Travel: Porto WOWs with a world of wine and culture to explore - Scotland on Sunday Travel

My mission was to explore WOW, the city’s new cultural district with its seven interactive museum experiences, 12 restaurants, bars, and cafes, shops and wine school. Created from the restoration of old port wine cellars combined with new indoor and outdoor spaces, there is a wealth of choice to entertain all ages, and gastronomic delights to suit every palate and pocket with plenty of opportunities to sample port and wine along the way.

We stayed at The Yeatman Hotel, the best place from which to dip into the delights of WOW as it’s located just a short walk or wobble along the cobbles away. A beautiful hotel which cascades down the hilly riverbank towards the Douro, each floor makes maximum use of the waterfront views and outside terraces. Light-filled lobbies and public rooms are elegantly furnished and entice you to sit and enjoy the vistas of the double-decked metal Luís I Bridge and the city on the opposite shore. My spacious room also had floor to ceiling windows and sliding patio doors for maximum dawn to dusk viewing of the panorama of white stacked buildings under red roofs across the river.

Tempting as it was to linger in the Yeatman’s indoor pool and Wine Spa, where the treatments include a Red Wine Grape Bath - a grape-scented barrel bath experience using vine leaf flavonoids and polyphenol as anti-oxidants - or take a dip in the outdoor infinity pool shaped like a wine decanter, WOW was waiting.

Located in the historic heart of the Vila Nova de Gaia district, it celebrates the regional culture, history and industries of Porto and its region.

We kicked off with The Wine Experience, an interactive exhibition aiming to demystify wine. It leads the visitor through explanations of why wines all taste different, starting with the soil (sandy, clay, slate) and seasons and moving on to method and traditions, all of which gives you a thirst for a tasting session at the end to flex your newly-educated palate.

Next up was the fun and informative Planet Cork for everything you’ve ever wanted to know about this 100% sustainable material, of which Portugal is the world’s largest producer, from how it’s grown to its uses in everything from bottles to fashion, NASA rockets and surfboards.

Another fascinating museum is The Bridge Collection, a showcase of two thousand artefacts connected with drinking used by different civilisations over 9000 years. Owned by princes and paupers and everyone in between, the vessels on display give a flavour of world history right up to the present day with radioactive (safely sealed) glasses that glow in the dark.

It was time to feast the eyes and ears at the Atkinson Museum which was hosting The Tate Collection’s The Dynamic Eye, Beyond Optical and Kinetic Art, part of an ongoing collaboration. With work from Victor Vasarely, Jesus Rafael Soto and Alexander Calder exploring shape, colour, movement and sound, this was an eye, ear and mind-boggling interactive experience, with captivating exhibits ranging from mobiles to bubble machines.

Speaking of bubbles, it was time for aperitifs at Angel’s Share, a wine and cocktail bar specialising in Portuguese and international wines where a Croft Pink, an innovative rosé port wine from the established Port house, mixed with tonic, put everything you ever knew about Vintage, Tawny and Ruby in the shade.

Dinner at elegant haute cuisine restaurant 1828, is not to be missed if you’re a carnivore, with its focus on the best cuts of aged meat paired with young vintage Port wines, while Pip serves up superior versions of family favourites - pizzas, burgers, pasta and salads - in a relaxed atmosphere.

Our second day started with a highly-recommended tasting and informal lesson at The Wine School, where the knowledgeable and friendly staff lead you on a jolly journey of discovery, with an emphasis on Portugal’s unique grape varietals - local alvarinho and tempranillo - which teed us up for lunch at T&C.

Located in an old port wine cellar with seating booths in huge empty port barrels, T&C specialises in typical Portuguese cuisine, such as local Porto heart-stopper, the francesinha (veggie option available), a toasted meat sandwich topped with a fried egg and melted cheese in a tomato-and-beer sauce, salted cod, caldo verde (green vegetable soup with chorizo) and abade priscos, a rich crème caramel-type pudding with secret ingredient – a smidgeon of ham, and port, of course.

For chocoholics, The Chocolate Story and chocolate tasting is a must, with workshops on what makes for quality and how to judge it - brightness, smell and taste - with the chance to make your own to take away.

To walk off all the calories, we headed to Porto Region Across Ages, another museum with an excellent overview of the region, its history and people, and strolled mock up streets from various parts of the Porto region.

Our last stop, The Pink Palace, is a riot of fun, with instagram-friendly installations including a pink cadillac, bubble pit and giant sparkling rosé bottle in which you appear to be popped out of the top like a cork, all designed to make you fall in love with rosé wine. And with five different styles to choose from, it’s hard not to.

On our final evening we dine at Mira Mira by Ricardo Costa, where the Michelin-starred chef from the Yeatman hotel has branched out with a more intimate restaurant to bring a relaxed approach to fine dining. An elegant tasting menu celebrating Porto’s seafood was served in a series of dishes packed with multiple flavours - including spider crab cannelloni with fermented cucumber, langoustines, the regional speciality of salted cod with bean stew, shrimp and chorizo oil, and blueberry, mascarpone and kaffir lime dessert, all paired with carefully chosen complementary wines from small producers - each one a work of art.

With so much to do at WOW I never did make it across the Luís I Bridge to old Porto, guaranteeing I’ll be back soon for another taste.

The Yeatman www.theyeatman.com: WOW, www.wow.pt/en: The Wine Experience www.wow.pt/en/museums/the-wine-experience: The Wine School www.wow.pt/en/the-wine-school: Pink Palace www.wow.pt/en/museums/pink-palace: Planet Cork www.wow.pt/en/museums/planet-cork: The Chocolate Store www.wow.pt/en/museums/the-chocolate-story: Porto Across the Ages www.wow.pt/en/museums/porto-region-across-the-ages: Mira Mira restaurantes.wow.pt/miramira-en: T&C www.wow.pt/en/restaurants/t-c: Pip restaurant hearty family meals, pizza and pasta https://www.wow.pt/en/restaurants/pip

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