a ‘change language’ option.

5.18pm. “Do you need help?” a young man asked, approaching the automated booths. “YES!” I exclaimed, silently thanking God that a local in this otherwise empty station bothered to stop. He helped me to buy the ticket, and at the end, quickly said that it wasn’t a direct train, so I’d still have to change for another line at Trindade. Wait, what?! Then before he left, he asked if I could spare some change. I gave him all the remaining change in my coin pouch to thank him for his help and ran off.

5.25pm. I’d reached Trindade, but I couldn’t figure out which track to go to. The tracks on the platform were all parallel to each other, but the only way to get to another track was to go down and up the stairs, and the small static signs hanging from the ceiling weren’t helpful enough. Instead of showing any relevant information about the stops, direction, or waiting time for the trains, the few mounted screens only showed advertisements. Standing on the first platform, I asked a nearby group for directions. “Which track for Campanhã?”, to which they simply pointed in the opposite direction. It seemed like there might be a bit of a language barrier. Also, it could be any of the three remaining tracks!

5.27pm. I rushed down the stairs, running to what I thought would be the staircase for the opposite track and flying up the steps. Heart pounding, I asked someone who looked like he worked at the station. Again, he pointed in the general direction of the other tracks, and told me to just go across. Then I realised that by running across instead of turning left, I’d simply gone down and up again along the same track, arriving back where I started. Cursing at my own stupidity and running down the stairs again, I felt my face flush red as tears started to well up in my eyes.

5.30pm. I tried to keep calm, but with every minute that passed, I grew more anxious. The lady I’d sat down beside clutched her belongings closer to her, probably worried that I might take her stuff. I didn’t know where to look to find out how long I had to wait, and I was afraid that I was waiting for a train that would never come. Every minute I spent on this platform was a minute less for me to find and board the train back to Lisbon.

5.32pm. I turned to the lady beside me and decide to try my luck. “Excusez-moi, vous parlez français?” “Uh, oui,” she replied. I asked her in halting French if this train stops at Campanhã. It does, and she’s going there too, which is a huge relief. Then I asked if she knew when the train would arrive, and she said that we just had to wait.

The train arrived, and we got on. Still hot and sweaty from all that running around, I told myself that I would never do this again.

5.41pm. We arrived at Campanhã, and the lady helped me to look for the track. Thankfully, it was a lot easier to find than expected, and I thanked her as I ran up the train. I found my assigned seat in the first class cabin, alongside the professionally dressed adults typing away on their laptops. I’d made it by the skin of my teeth. I breathed a huge sigh of relief and thanked God as the train pulled away from the station.

To date, I think this day trip to Porto still ranks as one of the most eventful, stressful, and downright memorable experiences I’ve had. I’ve definitely learned my lesson to plan ahead more and to be less recklessly spontaneous, but a part of me is also glad that I went through that alone. I am now more confident that if the situation ever calls for it, I can rise to the occasion and be whatever is needed to face the problem head-on without relying on someone else. I know that I’m not someone who will be paralyzed by fear into inaction when thrown into a sticky situation because I won’t give up without a fight, and I’ll put in everything I’ve got to reach a solution. For that, I’m somewhat thankful that I was given the 1745 train timing instead of the 1930 one.

This is Part 3 of my Solo Tripping to Portugal series. If you enjoyed it, check out Part 1 to Lisbon here, and Part 2 to Sintra here. You can also check out my YouTube video of my trip to Portugal here, which for reasons mentioned above, doesn’t feature much of Porto.