5 reasons to put Porto on your bucket list

We have a rule for our annual girls' trip: if you're marking a birthday year that ends in "0", you get to choose the destination. My friend Lisa's desire to stay at the legendary Yeatman Hotel, and to explore the wines made upriver from there, prompted my first trip to Portugal.

What a discovery! It's perhaps shameful that a place so close to England in distance and allegiance can seem "off the beaten track", but the truth is that Portugal's profile is far lower than its more popular European neighbours. Of the handful I know who've visited, most went for the Algarve, a top British pick for beach holidays. Despite its long links to England, few are familiar with Northern Portugal and its chief city of Porto.

Here are five reasons why you should move Porto further up your holiday priority list.

ONE: IT'S EUROPE'S GREATEST WINE SECRET
Port makes it unsurprising as a wine destination. If you're English, this place's eponymous drink has probably concluded many of your life's most memorable meals. The sweet, fortified wine is made further up the Douro valley, shipped down to Porto for aging and then on to the rest of the world. The British have loved it for centuries, and political circumstance put them in charge of many of the biggest makers in the early 19th century.  Today, clever marketing departments have ensured a great port tourism experience, with the traditional port lodges on the south side of the river offering tours and tastings to meet every budget and level of interest.

But there's much more here than the sweet stuff. The Douro is one of Europe's oldest wine growing regions; their first big export market was ancient Rome. The locals even claim to be the inventors of the DOC system that restricts the ability to brand a wine according to its region. Many vineyards have vines older than a century, the starting point for fabulously rich and complex products. Steep slopes formed of easily cracked schist rock create perfect drainage while capturing the sun, while their unique terraces are spectacular to see. In fact, they whole region is a UNESCO World Heritage site because of their architectural impact on the land. Further north, you'll find some of Europe's greatest easy-drinking whites. They're all available in Porto, which has enough wine-by-the-glass offerings to keep your body in a constant, gentle pickle across your whole holiday. Best of all, most of these "table wines" (as the locals call all their non-fortified wines) are little known, rarely exported and fantastic value for money. I don't expect this state to last, so visit now to make your discoveries and invest while the price is cheap.

TWO: IT'S FAMILIAR YET EXOTIC
Portugal is a mainstream a European country that's had a continuous alliance with England since 1386 (the world's oldest). At first it all seems very familiar. Lots of churches, windy streets, picturesque architecture, sidewalk cafes. Plenty of words on signs are familiar. Most people speak English. And yet, it's not like anywhere else. The language as spoken is full of "shush"es and strange cadences, like someone mixed Spanish, Russian and some mysterious ancient texts to come up with a new dialect for a race from a fantasy novel. The architecture is as elegant as Paris or Rome, but the tiled exteriors are unlike anything I've seen elsewhere in Europe, and the churches are so encrusted with precious metals they feel almost pagan. Beautifully restored buildings sit cheek-by-jowl with crumbling ruins being reclaimed by strangling carpets of blue-blooming morning glories. This lends the city a slightly seedy decadence reminiscent of Naples or Palermo, but the locals have the sophisticated style of Milan or Madrid.

Much of the food seems familiar, yet there are oddities. Like their proud ability to cook a different salt cod recipe for every day of the year. (Why the passion with dried fish when the whole country is a narrow strip next to the aquatic larder of the Atlantic?) They outdo even Greece with their abundance of octopus recipes, and I've never visited a country more in love with the egg. It seems to dominate everything, from the custard tart that is the national pastry to fried versions lobbed atop most sandwiches. With their snack of lupin beans I discovered my first completely new food in years. The nation's history brings similar surprises. Most of us have some sense of Portugal during the Age of Discovery, their colonisation of Brazil and their role during the Napoleonic Wars. But there's so much more to discover. They have glorious heroes, romantic poets and wildly dysfunctional royals. Turns out St. Anthony of Padua ... who I was raised to respect as the most Italian of saints, and whose statue occupied all of our homes ... was Portuguese. Discovering Porto's unique take on European culture was like finding out that my favourite, long-dead author had written a series of books I somehow missed.

THREE: IT'S EASY ON THE EYES
Porto offers one of the world's greatest urban riverfronts, in duplicate. Both sides clamber up steep slopes, providing views from the opposite bank like the architectural capriccios of artists' imaginations. Stolid 18th century warehouses, Baroque fantasies encrusted with ornament, grim Romanesque piles, 19th century statements of financial confidence, modern apartment blocks all contribute to the pastiche. Harry Potter fans are delighted to discover that J.K. Rowling lived here while drafting the first book in the series. Twisting cobbled alleys, caped college students, an extravagant fountain of winged lions and an opulent neo-gothic bookstore with a sinuous, fairy-tale staircase all influenced the style of the wizarding world. The river gorge is spanned by bridges that are truly wondrous in their architectural daring; the oldest by Gustave Eiffel of Parisian tower fame. Most days dawn with ghostly fog dancing up the Douro, burning off by mid-morning. The sun sets where the river flows into the sea, painting the sky with extraordinary colours every night we were there, gilding the river and the windows of the city with the same gaudy sparkle on display in their church altars.  Head upstream, and the system of steep terraces gives you some of the most spectacular wine country on the planet. It's a dramatic, luscious, theatrical set of a place.

FOUR: NATIVES OFFER AN ABUNDANT WELCOME
If he was lying, he did it well. "We love the English!" Our driver insisted. You are our oldest allies.
Your families settled here and still run some of our biggest businesses. You rescued us from Napoleon when the Spanish betrayed us and our own royal family ran away. (The peninsular war monument topped by a bristling, confident English lion ripping the neck out of a tragically submissive French eagle leaves no room for mis-interpretation.) "You are more like our cousins than people from another country!" Whether this was true or a spectacularly fine line for the tourists, we chose to believe it. Certainly we've rarely met more uniformly cheerful, helpful and enthusiastic service. From luxury hotel to inexpensive restaurant, wine bar waiter to nun-on-the-street, it seemed that the driving ambition of everyone we met in Porto was to go out of their way to make us love their city. Nobody was ever in a hurry ... stopping to chat with us seemed more enjoyable than whatever they were off to do. Waiters were keen to offer details on the food, keener still to tell us what was best that day whether or not it was on the menu and could even be talked into offering wines by the glass from special bottles they probably shouldn't have opened.

It helps that almost everyone speaks good English. The exception, oddly, are the taxi drivers, most of whom speak only Portuguese and make it painfully obvious that Portuguese pronunciation is very different from the written word. Having your destination written down for them is a good idea, as is a strong set of nerves as they endanger their brakes and transmissions careering around precipitous, cobbled corners.  In eight days I encountered just two grumpy people. Both had tedious jobs ferrying tourists up, down and across the Douro. Otherwise, this seems a charmed place where everyone seems to love their jobs.

FIVE: GOOD VALUE FOR MONEY 
Even with a plunging pound, Porto offers bargains. Restaurants seemed to be about 20% cheaper than their London equivalents. Taxis are a bargain, rarely costing more than €10 to get from one side of town to another and about €20 to get in from the airport. If there are two or more of you, it's not worth wasting the time checking out public transport. All of the port houses charge for tastings, but it's a nominal fee compared to Northern California's wineries and the pours are generous. Reasonable wine prices prevail from Michelin-star restaurants to humble wine bars, as if the industry has colluded to encourage you to drink as much as possible. Even at the magnificently luxurious Yeatman Hotel (the catalyst for this whole trip, where rooms are a blow-the-budget extravagance) you can get wine by the glass for €4. The equivalent at a London hotel with that kind of view would be €12 or more.

Tempted yet? If not, in coming days I'll write more about wine, sightseeing, architecture, food and accommodation. Like all those cheerful Porto natives, I want you to be thinking about booking your visit before I'm finished.