Porto, Portugal

Porto doesn't hide its age. Half the buildings in Ribeira look one storm away from falling into the Douro, and that's part of the appeal. Peeling facades next to restored ones. Laundry hanging over a five-hundred-year-old balcony. Nothing here has been smoothed over for tourists, even with the tourists everywhere.

I spent most of my time down along the river and up at São Bento station, which might be the only train station in Europe worth visiting for the walls alone. Twenty thousand blue and white azulejo tiles covering the entrance hall, telling Portuguese history in ceramic. Mornings there for the light through the windows, afternoons down in Ribeira for the boats and the bridge.

What's in the gallery

The São Bento tiles, obviously, along with the trains and passengers moving through underneath them. The Ribeira waterfront, rabelo boats docked along the Douro, the lower deck of the Ponte Dom Luís, and the old townhouses in every state of repair from freshly painted to genuinely falling apart. And the view from the Sé cathedral terrace, looking across the river to Vila Nova de Gaia, which is worth the climb up.

If you go, skip the tram tour and just walk the riverfront instead. You'll see more.