October 19, 2026

Gaia, Distrito do Porto, Portugal

Tivoli Kopke Hotel

Breakfast was at 07:00 and Mike, Maddie and I were there waiting for the doors to open. It is, like usually, a breakfast buffet. They also had a selection o foot dishes to order from. I ordered the ham and cheese omelette. I managed to get a couple of tea bags from the staff to take back to the room., along with a couple small jars of honey.

Was back in the room waking up Mary by 07:30. I decided to walk to the laundromat and check it out. Tomorrow is laundry day and I want to make sure I have the proper payment methods ready. Wash Station Gaia Lavandaria Self-Service is located at Travessa (meaning small street or lane) Conselheiro Veloso da Cruz 56.

This house is included for no particular reason. It was on my walk to the laundromat. I like the tile work.

Google Maps in had I headed out the door, up the elevator to the 5th floor, across the fifth floor to the elevator that goes to the 7th floor, then out the front of the hotel. Turned left and walked up the “hill” towards my destination. The map kept pointing me uphill. There were thoughts of giving up, but I continued on.

The Hotel is built directly into the steep, terraced hills side of the Vila Nova de Gaia riverfront area. The elevation of the hotel changes dramatically as you walk through the property. The lower baseline, at the entrance we arrived at is at an elevation of 15 to 20 meters (50 – 65 feet) above sea level. The 7th floor is roughly at 30 to 35 meters (100 – 115 feet), with the rooftop Terrance and higher guest floors 35 to 40 meters (115 – 131 feet). While the unique hillside positioning is what gives guests panoramic views for the Porto Skyline and the Dom Luís I Bridge, it is also what makes the hotel difficult to stay at.

According to google the laundromat is at 78 meters (260 feet). So, it was approximately a 50 meter (160 foot) rise over a distance of 950 meters (3,100 feet) or a 5.16% grade. For comparison a public road with a noticeable incline but still safe to drive up, like a mountain pass, usually max out about 6%. Your standard ADA ramp is gentler at 8.33% grade (1 foot in 12). Your standard patio has a 2% grade to successfully allow water to drain off. The point is – it is steep.

 This shot is from the hill top where the gondola stops.

I made it back to the hotel just in time to meet the tour group in the lobby at 08:30. I did have to make a dash back to the room to get my whisper device for the walking tour of Porto across the river. We were on the bus and on our way by 08:45. It took about twenty minutes to get into Porto across the river. The bus dropped us off near Rue di Alexandre Herculano close to the historic center at close to the top of the hill that is Porto.

Porto’s hills drop sharply from the historic center down to the Douro River, with a total vertical change of about 60 meters (197 feet). Grade in the steepest streets and funicular paths up up to 36%, making parts of the city even steeper than San Francisco. Our local tour guide probably found the steepest alleys for us to walk down to the river during the tour. The building can be quite beautiful as the Portuguese used ceramic tiles not only to decorate their buildings but help protect them from the humidity.

Porto’s ceramic industry is famous for the blue-and-white azulejos architecture and historic tile production. Gaia was not only a place for making and shipping port wine, but there are still the remains of many ceramic tile factories. We saw a beautiful example of the azulejos tile in the Igreja de Santo Ildefenso church located near Batalha Square. The church was completed in 1739 and built in a proto-Barque style and features a retable by the Italian artist Nicolas Nasoni. The beautiful blue-and-white façade azulejo tile work was added in 1932.

The tile work on the church. 

Our second stop was the Sãn Bento Railway Station. The station has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is a National Monument. It isn’t a large station like say Milano Centrale. It was built much earlier starting in 1904, based on plans by the architect José Marques da Silva. The major feature of the station are the large murals representing moments in the country’s history. These murals contain about twenty thousand azulejo tiles covering about 551 square meters or nearly 6,000 square feet.

The only problem with the train station is that it a train station. Full of people dragging suitcases, running to get to trains, and several groups of tourists looking at the wall. It had all the earmarks of a great place for pickpockets. Because of the construction of the adjoining new metro line, they had placed a protective film over much of the tile. What we could see was very nice, but you would need more time to fully understand the murals.

Inside the train station.

The next stop was the Palácio de Bolsa (the stock exchange palace). The Palácio was built in the 19th century by the Associação Comercial do Porto (the city’s commercial association) in a neoclassical style.  Although the work began in 1842, following the plans of Porto architect Joaquin da Costa Lima Júnior, the decoration of the interior was only completed in 1910, and involved several different artists.

The Palácio de Bolsa has been a national monument since 1982 and is designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.

The interior of the Palácio is magnificently decorated. The central courtyard, Pátioo da Nações (Nations’ courtyard) is covered by a large metallic, octagonal dome with glass panels. The lower part of the dome is decorated with the painted coats-of-arms of Portugal and the countries with which Portugal had commercial relations with in the 19th century. The one room of particular interest was the court room. It was absolutely amazing.

The floor of the central courtyard

Can you find USA and Mexico?

Our guide in the courtroom

Showing some of the paintings on the walls in the courtroom.

One of the meeting rooms

Again with the beautiful tile work.

We left the Palácio and walked down hill through the narrow cobbled stone paved street to the reboleria. There we boarded a boat which took us on a river cruise tour of the bridges over the Douro River. They do have some very beautiful bridges, including one by Eiffel, yes the man with the tower in Paris. It had just gone noon when they dropped us off on the Gaia side of the river. We stopped at Ar de Rio for lunch. Not bad but just a tourist place.

After lunch we headed to the Hard Rock Café to get Grace’s, Mike’s and my shirts. Part of an ongoing collection. This adventure started with a ride on the Teleférico de Gaia – Estação Cais de Gaia (cable car). The cable car only covers a distance of about 600 meters, but it does it an incline of 9.1%. The river station is at 4.5 meters and the upper station, at Jardim do Morro and the Avenue da República is at 63 meters.

At the top we got on the metro and rode across the Luis I Bridge to the São Bento Station just a couple blocks from the Hard Rock. We walked over to the Hard Rock and got our shirts. It is a very small Hard Rock with a very small rock shop. They didn’t have collared shirts which was a little disappointing. But I am sure Grace will enjoy having another one for her collection.

After visiting the rock shop, we did actually go into the café. Mike, Maddie and Mary all ordered drinks, while I ordered by drowning hot fudge Sunday. I didn’t get too many bites, however. Once we were done it was time to get back to the hotel for the farewell dinner at 18:00. There were a couple of choices. First, walk down to the river and take the water ferry across. Second, walk back to the subway and take the gondola back. In both of these cases we would have to walk up the hill from the edge of the river, the prospect of which didn’t appeal to us. So, we walked to the train station where there was a taxi stand, and took a taxi to the hotel.

The taxi to the hotel was interesting. Google Maps says it was 9.8 km. The taxi guy said 8.9 km. In any case it would be about a €10 ride back to the hotel. €10 is less than the combination ticket for the subway and the gondola for the four of us. So it was a deal! In addition to being a deal we got to ride through parts of Porto and Gaia that we hadn’t seen.

We got back to the hotel about 17:00. Went to our rooms to change and get ready for dinner. We then headed down to the Boa Resturant in the hotel. Ok, actually it is on the third floor and our rooom is on the second, so we headed up.

Fernando was there welcoming people. He had a friend of his there playing the guitar. We stood around talking to our fellow travelers, enjoying wine and hors d’oeuvres. The dinner was a burrata salad, a fish dish and then a small steak with vegetables. The vegetable pot stickers were probably the hit of dinner. Fernando also arranged a Portuguese singer to come and sing us a couple Portuguese songs. She was accompanied by a traditional 12 string Portuguese guitar, and Fernando’s friend on a regular guitar. It had gone 21:00 when the dinner broke up with everyone saying good-bye.

Buonanotte e Ciao,

Enrico & Maria