Early in the year there was a newspaper article outlining Ryanair’s plan to offer two new routes from Shannon Airport – the destinations were Naples and Porto. Having relocated back to Limerick last year after twenty-seven years away, this news piqued my interest. The travel options from Shannon are more limited than those from Dublin Airport (which for some unfathomable reason accounts for 90% of flight to and from Ireland –but without a train service to Dublin city centre). I had visited Naples last year but had never been to Porto. I booked it instantly – a credit card is a dangerous weapon in my hand on pay day.

It’s a city I knew little about. My two previous trips to Portugal had been to the capital Lisbon. Porto is the country’s second city, and the country is named after it(or maybe it’s the other way round – either way Porto is an older city than Lisbon. Today it is home to more than a million people in its metropolitan area and it straddles the Douro River as it meets the sea.

My friend was arriving from London two hours after my flight landed. I decided to use this time to work. My travels this year meant that I had very few actual holidays left, so I needed to bring the work laptop to minimise official time off. When he arrived, we took the Metro to the Bolhao region in the city centre. We emerged to the sight of a beautiful, blue-tiled church called the Chapel of Souls. These blue-tiled building are dotted all over the city and in olden days blue tiles worked as status symbols for wealth. All churches are covered in these intricately designed tiles.

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