Porto is a stunning city. I suppose it helped that the sun was shining – after all, even Cowdenbeath looks good in the sunshine – but the buildings were interesting. Not just São Bento Railway Station and the tiled churches but even generally “ordinary” buildings.

This was just down from the Great War Memorial. That tiled church is just to right of centre here:-

“Ordinary” building:-

Some of the streets were narrow though:-

And like all great cities, Porto has a river, The Douro:-

That way kind of led us out of town so we doubled back and found this way down to the river:-

Looking back up to city from bank of River Douro:

It is one of the less remembered aspects of the Great War that Portugal was one of the Allies and sent troops to fight on the Western Front.

Germany declared war on Portugal on 9/3/1916 though before that there had been tensions over sea trade embargoes and border clashes in Africa. 12,000 Portuguese troops died and 82,000 civilians due to food shortages.

In São Bento Railway Station in Porto we found a commemorative display of photographs of Portuguese involvement in the war.

Grande Guerra (the Great War):-

Declaração de guerra (Declaration of war):-

A caminho das trincheiras (Portuguese trenches?):-

A retaguarda (Training?):-

A vida nas trincheiras (Life in the trenches):-

Destruição e desoleção (Destruction and desolation?):-

Campos de prisoneiros (POW Camps):-

O desfile da vitoria (Victory parade?):-

The best tiling we saw in Porto was at São Bento Railway Station (Estação de São Bento.)

I neglected to take a photo of the exterior. This one is from TripAdvisor:-

No tiles there obviously. But the vestibule was fantastic – not to mention packed with people whom it was impossible to avoid getting in the pictures except when only photographing the upper portions:-

The frieze at the top showed agricuktural scenes:-

I had to stitch two photos of the corniced ceiling to get most of it in. The words Minho and Douro refer to the province in which Porto is situated (between the Minho and dDouro rivers):-

This brilliant interior reminded me of Groningen Railway Station.