Where to go, and when · with the homework done
PORTO · FEBRUARY · 41.1° N Porto’s February is a documented month, not a guess. The national weather service’s 1991–2020 normals put the average high at 59.0°F and the average low at 44.2°F, with 3.85 inches of rain falling across ten days that register at least a millimeter. On the 15th you get 10 hours … Read more
PORTO · JUNE · 41.1° N June is the month Porto’s rain gauge finally relaxes. The city collects 1.33 inches across the whole month against 3.37 inches in May, the sun stays up for 15 hours and 11 minutes on the 15th, and an 8:30 pm dinner on a terrace still happens in daylight. The … Read more
PORTO · MAY · 41.2° N May is when Porto stops drying out between showers and starts staying out. Afternoons average 68.5°F, the light holds past half eight in the evening, and the granite quays trade the low winter glare for something the whole city eats dinner in. What May withholds is the Atlantic: the … Read more
PORTO · APRIL · 41.1° N April is the month Porto’s opening hours change gear. The Palácio da Bolsa drops its winter lunch break from April onward and runs 09:00 to 18:30 straight through, and by mid-month the sun is still up at 8:16 p.m. The weather is less obliging than the calendar: the official … Read more
PORTO · JANUARY · 41.15° N January is the darkest month on Porto’s clock and one of its wettest. On the 15th the sun comes up at 07:56 and is gone by 17:31, which leaves 9 hours 35 minutes of usable light, and the weather station out at Pedras Rubras logs 5.94 inches of rain … Read more
MADEIRA · PORTUGAL · THE ISLAND GUIDE Madeira arrives as a wall of green dropping into the Atlantic, and the first thing you notice from the plane is that the island has no flat parts to spare. Funchal is stacked up a slope above its harbor, terraces climb behind it, and somewhere in the cloud … Read more
