This was such a good introduction to PORTO. History, culture and modern issues and such a great lay…read moreof the land. Sergio our guide was fantastic. He was smart and knowledgeable about the city and excellent ambassador. I do walking tours everywhere in the world and this was among the finest.

We had a wonderful experience with Pedro Fiel, our walking tour guide. He showed us the best spots…read morein Porto and he did it with such passion. He was absolutely wonderful!

We took Eugenia's walking tour when we were in Porto a few weeks ago and it was more than we could…read morehave asked for. Our group was about 8 people, making for a much more intimate experience than the large groups we saw around town. It was a very curious group and Eugenia enthusiastically answered all of our questions, even though it resulted in the tour running a little long (which was terrific for us). I highly recommend this walking tour!

From the owner: Walking tours. Booking is required, please send an email to…read moreportofreewalkingtour@gmail.com

Fabulous tour guide, Diane. I Highly recommend her because she has a good depth of historical…read moreknowledge, sense of humor, and a witty delivery make your time on the tour enjoyable and entertaining. She was able to deliver historical points in concise, easy to understand verbiage with a kick of lightheartedness when appropriate and sincerity where it belongs. Loved it. Make sure to bring your tip money as it is their way to earn a living. They are independent contractors who pay Sandemans for the leads.

Get ready for a really long walk, up and down the hills, with this tour. We were so tired at the…read moreend of the tour! However, the guy Andre did a wonderful job showing you the major sites, and giving tips on places to explore more on your own, restaurants and food to try. He even sent us an email listing all the things he mentioned and suggested. How awesome is that? The tour is a bit heavy on history, I'd prefer more focus about the culture, and the food, but then it's just personal, and you can see that Andre is really proud of his country and his city. We just showed up at the meeting point at the start time, though you can make reservation online. There is a break at a cafe half way through so you can get a coffee or use the restroom, or just sit and rest your legs.

My friends (3 of us) and I visited Porto last May and decided to do a cooking class for our last…read moreday. We met up with our tour guide Nuno at Mercado do Bolhao where we purchased a few ingredients. He was very friendly and knowledgable about the market's history. He made us feel welcomed and we also learned so much from him, like the origins of tea and tempura (I always thought this originated in Japan). After the market we took a short train ride to Vila Nova de Gaia where the cooking class was located. We were greeted by our other host Joseph who also welcomed us , was friendly, and knowledgable. We learned how to make three authentic dishes and both our hosts really explained the process well and answered all our questions. The food, wine, and appetizers were delicious. The best part was that our hosts Nuno and Joseph made us feel at home and welcomed. This was such a wonderful and memorable experience. I highly recommend doing this tour because this is a great way to learn about some of the history or Porto and experience the warm hospitality of this beautiful city.

Anna was a sensational host and was so welcoming and enjoyable. We all had a wonderful time.read more

One of the highlights of our visit to Portugal was the afternoon that we spent on our walking tour…read morewith Hugo Vaz. We originally signed up for the tour of the Old Jewish Community, but learned so much more as we walked the streets. Hugo and his associate have advanced degrees and are knowledgeable about the history, industry, and economics of the fascinating country of Portugal. I regret not taking this tour earlier so that I could have visited other sights such as the "Port Wine & Douro Institute". My guide was able to educate me on both topics with equal fluency. My next visit will include a bike tour along the waterfront!

We recently rented bikes and helmets from Fold n Visit, and biked the Camino Portugués from Porto…read more The bikes we rented came with luggage racks, were very well maintained, and performed perfectly for the entire trip to Santiago compostela. Sergio had everything ready to go when we arrived at the shop and was very helpful in giving us tips about the area and biking the camino. We would definitely go with Fold 'n visit again for future trips to Porto.

I was so excited for this tour but it was a disaster to begin with. Three tour guides show up at…read morethe meeting spot. No one knows which attendees are supposed to be with which guides because that was not predetermined. So it's already a mess. And the groups are big--12 people max. That's really too big. The guides are super confused about how to handle everything and what to do. Probably because they are all of 22-years-old. I get told I'm going with one leader, then another, then back to the first. Well, the first leader is leading a group of 11 20-year-old Americans. No one wants to be a part of that. I left in tears and will do whatever I can to get my money back. City Lovers is an awful, disorganized tour company and I will never book with them or Viator again.

The free City Lovers Tour was amazing. Silvia was one of the very best tour guides my wife and I…read morehave ever had. She was cheerful, clear and clever. I loved how she shared her honest feedback about what was worth it and what is a tourist trap. Those local secrets made the tour totally worth the time. I also loved how we got to learn the character of Porto from her.

Went with a large group of friends for a Douro Valley Wine Tour in March. Our Living Tours guides…read morewere Luis Matos and Pedro Teixeira, who picked us up from our hotel in two vans and drove us around all day while narrating the history and knowledge about the area. We stopped by two beautiful vineyards for delicious wine tastings (Quinta Dos Castelares and Quinta Santa Julia) with a peaceful boat ride on the Douro River in between. The whole day lasted 9am to 6pm. Luis and Pedro did a wonderful job and made the trip seamless and memorable. They mentioned that they partner with different vineyards daily, so you could get other wonderful options for wine if you go on the tour with them. Overall, highly recommend the experience and thank you for a great trip!

Living tours has a great Douro Wine Valley tour. Rita and Luis were fantastic guides and Rita is…read moreso knowledgeable about the history and we learned so much about the beautiful country of Portugal. The first winery was amazing! 100% recommend using this company.

Great Walking Tour at…read moreno Cost covering Porto. Learn the history and present.

Today our group of 4 enjoyed an amazing historical and architectural tour of our beloved Porto. We…read morelearned the history of Porto including the tough parts. If you want to understand how this city developed and continues to evolve from the perspective of a funny and intelligent guide, then this is the tour for you. Nearly five miles and mostly avoiding the tourist traps I learned to appreciate the complex history of this beautiful city. Highly recommend!

City Tailors and Taste Porto have merged into one company since I believe April of 2022. I began…read moreattempting to create a customized trip starting with Ricardo in early January 2022 for a trip in June. We discussed some ideas and I ended up requesting a trip of 6 days with a private tour guide - 3 days, a break day, 3 more days, then a concert festival the following day on my own. Apparently, 6 days is unintentionally the longest number of days for time spent with a tour with the same private guide at this company at the time of writing this review. A lighthouse tour was 5 days and it was 3 days at most before that. Within the 6 days, 2 were within Porto and 4 were in suburbs of Porto with history of its own and hidden food gems that one would not be aware of unless one grew up in this area. I have just completed the 6 day tour and it has become one of the most heart warming confidence building trips of my life. If you want a customized tour with this company, you need to come as an adventurer and not a typical tourist. If you want a typical tourist trip, there are many other companies and guides for this. If you are more of a traveler, foodie, adventurer, then this may be the Porto company for you! If you are not a planner and if it fits into a guide's schedule, you could be asked to pay a premium price. Remember, you're paying for 35+ years of experience done more on the company's terms. They can work with you on some ideas, but it is important to come with an open mind. If you have many extreme allergies, there are certain tours or parts of tours that may need a premium price or the company might not be able to serve extreme, unusual situations but they will try to do so. When you tour with CityTailors, do not expect mainstream. Also, plan ahead if you can. If you aren't a planner and need to be thrifty, look elsewhere. Remember, you get a unique brand of quality here like no other. Some mainstream things may be included, but other more unusual spots will be created as well. Local people or southern Portuguese are not likely to hire a tour guide company, but they really should or at least consider a private tour guide. Not only would you be supporting your own, but you would be enhancing your trip in ways you thought not possible. I also told my tour guide after the tour that his girlfriend was tired of hearing him talk to her about his 11,147th tour and showed the graffiti picture of angry woman with her roll away suitcase. Oh, don't forget to "look for signs in Porto"!

On our first trip to Portugal. Friends gave us 2 " must -do's": Fado in Coimbra and hiring Ricardo…read morefrom The City Tailors as a tour guide in Porto. They were " dead on" about both. But this is a review about Ricardo who was certainly for us the most knowledgeable , pleasant , interesting , and fun tour guide we have ever used, and we travel a lot in Europe. He guided us with his trainer "Ze" who was wonderful as well. Ricardo in particular is clearly extremely well read and skilled but is just a nice guy. History, architecture , culture, coffee, wine and FOOD , including just a lovely, authentic and delicious multi course lunch included in the tour price. My wife and I felt like we were just walking the city with good friends whose company we totally enjoyed. This is as I said a " must do" in Porto. Hire Ricardo. He will " make your day".

As I continue to catch up on the large number of things I did in Portugal from, now, *several*…read moremonths ago... this is the one review I have left that is probably the least likely to have changed in a few months, of a building whose main attraction is the beauty of the building itself, beauty that was all constructed... not recently. Though I did also appreciate the tour, mainly in the history of the building, a building honoring not a king or a royal line like the other glamorous historical building we stopped at earlier in the trip, the royal palace in Madrid, but the history of commerce itself in the country, and the continued independence of a small nation surrounded by Spain on several sides, mostly on the power of their *money*. Money, which of course, they also used to construct this impressive building, that *reminds* you of a building a historical king would construct to honor his own family with stolen riches, but in this case, the riches seem to have been earned more... legally, at least. It is still also used at least sometimes for its original purpose (impressing foreign businessmen, i.e. business meetings), but obviously now mostly for our purposes it's a spot on all the tourists' list of half-hour tours. Definitely worth a stop if you're never been - though it is too bad tickets sell out somewhat in advance, in that I bought 2 tickets to this weeks earlier, not counting on my wife to be feeling rather sick that day and unable to join a tour. I don't think tours are unreasonably priced, given it's a unique, historical, and quite impressive building, but it was definitely not worth it at the effective twice the cost it ended up being when my wife couldn't make the tour. That said, you don't have to reserve the *time* in advance, though as other reviews have pointed out, if you only speak English, they have tours in 3 languages, so you want to get there relatively early the day of your tour, and redeem your tickets, valid for any tour the day, for passes, valid for a specific tour, before all the spots on the *English* tours are taken. They do have tours all day, though. At the end of the tour, they also have a small, presumably subsidized, shop selling pastel de nata, glasses of one specific bottle of Port, and espresso. I say presumably subsidized because, even by the standards of food and drink in Porto, already somewhat better than in the US, all three of those items were... inexpensive, and solid. Obviously that isn't why we went on the tour, but I did have a goal of trying as many of all of those as I could in the time I was in Portugal, so it was a fun bonus.

When is a palace not a palace? I guess this 19th-century building provides the answer because this…read moreso-called palace doesn't have any connection to the royal family. Rather, it was Porto's historic center for trade and corporate law, as well as the local stock exchange. The neoclassical architecture is a striking sight, especially as you walk up the incline of the Ribeira. Reservations are required for a 14€ guided tour to enter the building. Was it worth it? Fortunately the answer is yes if just for two features. The first is the Tribunal Room, a cavernous courtroom decorated with large Michelangelo-style murals depicting the history of Portuguese commerce and law (Photo 6). The second and most impressive feature is the Arab Room, a formal reception hall Inspired by the Alhambra, Taking nearly two decades to complete, it incorporates intricate stucco work gilded with authentic gold leaf (Photo 9). There's also the Nations Courtyard which originally served as the stock exchange trading floor and normally showcases the painted coats of arms of countries that traded with Porto. However, a temporary art exhibit obscured the views when we were here. The grand granite Noble Staircase is impressive though (Photo 2) as are all the Moorish revival interiors. Less interesting are the merchant association offices and corporate studio spaces. Pure filler. RELATED - Exploring Porto? Here's a collection of places I've visited and reviewed: https://yelp.to/OrsoK1kR_F