We woke up here in Porto to rain ao we took it easy (when do we not?) for the morning.  At 9:00 there is a delivery of fresh rolls, 2 sweet and 4 plain white.  What a treat with some tea for breakfast!  I could get used to this.

The rain paused and we set out for the old market called Balhao.  It’s a fairly typical market for a large city, but not much “junk,”  mostly veggies, fruit, seafood and sausages with a few souvenier stalls mixed in.  This picture is from the upstairs level:

At the entrance this cute father–son duo is happily playing music: See the bird on his shoulder?

I wanted to make us some vegetable soup so we made the rounds and came back to buy some from the first woman we had seen.  Communication was difficult but I tried Italian and somehow it worked.  She ended up giving us a bunch of parsley and a couple of branches of bay leaves.  So sweet; I’m sorry I didn’t get her photo.

With the veggies in Ken’s back pack we started to head in the direction of the river; it is so overcast and blustery that my pictures are not good.  Then we climbed up hill towards a restaurant called Avore recommended by Sofia.  This place is in the bottom of an art gallery and it is filled with local business men, surrounded by glass and gorgeous.  They have a fixed price lunch for €8.50.  I loved my simple baked whole Dourado fish (bream?) with potatoes and yummy greens.  They also served me a slice of soft yellowish bread baked with a layer of bacon inside that was on a plate with arugala and a bit of balsamic drizzle.  It was delicious!  Here is one of the views from the room:

We walked back home for some down time and I made the soup for tonight.  We have a real kitchen here.

Walk before dinner we just decided to go in a new direction and we bumped into the main cathedral of Porto.  It was so windy I got scared for a moment so we went inside.  I loved seeing all of the Easter flowers decorating the church.  Coming out, a miracle:  the sun was shining!  I took this looking back into town at the tile buildings.

And we saw this empty? closed? market with grass on its roof.

And favorite tile of the day:

The soup was OK with our rolls and some ham and cheese.  We went to buy some wine and ended up with white instead of red.  Total tourist mistake!