There is always a story behind a photograph and I thought it would be a fun way to look at the world of travel. So, welcome to a new feature that will appear regularly this year in the travel section. Today we are going to kick things off by looking at one of my favourite photos.

In my third year of University we had a housemate who was from Portugal and had come over to the United Kingdom to gain a Masters Degree in Travel and Tourism. She was a lovely girl even though her English was not that great, I had a good friendship with her and we learnt a way to sort of communicate with each other.

At the end of her year in England, she invited us to stay with her and her family in Porto, Portugal. We accepted and was excited to visit her. It was only when we arrived that we realised how rich her family were. All the local roads were named after them and they had this massive mansion that they lived in and also used part of it as a hotel.

The mansion was so big and we were to stay there for a few days. This photograph is taken of one of the gardens that they owned. I would say most of what you can see in the photograph was owned by her family.

It was a very structured garden, which I am not usually a fan of but within the setting it was really wonderful and mind-blowing as it had these dramatic hills int he background that made it look great.

I like this photograph as it brings back a lot of lovely memories and always makes me smile.