Where to stay in Porto

This is one administrative parish with six old names in it, and it covers almost everything a first visit to Porto consists of. São Bento and its tiled hall, the cathedral on its rock, Livraria Lello, the Clérigos tower, Bolhão market, the Aliados boulevard and the Ribeira quay are all inside it, and none of them is more than 20 minutes on foot from any other. Six metro lines meet at Trindade, one stop north of Aliados, so the airport and the beaches are a single ride away.

The cost is the hill and the crowd. The Ribeira sits at river level and Aliados sits about 60 metres above it, on granite setts that turn slick in rain; the walk back from dinner is a climb every night. Restaurant prices on Cais da Estiva and Rua das Flores are set for people who will not return, and the Galerias de Paris bars run to 02:00 on Friday and Saturday with the drinking done standing in the street.

Book here for a first trip, for a short trip, and for any trip where you would rather not think about transport. Ask for a room on a courtyard, or one street back from Santa Catarina and Rua das Flores.

Vila Nova de Gaia is a separate city, and the strip of it along the Douro is where every port house keeps its cellars. Taylor's, Sandeman, Graham's and a dozen more are within ten minutes of the quay, the cable car runs up to the Sérra do Pilar terrace, and that terrace has the best view of Porto there is. Hotels here sell that view, and for the same money they sell a bigger room than the Ribeira can fit.

The problem is geography. Everything on your list - the cathedral, Lello, Bolhão, São Bento, the restaurants - is on the Porto side. Crossing is easy in the direction you are looking: 15 minutes on foot across the upper deck of the Luís I bridge, or four minutes on the yellow line D. Coming back at midnight means the same crossing plus a climb of about 60 metres from the quay to the metro, because the lodges are at river level and the town is not.

Book here if port is the reason for the trip, or if the view is worth a daily commute. Do not book here expecting to walk out of the door into Porto.

Bonfim starts where the Baixa stops being pretty. It is the plateau east of Santa Catarina, it is where people who work in Porto actually live, and it is where the rate for a three-star room drops by about a third for the same distance from the centre. The walk in is flat, which in this city is worth more than it sounds, and Campo 24 de Agosto and Heroísmo put five metro lines one or two stops from Bolhão.

What you give up is everything a visitor came for. There is no sight in Bonfim. Rua da Alegria and the streets running down towards Campanhã are visibly worn - Wikivoyage's own listing for a hotel on Rua da Alegria calls the area a bit run down - and the district goes quiet by 22:00 on a weeknight. The eastern end shades into the station district without any clear line where one stops.

Book here on a second visit, on a long stay, or when the budget matters more than the address. Stay west of Rua de São Victor and you are a flat quarter of an hour from Aliados.

This parish runs from the Boavista roundabout down to the Douro, and it is where Porto put the things that needed space. The Serralves foundation and its park are here, so is the Ipanema Park, so are the four-star conference hotels along Avenida da Boavista with rooms twice the size of anything the old town can fit. The river bank between Massarelos and the bridge is one of the few stretches of Porto waterfront with no tourists on it.

The catch is that nothing is close. There is no metro station inside the parish at all - Casa da Música, the nearest, sits just over the boundary in Cedofeita - and Aliados is a 35-minute walk, uphill on the way back. Tram 1 runs along the river towards Foz and the Ribeira, which is charming and slow and stops in the evening. The hotels here are built around conference schedules, so a Saturday can feel like a business park with the lights off.

Book here for work, for a car, or for quiet. Do not book here for a three-night sightseeing trip.

Foz is the seaside end of Porto, and it is a genuinely lovely place to be: an Atlantic promenade, a row of beaches from the river mouth north to the Castelo do Queijo, low streets of nineteenth-century villas, and the highest concentration of serious restaurants in the city. Porto's own money lives here, which is why the room rates are what they are.

It is also as far from the sights as you can get and still be in Porto. Seven kilometres separate Foz from the cathedral, there is no metro station anywhere in the parish, and the connection is tram 1 along the river - about 25 minutes to the Ribeira in daylight, and finished by the evening. The Atlantic here runs about 17C in August and the wind off it is constant. The clubs on Avenida do Brasil open when the restaurants close and run to six in the morning.

Book here for a summer trip built around the beach, or a return visit that does not need the monuments. For a first trip, come for a sunset and sleep in the centre.

Paranhos is where Porto keeps its institutions: the university campus, Hospital de São João, the IPO cancer centre, the halls of residence and the football stadium's northern approach. The yellow line D runs straight down it into Aliados in about eight minutes, and a room costs less than the same star rating in the Baixa. Those two facts are why people book here by accident, usually from a map that shows the metro and not the walk.

The walk is 30 minutes and uphill on the way home. There is nothing in the parish that a visitor crossed a continent to see, the hotel stock is chain rooms bolted to hospital and campus buildings, the cheapest of them inside a hospital shopping gallery, and in August, when the students go home, the streets that do have life in term time have none.

Book here only if your trip is to the hospital or the university. Otherwise the saving buys you an hour a day on the metro.

Every Alfa Pendular and Intercidades train from Lisbon stops at Campanhã rather than at São Bento, the intercity bus terminal moved here, and the metro interchange sits on top of both. That is the whole case for Campanhã, and it is a case for passing through it. The rooms are the cheapest in the city because the district is 3 km east of the centre, uphill on the way back, and largely a building site while the new terminal and its surroundings go up.

There is nothing to walk to once the bag is down. The Estádio do Dragão is ten minutes away and empty on 340 days of the year. The streets between the station and Rua Pinto Bessa are residential, unlit and deserted after about nine in the evening, which matters mostly because the walk down into the centre goes through them.

The good news is that the fix is free: a long-distance ticket includes the five-minute local train on to São Bento. Use it, and sleep in the centre.