Porto: Dragons on the Pitch, Books on the Shelves

Porto packs an unreasonable amount into a relatively small footprint, and it is entirely possible to spend a satisfying two or three days moving between football, books and wine without ever needing a car or much more than a good pair of shoes. FC Porto anchors the sporting side of things at the Estádio do Dragão, a stadium built for Euro 2004 that also houses the club museum, arguably the most polished of the big Portuguese club museums, with a room dedicated to the European Cup wins that former players seem genuinely proud to have their photos taken in front of. Buy match tickets through fcporto.pt well ahead for anything against Benfica or Sporting, and book the stadium tour separately if you cannot make a game; it runs most days and gets you into the dressing room and down the tunnel.

Back in the centre, Livraria Lello is the bookshop everyone has seen a photograph of, with its carved wooden staircase curling up through the middle of the room, and it has become popular enough that you now need a timed ticket bought online, which converts into a voucher against a book if you buy one inside. Go early or late in the day, since the middle hours turn the staircase into a queue for photographs rather than a place to actually browse. A short walk away, the Torre dos Clérigos rewards the climb up its narrow spiral stairs with a properly wide view over the city's terracotta roofs, and Sea Life Porto, out near the Foz district, is worth an hour if you have children who have had enough of churches and towers for one day.

The river is really where Porto explains itself. Cross to Vila Nova de Gaia, either over the lower deck of the iron bridge or the upper one if you like your views a bit more vertiginous, and you land in the middle of the port wine lodges: Graham's, Taylor's, Sandeman and a dozen smaller houses, most offering a short cellar tour ending in a tasting for a modest fee. Book the well known names ahead in high season, since tour slots fill, but the smaller lodges will often take you in on the spot.

From the Gaia riverside, or from the Ribeira on the Porto side, short boat trips run up and down the Douro past all six bridges, a pleasant, slightly touristy hour that is nonetheless a genuinely good way to see the gorge of buildings stacked up the hillside from water level. If you have an extra day, the longer Douro cruises upriver into the vineyard country are a different, slower experience and worth doing separately rather than squeezing into the same afternoon.

End the day the way locals do, with a francesinha somewhere unglamorous rather than in a restaurant clearly aimed at tour buses, and a glass of the port you tasted earlier in the afternoon, which by evening tends to taste considerably better than it did on an empty stomach.