Allllllllllll the tile of Porto

We all had some favorite parts of Porto.

The girls loved the swing in our AirBnB.

Adam loved the port.

I loved the tile. Literally every building façade was tile. Each one different to the next.

Even the McDonalds was in a tiled building.

Before I interest/overwhelm/bore you (pick your own adjective here) with 10,000 pictures of tile, let me tell you a few of the sights we visited in Porto.

The Palácio da Bolsa (Stock Exchange Palace) is now the headquarters of Porto’s Commercial Association. This building was established on the ruins of St Francis Convent after a classic church vs state battle. The impressive marble and granite staircase takes visitors to the Golden Room, which is completely covered with gold-leaf, the General Assembly Room, completely decorated in wood, and the Arab Room, decorated in Moorish style.

We did a guided tour instead of our usual self-paced ones. One of us got bored at the first stop: the grand staircase.

The celling above the grand staircase

The Arab Room

The General Assembly Room

Even the wood floors look like tile!

The Arab Room

We also toured Livraria Lello & Irmão, a bookshop in the heart of Porto housed in a neo-gothic building from 1906 with its exquisitely decorated wood facade. The bookstore has two floors with shelves packed with books of all shapes and sizes covering every wall and touching the ceiling. An elegant wooden and red velvet staircase stands in the middle of the library connecting both floors, while the stained-glass window at the top fills the shop with natural light bringing the room to life. There is an urban legend that J.K. Rowling was inspired by the Lello & Irmão to write the Harry Potter series. Though beautiful, I found this place to be a bit of a tourist trap. You pay to go in; timed reservations required, usually selling out 2-3 days in advance. However, they allow way too many people in at a time & you cannot walk through, browse the books, enjoy the architecture without being squashed by a couple hundred other tourists trying to do the same.

Needing to escape the claustrophobic feeling, we decided to walk along the port area which started the name of the city.

Then these charmed faces used their special eyes to convince Dad they needed a snack.

And it worked.

Thoroughly refreshed, everyone then had the energy to explore the side streets, main streets, train stations, and market squares in search of the azulejo tiles. In all, I took 46 photos of tiles in 2 days (I consider this restraint). I have narrowed it down to my favorites below (also restraint).