Street Performers and the Most Beautiful Store Facades | Santa Catarina Street, Porto, Portugal

Santa Catarina Street is one of the most well known and crowded streets in Porto, it is almost 1,5 Km of stores, restaurants, cafes and hotels. Cars are not allowed in this street, which makes it great for pedestrians, street artists and street sellers to walk around freely.
Curiosity: The first Zara store to open outside of Spain, was in this street in 1988!

Shopping is also a cultural experience here

As this street is so old and has so much history, most store facades are works of art, some are sculpted in materials such as metal, stone or wood, also some are beautiful mosaics or azulejos. 

Three of the most remarkable buildings are the Palladium Galleries, designed by the architect Marques da Silva; Majestic Café, built in 1921, it has been a place where some of the most brilliant minds of Portuguese literature meet and finally the Grande Hotel do Porto, that has hosted people such as Eça de Queirós (one of the biggest Portuguese literary geniuses) and Teresa Cristina, the last empress of Brazil. 

Furthermore, some well know Portuguese writers were born and raised in this street: Camilo Castelo Branco and Guerra Junqueiro are just a two examples.

Street Performers and Street Sellers

As this street is always crowded and cars are not allowed here, it is the perfect place for street performers and street sellers to settle. All kinds of artists can be found here: Native American musicians, classic/rock musicians, violin players, accordion players, human statues, painters and even this guy making giant bubbles. Street sellers are sometimes not legal, but you'll find them a bit everywhere, selling a bit of everything: clothes, shoes, paintings, hand crafted stuff and food, mostly snacks like roasted chestnuts or hot dogs.

Inês Tavares

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Casa da Música (House of Music) | Porto, Portugal

Casa da Música is a concert hall space in Oporto which was designed by the dutch architect Rem Koolhaas. It was inaugurated in April 2005 and cost around 100 million euros. 

It is a very unusual building from it's "curtain" shaped windows to the gold leaf wood grain pattern in the larger auditorium (it has two auditoriums one smaller than the other and a rooftop restaurant). 

Its design is acclaimed worldwide and compared to buildings such as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain by Frank Gehry, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and Berliner Philharmonie in Berlin, Germany. It was considered by the architecture critic of the "New York Times" as "one of the most important concert halls built in the last 100 years".

As seen in the last picture, the floor on the outside is very irregular and is often used by skateboarders to perform their tricks.

I don't own credits to this video.

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Expofacic 2014: Kaiser Chiefs | Cantanhede, Coimbra, Portugal

Hello again! This is the last post of the "Expofacic" series (this expression sounded kinda odd to me, anyone else?) and is about Kaiser Chiefs concert, which I didn't expect, but was simply mind blowing! One of my favorite concerts of all time and I don't even like their songs much (I went to see Borgeous and Moullinex, but it started raining so much we had to leave :'( ). If you watch the video you'll for sure find their energy contagious like I did... to the point that without knowing the songs nor the lyrics I found myself singing along "THIS IS MY LIFE! I CAN WORK IT OUT I LIVE WITHOUT NAHAHANAHAHNHABLABLABLA... THIS IS MY LIFE!!"
I'll see you guys soon!

Expofacic 2014: Buraka Som Sistema | Cantanhede, Coimbra, Portugal

Hey! So today I'm showing you some pictures and a small video I recorded during Buraka Som Sistema concert in Expofacic this Summer. It was the third time I went a BSS concert and it was a great show, as always, I had a great time with my friends and am sure I burnt all my dinner's calories! The only criticizm I can possibly make is that every concert is the same, exactly the same! And the three times I went to their concert were in 2012, 2013 and 2014, it's not like I've seen them three times in the same month... But, oh well, I still had a good time, so it was worth it. That's all for now... k bye!

Expofacic 2014: 5-30 and Mastiksoul | Cantanhede, Coimbra, Portugal