It was mid afternoon and past the highest forecasted temperature for the day. At 37 °C (around 100 °F), it was not easy to be walking around. Luckily, our short visit to Porto Cathedral was enough for some rest and respite from the heat. We moved forward with our next self-guided walking tour. Using the app, GPSMyCity, we guided ourselves from Porto Cathedral, to São Bento Train Station, to Porto City Hall, to the Chapel of the Souls, and to Bolhão Market.
The route was less than 2 kilometer (around 1.2 miles) long and mostly flat. A flight of steps sharply declined from Porto Cathedral to the Main Street. After that, it was mostly an exercise of keeping the balance while walking the limestone and basalt cobblestones of Porto.
São Bento Train Station
It was built on the site of the former 16th century Benedictine Convent of São Bento d’Ave Maria. Hand painted blue and white Azulejo tiles decorated its walls. It became one of the most beautiful train station in the world when it opened to the public in 1916.
We spent quite some time at the train station admiring its Azulejo tiled walls. It was an active, busy, and historic train station in the heart of Porto.
Porto City Hall
Our next destination. It was a short walk of a quarter mile (around 600 meters) due north of São Bento Train Station. It was a Tuesday and yet the building looked deserted from the outside. We heard that Portugal has a long summer vacation in August. People go back to work on the first days of September. The plaza in front of City Hall was a different story. It was crowded with people, most of whom were lining up, having their photographs taken beside the large Porto sign. Of course, we didn’t miss our turn to take some photographs.
Chapel of Souls
A chapel located along a busy street, Rua de Santa Catarina, also famous as a shopping area. The chapel was adorned with thousands of blue and white Azulejo tiles. This made the chapel famous to tourists who flock the area to visit and take photographs.
It was another easy quarter mile (around 600 meters) walk, going east this time, to arrive at Chapel of Souls.
It was originally a small wooden chapel in the 18th century dedicated to St. Catherine. the chapel was renamed Chapel of Souls when the Brotherhood of Souls moved into the chapel. Incidentally, it also housed the image of Our Lady of Souls. The chapel was closing when we got there. We were not allowed to go in anymore. Anyway, just seeing the blue and white Azulejo tiles was satisfying enough.
Bolhão Market
The market was just around the corner from Chapel of Souls. We found some colorful facade right next to the market but the setting sun was too harsh for a good photograph. We opted out of doing more photographs and instead decided to explore the market.
Bolhão Market is a public market. It was completely free to enter and explore. Inside, there was a wide variety of food and dry goods for sale. We were particularly attracted to the variety of canned sardines (they looked so colorful), dried and salted codfish (bacalhau), and the variety of freshly prepared food. The upper floor had some fancy restaurants but we didn’t fancy it at the time.
Thus, we end our days in Porto, Portugal. It was an exciting adventure! Our next adventures happened in the cities of Guimaraes and Braga.
We hope that you enjoyed our random photographs of our travels. These were our memories that we found and captured in a photograph.
Visit our Photo Gallery too! We have higher resolution photographs that you may enjoy. We hope that our photographs will be wonderful enough for you to order some prints. Thank you!
