One of the best decisions we made for our Spain and Portugal trip was to sign up for a Tours by Locals tour in Porto. As the name implies, tours are led by local residents who may not be professional tour guides but who nevertheless have intimate knowledge of their hometown and also some expertise in a particular area, be it history, art or food and wine. Well in advance of our trip, I went online to the website, typed in the city I wanted to visit and then scanned through a wide range of tours. Some are as short as 90 minutes while others may take up a full day. One can choose from walking or vehicle tours, and profiles of the guides allow you to get to know a bit about them and read reviews from previous clients.

We chose a half-day walking tour on our first full day in Porto, figuring we’d get a good overview of the city and benefit from tips and suggestions from our guide for the remainder of our stay. Shortly before we left home we learned the guide we’d originally chosen was unavailable, and we were given the option to cancel the tour for a full refund or accept a new guide. We opted to try the new guide, which proved to be a great choice.

Well before we arrived, Ricardo emailed me and sought out our interests, fitness level (there are a LOT of hills in Porto!)   and food preferences. He then provided a string of suggestions for port houses we might want to visit and where to get the best versions of traditional Portuguese dishes. We arranged to meet at the Porto Cathedral, literally just steps from our accommodations. Starting out at 9 a.m. on a beautiful, sunny day, he led us across the Ponte Luis I Bridge   to gain a perspective of Porto  from a former fortress   and a brief look at Gaia (the “new” city on the southern bank of the Duoro River).   Port tour boats heading up to the Duoro Valley loaded with tourists and crew teams   plied the waters. We crossed back on the lower level of the bridge   to Porto’s Ribeira, a lively area of restaurants, bars and shops stretched along the river and the old city walls.

We spent the next four hours covering a host of sites in the old city of Porto. Ricardo proved an excellent guide, knowing so much about the city’s history and providing information and out-of-the-way highlights a typical city tour would miss. We stopped in at Porto’s main train station, an early-20th-century beauty boasting intricate tile murals depicting the history of transportation, events in Portuguese history and scenes from daily life.     We saw more tile work gracing the façades of churches,   apartment houses and civic buildings. Even the pavement provided a study in patterns and textures.

Ricardo pointed out sites that became the inspiration for many locations and aspects in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. We opted not to stand in a long line to gain entrance to perhaps the most well-known of these, the Lello bookstore with its beautiful and intricate wooden staircase and stained glass, but we poked into several shops in the area, housed in former textile factories and still boasting high ceilings and elaborate plaster- and woodwork.

It wasn’t all monuments,   churches and fountains, though. Ricardo took us to Arcádia, an artisanal chocolate shop operating since 1933 and offering a host of wonderful chocolates. We also stopped in for coffee and pasteis de nata, those custard tarts for which Portugal is well-known. Hot out of the oven (their “assembly line” reminded me somewhat of Krispy Kreme’s doughnut output), they were the best we had during our trip.

We wound through the quieter streets of the Jewish Quarter and along residential alleys whose ancient stone was softened by potted plants and friendly little neighborhood cafés.

Our four-hour tour ended up being closer to six hours, as Ricardo had so much to share with us and seemed willing to carry on as long as we were willing. We learned he also provides tours on his own up the Duoro River with his own boat and van, and we decided if we make it back here again, we’d seek him out in a heartbeat.

— Patty Vanikiotis, associate editor/copy editor