Porto things to do or day trips? Is a week too long?

Three days dedicated to Porto followed by four days Douro River cruise.

Thanks! Any good multi day cruises companies you can recommend?

I've spent 6 days in Porto and could easily spend another week. I'm not a sweet wine drinker, but did do the Sandeman cellar tour with the vintage ports. Had more fun with the group than anything. A couple of us still keep in touch.

I did a one day trip in a van with a party of 8 up into the Douro. Again, I live in wine country so what interests me isn't usually what tours show. I did enjoy seeing the layouts of a couple of the smaller vineyards we visited. It's a very pretty valley.

While the area around the mouth of the river is tourist central, I enjoied just walking through the local neighborhoods. The Bolhau market was really nice, good food, and near the center of town. Easy to reach by bus.

I also liked the beach, north of the city proper, at Matosinhos. There's a park, an old fort, surfers, warm water, boats to watch, and excellent sundowns on the sand. Good food and drink on the boardwalk also. You can spend a lot of money , but they also have a couple markets (Lidl, etc) where you can grab some supplies and sit on the beach.

The churches are spectacular, but I spent more time just looking at the tilework on ordinary buildings. I also just crawled around a number of local craft venues, but didn't do any museums. Those are for the next trip...

Hi!

Gastronomical tour: https://tasteporto.com/pt/

They are very good.

Wine cellar to visit: they are all nice, but Graham's, Taylors and Croft are usually the preference of many people to make a visit and tasting. But if you just want to relax and drink some wine, Porto Cruz has a very nice rooftop. Concerning the building, my favourite is Sandeman.

Day trips:

• Matosinhos is as described above. You can take the metro there, the bus, or uber/taxi/bolt (unexpensive). Would just like to add that you should visit the market, and also that best restaurants are at Rua Heróis de França and around that street.
• Vila do Conde - a small town with nice gardens, beaches, architecture, etc. You can go there taking the metro.
• Braga, Guimarães (both North from Porto) and Aveiro (South): just take the train at one of the train stations, São Bento or Campanhã. Each of them is more or less one hour ride. Braga has an atraction, a church on a hill with a beautiful staircase, just outside the city, named Bom Jesus. Guimarães is very nice and historical, as it is where Portugal was born. Aveiro is an interesting city with some water channels, and nearby (12 kms more or less) is Costa Nova, by the ocean, with very typical stripes houses.

Museums in Porto: imo you should not miss MMIPO at Rua das Flores. The visit includes both the museum and the church. If you like sports, take the metro to "Estádio do Dragão" and visit the museum of Futebol Clube do Porto.

On Saturdays, there are 2 open air markets where everything you can imagine is being sold: clothes, fruits, furniture, etc. During morning the sellers are at Senhora da Hora, you can go by metro (all lines), during the afternoon they are at Custóias - metro towards ISMAI, leave it at "Candido Reis" stop and follow the crowd.

Just some ideas for things to do, hope some of them might be usefull.

Just got back from Porto, we did this wine tour to the Douro Valley, and it was incredible. The scenery is pure magic; I’ve never been anywhere like it. Highly recommended.

We skipped the bookstore. It isn’t that large and costs a hefty sum to enter. When we walked by, the line to get it was fairly long, so some people think it is worth the price. While we did three port/wine tastings, we didn’t take any tours.

We did go to the Majestic Café for the architecture even though it’s only tourists that go there. While we enjoyed it, it was fairly pricey for what you get.

Our visit to Porto was three nights and we felt that was sufficient. We did have a rental car and toured the area both before and after the Porto visit.

I do think a week was too long. I think 4 days would have been more than plenty of time, with one of them being the Douro Valley tour..
My husband found a good craft beer place not too far from the river, so when we would got too thirsty we would head over there or find a place to buy a water and/ or a Porto tonic. Problem is then in 20 minutes I have to pee, so that means finding another restaurant to but another drink so I can use the bathroom. Rinse Repeat. It get tiresome and expensive. And time consuming because the service there is so slow! Things close during afternoon, which means waiting around for places to reopen.

One day to do walking tour. On this day we did a 6 bridges tour. This was one of out favorite things. The only caveat is that the young sales women told us to walk down the stairs to the river. The kept going and going and going. My knees were in extreme pain. (Already unhappy from hills in Santiago de Compostela, where I discovered my knees didn't like going down hills.). While at the river, we had to use a restroom so we ordered the worst 19euro Porto Tonic we have had yet compared to countless others. The waitress broke a large bill for us. When she gave us our change in the little bucket , she shorted us 50 cents.

One day for the Gaia wine district across the river. We took the monorail back to the bridge and walked across the bridge, so that we could ride the over priced funicular up the mountainside. My knees thanked me. That same evening, we saw an authentic fado show. It was great. Didn't understand one word but loved it. It gives new meaning to the tshirt we bought last year which shows a sardine singing fado. :D

The museum of port of whatever it was called was a waste of time. We had to wait an hour because the close down in the middle of the day.

We did the obligatory Douro Valley wine tour. Our guide was great. The scenery was beautiful. We only went to 2 small quintas. The first gave us samples of 3 wines. We went to go buy a bottle of dry white for Porto tonics and I saw others had olive oil tastes. I asked at the counter if I could taste it. They had only one but it was good so I bought a bottle of that too. The second quinta was 2 samples of wine. (not good to us. I don't even think there was a port, so we were thankful we got one when we did), also a sample of 2 olive oils. Again, we were not impressed and so thankful to have purchased the bottle at the first stop. This quinta also gave a tour of the old style olive oil production. Very interesting.

One day we took a daytrip to Aveiro. I wish I would have just taken the train out there as I originally wanted rather than the daytrip because while it was nice, we had only 10-15 minutes in the town and 20 minutes in another. Not enough to do anything really other than speed-shop the only open souvenir shop and use the water closet. I really would have liked to do the tour of the salt flats but it was only offered in English at 11:00 & 3:00. IIRC. The train would have put us there about 10:30 IIRC but I didn't know how to get from the station to the flats, so we did the safe thing and opted for the tour. That same day we toured the castle.

We took the trolley out to Foz to see the beach.