We all made it to breakfast for our last morning in the Douro region, and apart from the coffee, it was tasty. The morning views of the river were thick with fog, but the clouds were slowly beginning to lift and leaving a beautiful mist over the water. J managed to get his drone out between breakfast and loading the car.

It was an hour’s drive west to Porto, and the sun was shining. It was sad to leave the beautiful Douro region behind – we wouldn’t have minded hiking there on a nice day – and equally sad that we were heading toward our last night of the trip.

I had a VomiKids as Dan navigated the winding mountain roads, until we were on a highway heading to Porto. I hadn’t been enamored with Lisbon, and I hoped Porto was different.

It was.

Apparently, Porto “put the ‘Portu’ in Portugal’, says my Lonely Planet. In 868, Porto was the capital of Portucale, and since then, it’s been a colorful, quaint city. Our SatNav took us down some weird roads before we found a parking garage for 15 euros a day, just down the street from the Gallery Townhouses. We knew we’d booked private rooms, but on Google, the place came up as a hostel – and it was. The hostel is on one side of the street, and it includes a bar and restaurant. The Gallery Townhouses are on the other side of the street, with a shared living room (exposed brick walls, comfy couches), a shared kitchen (with a water dispenser), and tasteful, clean, modern rooms. Of all the places we stayed, this one was up there in our list of favorites. We regretted we only had one night there.

We arrived too early to check in, so we left our luggage in the reception and wandered around the city. Unlike Lisbon, Porto felt more compact and walkable, with tons of quaint and hip little restaurants, cafes, and shops packed in around the corners.

Our first stop was just up the street at an open-air coffee bar called The Terrace, where we ordered Flat Whites to go. Then it was down into the old town area, where we explored churches and tried to climb the Torre des Clérigos, a 75m-high tower designed in the 1700s. As with most places we visited, we could not simply buy a ticket and go up; we had to book a time slot. We did this, then ventured out to find lunch someplace.

Lunch was around the corner at an amazing place called NOLA. The menu offered an array of vegetarian and vegan options that were out of this world: creative, fresh, healthy. While there, we decided to book a visit to the nearby bookstore, Livraria Lello, advertised as “the most beautiful bookstore in the world.” Rebecca had come across it on Instagram, and I found it in my Lonely Planet.

I had imagined a bookstore you might saunter into off the street, grab a book, have a coffee. But no. Once we arrived, there were two long lines of people, each line behind a colored sign that read 14:00 or 14:30 – your time slot. You found yours and got in line, waiting to have your tickets scanned for entry. For 8 euros, we had entry to the bookstore, which turned into a voucher you could use to buy a book. For 15 euros, we could have skipped the line to enter, but the line for our entry time went pretty quickly, and soon we were in a crowded but ornate bookstore.

According to my Lonely Planet, the famous red staircase in the bookstore was “supposedly the inspiration for the one in the Harry Potter books, which JK Rowling partly wrote in Porto while working here as an English teacher from 1991 to 1993.” Like Jesus, I did not know that JK Rowling had been in Portugal, much less an English teacher. (Obviously we learned Jesus had not been in Portugal.)

There was a small Harry Potter section at the back of the shop, complete with a stool and a Sorting Hat.

From there, we strolled down to the river, walked over the pedestrian bridge, took a gondola back down, wandered around the river, then took the gondola back up and walked over an even higher pedestrian bridge back to the tower for our 5pm climb.

It was 4:47, but we hoped they would let us up anyway. They would not.

An unsmiling woman peered at our tickets and said, “You have to wait until 5.”

Pretty tired from all the walking, and a little frustrated, Rebecca and I decided to go to the hotel. J remained at the tower (his photos are stunning, so worth the wait), and we picked up Dan at a nearby brewery.

Rebecca had gone ahead and made reservations at Flow, the restaurant recommended to us by our hotel guy back at Your Hotel & Spa. It was just down the road from our hostel, so we dressed a little nicer and headed in. The place was a mixture of posh and hip, with exposed brick and dim, industrial lighting. The tables were set and the chairs comfortable. A sign at the door advertised “smart casual” dress code, but the people inside were the whole gamut. There were men in baseball caps and women in white pants suits. At one point, a couple entered who looked like they might have just gotten married.

“They’re dressed like it, and they’ve ordered champagne,” Rebecca pointed out. “I would love to send something over to their table.”

She called over our waitress and asked, but the waitress stared back blankly.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Is there a way to find out? We’d like to send something over to their table,” Rebecca tried again. The waitress seemed confused.

“I don’t know.”

After that, we saw her over there opening a bottle of wine. We imagined ways of asking the couple, if we were the waitress. “Celebrating anything special?” we might have asked. But this did not happen. In any case, I figured it was worth preserving Rebecca’s kindness and thoughtfulness in this blog. If you got married in Porto on April 3 and dined at Flow after, please accept the fact that we wanted to buy you a drink!

Flow was expensive, but delicious and worth it. It was a cut above our standards, really, which was evident every time J tried to refill our wine or water glasses. The moment he plucked the wine bottle from the silver bucket or reached for the sparkling water, a waiter would appear out of nowhere and, with alarm, take the bottle from him.

The food was incredible, the ambience was buzzy, and we were all pretty happy we’d followed the guy’s suggestion and booked the place. We kept looking around, wondering if he was there somewhere, in disguise.

Afterwards, we popped into a brewery for some beer. There was trivia going on, with questions on the TV. Rebecca held up her Google Translate camera and we tried to play along on our own. Then we headed back to our hotel.

It may seem like an anticlimactic end to such a long, eventful, adventurous trip, but eating at Flow and walking home through a rainless night in Porto was actually a perfect conclusion. If we go back, we would go in May, stay in Porto and the Douro, or drive south to the Algarve. Portugal is a small country, but there is so much to see, and 10 days is not nearly enough time to see it all.