1st full day in Porto and joining the tour

I have a cooking class booked for later this morning and found out last night that the location is literally a few doors down from the hotel. 

I relaxed in the morning and just wandered around the area a bit. 

The cooking class was so fun! There was a couple from Florida along with her distant cousin from Sweden/Africa. Chef Tania is Cordon Bleu trained and her daughter Barbara assisted.

Our menu consisted of a pastry with Portuguese sausage and apple, bacalhau a Bras, which I had for dinner the other day, and french toast with port wine reduction.

We started with the pastry by cooking onion & garlic, then adding pieces of the sausage. The pastry is a pre-made dough that we put some egg yolk on the edges, adding the filling, sealed the dough and then brushed more egg yolk on the top. 

Chef Tania added dried rosemary to the top.

Dish 2 started the same with onion & garlic, but then we added chopped up cod. Once the cod was done we added skinny fried potatoes. Finally, scrambled egg is added while stirring, hopefully making it smooth (although mine was not that smooth). The entire thing is crammed into a metal ring then garnished with parsley and fries onions before removing the ring.

We ate the cod and the pastry before making dessert.

We used small pieces of french toast dipped in the usual milk/egg mix and out that in olive oil to fry (instead of butter). Once the french toast is done on both sides, they go on a plate and sprinkled with mix of cinnamon and brown sugar.

A pan with port wine is heated up with cinnamon stick and orange peel and brought to a boil. Once it's boiling, we put a pre-cut circle of parchment on top to help speed up the reduction. Eventually the bubbles slow down and get bigger and we know the sauce is done. Remove the cinnamon stick and peel and pour over the french toast. We were served a white and red wine with the meal and it was a great experience.

After lunch I needed to walk off the meal so I went to the Clerigo area. I debated visiting the church and tower but decided I didn't want to climb the stairs. I stopped by Livraria Llelo without going inside (the line was too long) and ended up at Igeja de Carmo.

This is another church with a blue & white tile facade. I chose to buy a ticket to tour this one. Inside there is also access to this tiny little house built between this church and a neighbouring one! They also have quite a few artifacts displayed and we were able to climb to the roof to get a view. 

From the church, I walked thru Sao Bento train station to get back to the hotel. The station is covered with tiles.

The Intrepid group meets this evening so I rested until then. The group consists of Leo from NYC, Lisa from Australia, Lori & Melissa mother and daughter from upstate NY, Yoshiko, Japanese woman from Texas, and two Indian ladies, Aruna & Jyothi, from Boston and Philadelphia respectively. Jyothi will be my roommate. Gerardo is our tour leader. 

After getting some trip info we all head to dinner, get to know each other a little.