the portuguese cities of porto and lisbon had been on my travel short list for a while, so when ian suggested we explore them between christmas and new years, i was excited! we spent a couple of days in each city and it was a great adventure. it was sunny and balmy, i absolutely fell in love with the all the tiled buildings in both cities, and we had a good time as a family. i have to say though: every trip with our kids seems to get more challenging! the extremely hilly, cobbly, and narrow streets of porto and lisbon were kind of wild to navigate with our wiggly, giggly boys and i feel like we are now totally out of the chill-baby-just-along-for-the-ride stage 😉 still, upon returning home from every trip it all seems supremely worth it. i feel really grateful that we’ve had the opportunity to explore so much whilst living abroad.

okay, on to some photos from porto, which is such a cool city!

the very first thing we did after we dropped our bags at our airbnb was find some pastel de nata. did you know that eating a portuguese custard tart in portugal is the number one highest rated thing to do (on tripadvisor) in the entire world?!? we went to a recommended bakery called manteigaria (passing through the still-very-christmassy streets of porto – i guess i was too excited for our treats to stop and take photos!) and the tarts did not disappoint. yummmm.
 
the boys were up early the next morning so we headed straight out to explore.
 
we walked across the bottom level of the dom luis i bridge, crossing the river douro, to take in the views of the colourful city from the other side. i had seen photos of this vista and was really excited to see it with my own eyes. can you tell by the crazy ammount of pictures below that i liked it?

we found a playground right on the water – cha-ching! the boys had a blast running around while i continued to snap photos of the city 🙂
 
then we rode a gondola up to the top of the hill so we could walk back across the bridge on its top level! it was such a fun little ride hanging over the land taking in the views!

here’s the awesome family photo we got in porto. haha. i think one set of eyes is open and looking at the camera. maybe?

walking back across the bridge on the top level was probably my favourite twenty minutes of our entire trip. i just felt so alive, taking it all in from high up, under the sun with my three boys.

we went to porto cathedral and i looooved all the blue painted tile. moses was pretty into taking photos of it with his new camera that santa brought him!

the cathedral towers provided some cool views overlooking the city.

 
 
we shared a sweet roll from the street market in front of the cathedral before hitting the streets again on a little hunt for more blue-tiled churches.

we definitely found some! 🙂

 
 
then we went to the crystal palace gardens to let the kids run around for a while.

we found some roaming peacocks and moses and gabriel loooooved just picking up sticks and rocks and watching the fountains. simple joys.
 
the gardens are huge and we saw just a little corner of them! (we had a little potty accident to had to head back to the airbnb, haha!) we went back into the tiled streets…
 
and while ian and moses went back to get a change of clothes, gabriel and i popped in to the livraria lello, a famous porto bookstore. i say popped in because *luckily* having a little child with me qualified me to go to the front of the masssssive queue to get in. it’s so interesting how some things just get so popular and so crowded! the bookstore is certainly gorgeous but i found it pretty comical how packed it was!
 
 
we found daddy and mo and got some more pastel de nata and enjoyed more beautiful, colourful tile!
 
 
 
and found one of our best magnets yet for our collection – i love this one!
 
porto is very cool. so glad we got to experience it as a family!