Porto, Portugal: Witches, Robbery, & Port Wine

Tuesday, September 1st, 2026

My mom and I stood in line at the police station, the couple ahead of us speaking in Portuguese with the officer on duty. Internally, I was panicking, though an expression of autopilot pleasantness remained plastered across my face. Midwest nice meets just-got-robbed-in-a-foreign-country mania. As if being nice might help me get my bag back.

It was only hours earlier that I had emerged from the airplane, breathing in the humid early-morning air as I descended the stairs to the tarmac, where a bus waited to take us to the terminal.

The smell of adventure and possibility.

We had arrived in Porto.

This was only the first leg of our trip. We had two days in Porto before meeting up with our travel group to walk the Camino de Santiago from Valença, Portugal. With such a short time in the city, we wanted to make the most of it.

Unable to check into our hotel until 2 p.m., we dropped off our luggage and set out to explore the city. Within minutes, my mom and I were falling in love with Porto—the charming architecture, winding cobblestone streets, tiled facades, and the general beauty of everything around us.

First on our list? Breakfast.

A Day in Porto

I pulled up Google Maps and searched for cafés near our hotel. We followed the little blue navigator dot, though it was slow to update and we quickly became a little confused about where exactly we were going.

As we wandered through the winding streets in the quiet morning, we happened to look up.

And there it was: Café Majestic, standing before us as if it had been waiting for us the whole time.

It had been on our list, recommended by nearly every bit of research we'd done before the trip. There was something satisfying about stumbling upon it rather than seeking it out.

Once we were seated, I ordered a cappuccino right away, too scared to try the espresso on our first day. I'd heard it was pretty strong in Portugal, and I wasn't quite ready to find out.

I looked around in awe at the ornate woodwork, gleaming mirrors, carved details, and chandeliers hanging overhead, feeling as though I’d stepped into history.

After breakfast, we wandered through Mercado do Bolhão, a bustling historic market filled with fresh produce, flowers, local delicacies, and vendors selling Portuguese goods. My mom and I bought postcards featuring beautiful illustrations of Porto that we’d send out later to friends and family.

On our way to the famous Porto sign in front of City Hall, we ventured into what’s been dubbed the World’s Fanciest McDonald’s. Housed in a former café, it still has much of its old-world charm, featuring elaborate details, chandeliers, stained glass, and even a giant bronze eagle perched above the entrance. We didn’t buy any food, though. Just popped in for a quick look before continuing on toward City Hall.

By then, it was early afternoon and our phone batteries were dying.

We headed back to the hotel and rested in the outdoor garden patio while we waited to check in, giving our phones—and ourselves—a chance to recharge.

There is nothing like a long, hot shower after an exhausting travel day.

We got cleaned up, dressed, and rested on our beds as we discussed our plans for the evening.

Still left on our Porto bucket list: walking along the Douro River, drinking port, crossing the Dom Luís I Bridge, and watching the sunset over the river.

We chose Muro do Bacalhau for dinner overlooking the Douro River, which put us right where we wanted to be for the rest of the evening.

The riverfront was beautiful. My mom and I made our way down to the riverside promenade, snapping a few photos before finding our restaurant. When we arrived, we asked to sit outside on the narrow patio overlooking the river.

Our table sat along a stone ledge, with the Douro stretched out below us and the colorful buildings of Vila Nova de Gaia stacked along the opposite hillside. I slipped my backpack off my shoulders and tucked it carefully beside my chair, between my feet and the stone wall.

For the first time in what felt like days, we could finally relax. We ordered dinner and wine and sat overlooking the river, talking about everything we had already seen that day and what we still wanted to do that evening. It felt good to simply sit somewhere beautiful with nowhere we needed to be for a while.

The Robbery

As we finished the last bites of our Pastel de Nata dessert, I reached down beside my chair for my backpack, ready to grab my wallet and pay.

It was gone.

I looked at my mom, then back at the ground. Under the chair. Around the table.

“Did you move my bag?” I asked.

“No.”

“It’s gone.”

My mom’s face slowly fell into an expression of worry.

“I think it was that woman who was standing close to you taking photos earlier,” she said.

I knew exactly who she was talking about. A woman had been lingering near our table earlier, seemingly taking photos of the river. I hadn’t gotten a good look at her, only catching the blur of a red dress and long, frizzy hair in my peripheral vision.

“She seemed a little... off. Frazzled. Maybe drunk or on drugs. Unwell. A little witchy, to be honest,” my mom added.

But how? My backpack had been tucked right beside me, between my feet and the stone ledge of the patio. I hadn’t seen, heard, or felt anyone come remotely close to it.

The couple seated behind us noticed me looking around.

“Is everything okay?” the husband asked in what I judged to be a British accent.

“My bag was stolen.” I shrugged and shook my head in a mix of disbelief and annoyance.

“I bet it was that woman,” his wife piped in. “We saw her taking photos. She looked... questionable.”

“Yeah, some of these people, the drug addicts,” the husband said. “What they’ll do is steal your bag, take the cash out, and then dump the rest. Your bag could be anywhere around here.”

Well, that was encouraging.

“If you give me your number, if I see her around, I’ll give you a call!”

“Thanks!”

He introduced himself as Pete. Pete seemed a few beers deep, but I trusted that he wanted to help.

We signaled our server over, explained what had happened, and he offered what felt like a handsome but somewhat rehearsed expression of sympathy.

“Do you want me to get the manager?”

“Yes!” I said. “Please.”

The manager couldn’t do much beyond telling us the restaurant wasn’t liable and encouraging us to file a police report. And then, of course, there was still the matter of paying our bill.

While my mom spoke with the manager, I immediately opened my banking app and locked my credit cards.

Panic was rising quickly now, along with the temptation to cry, but my rational side was already taking over.

Inside that backpack was €250 in cash, my wallet with my credit cards and ID, and, most importantly, my passport.

Would I still be able to finish this trip before it had even really begun? Would I be able to walk the Camino—the trail I’d spent months training and preparing for? Would I be stuck in Portugal?

I knew I’d never see that backpack again.

My mind started running through the logistics. I’d have to find the U.S. Embassy. Figure out how to get an emergency passport. Figure out whether I could still meet our group in two days. All those months of preparation, and suddenly the entire trip felt like it could be derailed before I’d walked a single mile of the Camino.

We paid as quickly as we could—or, more accurately, my mom did—and set out for the nearest police station, which happened to be just up the hill from the restaurant.

Which Brings Us Back to the Police Station

The couple ahead of us eventually finished speaking with the officer and walked away. My mom and I approached the desk, doing our best to explain that my backpack had just been stolen.

I pulled out my phone and searched for an image of a small brown Carhartt backpack to show him.

Before I could fully explain, the officer reached behind the desk.

And pulled out my backpack.

I pointed at it, stunned.

“That’s it,” I said. “That’s my bag.”

He nodded calmly, almost comically so, and explained in broken English that the couple who had just left had turned it in.

Somehow, my stolen backpack had beaten us to the police station.

The officer had even found a scrap of paper from our hotel inside the bag and tried calling them.

“No one from the hotel called you?” he asked.

“No!” my mom and I said, checking our call logs.

I wanted to cry again, but this time from sheer relief. The officer seemed tickled by the whole thing.

“But where did they find it?” I kept asking.

Whether he didn’t understand my question or simply wasn’t able to explain, I never got an answer.

I immediately started going through the bag. My passport was there. My wallet. My credit cards. Everything that had sent my mind spiraling only minutes earlier was still inside.

The €250 in cash was gone.

Whoever had taken the bag had also opened the paper wrapping around the postcards we’d bought earlier that morning. Later, I would discover that all three of my ChapSticks were missing, too, including my Rhode lip tint.

Ew, I thought. Who does that?

Witch.

We thanked the officer profusely, and I gave him a big hug before we left the station.

Outside, we stepped back into the soothing sunshine.

“Hold on,” I told my mom. “I think I need to cry.”

I stood there for a moment, waiting for the tears to come.

Nothing.

“Never mind,” I said. “I think I’m good. What should we do now? It’s still early.”

“Well,” my mom said, “should we still get that glass of port?”

“Definitely.”

We made our way back toward the riverfront, crossed the Dom Luís I Bridge, and found a rooftop bar overlooking the Douro, where we finally ordered that glass of port.

As the sun sank over the city, we sat above the river and debriefed the events of the day.

“If I saw her, I would push her into the Douro River, and she would float, because she’s a witch,” I told my mom.

“That’s not very nice. And you shouldn’t call her that.”

“You’re the one who said she looked like a witch!”

“Well, I don’t remember saying that.”

“Well.”

Somehow, despite everything that had happened, we still got the Porto evening we had planned.

And for the rest of the trip, I ate every meal with my backpack in my lap.

The Mystery Solved

Later that night, I noticed that a girl I didn’t recognize had followed me on Instagram. I didn’t think much of it.

The next morning, I woke up to a message from her.

“Hey! My father found your bag in Porto and took it to the police station for you to find.”

She had gotten my name from my passport and looked me up.

Wait. What?

I messaged her back immediately, telling her how grateful I was. She explained that she and her family were visiting from Hungary and, like us, were traveling through Portugal.

But there was still one thing I wanted to know.

“Where did he find my backpack?”

He found it hanging from the rearview mirror of his car, which had been parked right by the police station.

Whaaaaat?

I updated my mom in real time as we exchanged messages. Most likely, the woman had dumped the bag nearby, and someone else had found it and hung it from the mirror of a parked car.

I couldn’t believe it.

“You know...” my mom said. “As I was lying here this morning, unable to sleep, I thought of something else.”

“What?”

“Didn’t you have an AirTag in your backpack? The one I gave you before we left?”

I stared at her.

Yes. I did.

We laughed.