Unmapped Gems
CityBest April – June, September – October

Porto

Portugal's second city, on the steep north bank of the Douro, where J.K. Rowling lived and taught English in the early 1990s.

Porto climbs the north bank of the Douro just before the river reaches the Atlantic: tiled churches, the double-decker Dom Luís I bridge, and the port lodges across the water in Vila Nova de Gaia. J.K. Rowling lived here in the early 1990s, teaching English, and the city has been collecting Harry Potter stories ever since. Not all of them are true.

Porto and the Dom Luís I bridge over the Douro
Photo: Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons