Arca d'Agua

The beautiful park "muito perto" from my university is called Arca d'Agua. The little pond is a home for some duck families and the trees for rare birds. Next to the pond, there is a little cafe where senior citizens meet to play chess and sometimes at evenings to dance. On the street corners, you can find other two places to spend your time. One of them is the Cafeteria Arca d'Agua, redecorated, but following the traditional line, with its large windows where tasty cakes invite the pedestrians in. The coffee is ok, and everything is quite cheap. It's the only place where I found eclaire with chocolate so far, but the croissants and the other cakes worth your attention too. As most of the places in Porto, they also serve lunch. It's a must for a good business here, since between 12-13 and 14-15 all the city is taking a break and some live too far to go home for lunch. Not that they don't spend all day in cafeterias. It's not too hard to learn the menu... Bica is a simple coffee, galão is large coffee with milk, while pingo is normal coffee with a touch of milk. Coffee brands are all over the city, fighting for exclusivity in most places, with a lot of advertising items like the coffee cups, the sugar and napkins and so on. My favourite so far is Delta Cafes, the brand they also sell at the school cafeteria. Their coffee has a rich taste and good morning smell. In Norteshopping Delta Cafes has a little coffee shop where a pingo in about 50 cents and they serve it with a piece of black chocolate and a cinnamon stick to stir your sugar. My second favourite brand is Segafredo, which I think is a little stronger and more suited for a coffee on the esplanadas next to the beach. Talking about the beach, since I live in Foz, most of the places where you can have a coffee or more are within a five minutes of walk range and Praia dos Ingleseses is one of the very comfortable ones. Not to mention the pub Bonaparte, where you will never ever get bored... but about this, some other time.