The Portuguese used to be among the big movers and shakers of the world, albeit centuries ago. More recently they represented the "P" in the notorious PIGS moniker, standing for the ill-performing economies of Italy, Greece, Spain, and, yes, Portugal. The days of being a world-power in the way of exploration and trade are long gone, yet there are enough reminders of the glory times that one can find in Porto, even if the signs of slow decay are visible all over.
Thursday of last week I returned from eight days in Portugal's second-largest city, a place I had never visited, properly. Back in the day, Judy and I had stopped over for the night on a tandem trip that took us from Santiago de Compostela in north-western Spain south to Porto, then by train across the daunting mountains to the east, and finally back to Madrid via the Spanish highlands—for some reason we didn't see anything of Porto. Don't ask me why.
I had found a good mileage redemption deal on aa.com (115,000 miles and about $100 for taxes in biz, RT) and jumped on the opportunity to check out a new place. Even though technically this was a solo trip, I was to be joined by my old British buddy Howard for a few days as he found a way to rip himself loose from family life in Madrid for a long weekend. I had booked a centrally located two-bedroom Airbnb for us, and I was also responsible for developing an itinerary for our time together, with various Viator tours as well as local attractions thrown into the mix.
Before Howard showed up I had a day-and-a-half to myself, and I jumped with both feet into the cultural life of Porto just a few hours after my arrival. I had booked a ticket to a local
fado show, quite possibly Portugal's most important cultural contribution to the world since the early 1800s. I had run into this often sad and yearning, always melancholic style of music on numerous occasions in the past and actually have a Pandora station dedicated to
fado. The vocalist—male or female—is accompanied by only a 12-string Portuguese guitar and a viola or violin, singing mostly about life events that have affected his or her life.
The concert lasted an hour, and it was extremely professional with four accomplished musicians entertaining maybe 25 listeners in a small nightclub-like establishment. We sat at small tables within hand's reach of the stage, all the while sipping a glass of port. Lighting and sound quality only added to the overall impression. What a great way to start my cultural activities in Porto!
The next morning I joined a Free Walking Tour, a concept that I knew from places such as Edinburgh, Buenos Aires, and most recently Doha. Our guide, Fabian, was a Dutch national who had been living for almost a decade in Porto and was a treasure trove of local history and anecdotes. I like these small-group tours (seven participants in our case) because they provide a first overview of an unknown city covering a wide swath of different topics. We spent almost four hours crisscrossing the historical center of Porto, with Fabian telling us story after story about famous citizens, buildings, and intrigues.
It was during this tour that I realized that Porto is not characterized just by its
azulejos, those pretty blue-and-white tiles that adorn the façades of many churches, homes, and public buildings. Look just a little closer, and you suddenly realize that not only one, or two, or even three houses in many city blocks are abandoned but that in some areas the ratio between empty and occupied is much more evenly distributed between the two. Often only the tiled front of a house will be all that is left over: Certain zoning laws don't allow the destruction of existing tile work, and—on top of that—UNESCO World Heritage designations put additional financial burdens on the owners. For years, rent prices stagnated or, rather, collapsed, and before long tenants left the dilapidated dwellings. Roofs have caved in, windows are boarded up, and doors no longer exist.
To help homeowners restore a run-down house through renovation, the city of Porto has cataloged most of the various styles of tiles by design, size, and other parameters. Citizens can visit the municipal Banco de Materiais, a small museum-style building where one can find in cataloged bins the correct tile to replace what is missing to restore a
casa to former glory. After first submitting a written request and a subsequent follow-up visit by an expert, the homeowner will be furnished, free of charge, with the right number and type of tiles to replace whatever may be broken or missing. The
banco receives its inventory of replenishment tiles through a law that makes sure that all
azuelos are protected and must be deposited in the city's hands if a house is demolished. What a novel concept!
For dinner, I followed the suggestion of my earlier guide, Fabian, and ended up in the small, unpretentious
Casa Viùva, a restaurant close to the Airbnb. Just as it had been described, a low-volume TV in one of the corners was keeping the crowd up-to-date on a Champions League soccer match while the lone server/male owner scurried between the dozen or so small tables and the kitchen counter where the cook/female owner kept placing hot dishes. Unfortunately, I have to report that the fried octopus filets were rather dry and not as enjoyable as I had hoped. I suppose the octopus is bludgeoned thin and then thrown in a frying pan and loses any residual moisture. The same dish appeared on numerous menus around town, so I have to assume that the Portuguese really like it. At least the large carafe of
vinho verde helped.
Before Howard flew in on Friday, I visited a few other landmarks, such as the cathedral and the São Bento train station. Ascending one of the towers of
la catedral gave me a fabulous view of the city of Porto, the river Douro (all the way to its meeting the Atlantic in the far west), and the sister-city of Gaia on the southern bank, an area where all the important port wine houses are located. The train station is remarkable for its beautiful entry hall that features thousands of stunningly beautiful
azuelos.
As Thursday afternoon's weather turned out to be considerably nicer than what had been predicted, I decided to change my schedule and take tram line #1 (there are two remaining tram lines in Porto) and rumble along the Douro to Foz, the area of town that literally translated means "mouth," right at the breakwater of the Atlantic. The old-style electric tram is a hit with tourists (just the way the tram in Lisbon is), and the half-hour excursion (roundtrip ticket €8.00) is well worth the money. The Atlantic rolled in heavily, yet some youngsters decided to take a dip in the frigid waters. To each his own.
The next day I picked up Howard at the metro station, and soon we set out for an afternoon and evening of fun. First on the list was a light lunch at
Casa Guedes, a restaurant well-known for its roasted pork leg sandwiches; if you believe the guidebooks, no visit to Porto is complete without a visit to
Casa Guedes. What the guidebooks do
not tell you is that nobody traveling to this city should miss a guided tour of the Mercado do Bolhão. Somewhere in my initial research I had run across this old market hall that is in the final stages of a complete renovation, and I had discovered the once-a-month tour that is led by one of the architects involved in this project for a behind-the-scenes look. And this once-a-month opportunity just happened to be on the first Friday of the month, four hours after Howard's arrival!
With only 15 available spot for the tour yet no online booking services I had sent an email to the administration of the
mercado to reserve two spots, at the discounted senior price of €10.00 each. Much to our surprise, we were the only tour participants, and so we were treated to the full attention of Rita, a young architect who has been with the project for the eight years it has taken to completely re-do the market and make it a central point for commerce, community involvement, and tourism alike. In many ways, this may have been the best of all tours of my week in Porto.
The evening brought another
fado concert (this one was more informative with explanations given in between songs, but for my taste there was too much audience involvement in the way of sing-along sections) and then dinner at
O Rápido, a small restaurant known for its
bacalhau, or simply cod in English. The preferred way to serve fresh
bacalhau (there's also a salted version that I unfortunately didn't get to try) is to deep fry it and serve it similar to British fish'n chips with a generous helping of fried potato chips. Well, it looks better than it actually is: too many bones and enough fried stuff to induce a heart attack. Thankfully, the
vinho cut some of the grease.
Saturday morning we were picked up for our tour of the Douro valley. This tour was highly touted in reviews on Viator and other such sites as an ideal way to see one of Portugal's best-known wine regions (there are something like 14 altogether). While Portugal produces "normal" red and white wines in quantities large enough for export, it is the port wine industry that keeps the country on the map of wine lovers around the world. These grapes are grown along the banks of the Douro, a river that originates more than 500 miles to the north-east in Spain (I had ridden along its nondescript banks when I visited Burgos); after leaving rather flat country and crossing through the mountains, it resembles more the Rhein and Mosel rivers with their terraced vineyards.
We lucked out with the weather as the day was sunny and relatively warm, with clouds appearing only in the late afternoon. Wineries here are referred to as
quintas, and many of them are small family affairs that will sell their wines only locally. We visited
Quinta do Tedo, named after a small tributary that enters the Douro right where its vineyards are located. This winery was bought by a French/American couple who didn't quite have the money to buy a place in Napa but had enough to buy this
quinta. Our small group was given an excellent tour of the cellars, learning about the difference between
tawnies and
ruby reds and what for example LBV (Late Bottled Vintage) means. Interesting, but truly more fun was the eventual tasting of four different ports.
Another part of this tour was a one-hour cruise in a replica of a
rabelo, one of the flat-bottom wooden boats that were used to ship barrels of wine from the producing region to the shipping (and storage) houses in Porto/Gaia. We boarded our
rabelo in Pinhão, one of the last towns upstream before the Douro becomes so narrow that no roads can follow its banks. For some odd reason, there were no other tourists around, and our group of eight had the entire boat for ourselves. Naturally, the attendant sold wine....
On the way back to Porto we stopped by yet another
quinta, this one involved in olive oil production as well as regular reds and whites. More explanations, more tasting, more socializing—overall, it was a truly enjoyable day. Once back in Porto we decided on more evening sightseeing and ended up in a tiny restaurant where we had an excellent dinner, shrimp pasta for Howard and steamed clams in a white wine sauce for me. That certainly beat the
bacalhau!
We had been so lucky with the weather on Saturday! For the remainder of the trip,
o céu turned somber, and we were happy when there was no drizzle and we had to contend just with grey skies. For Sunday I had booked for us a wine tasting involving three of the major port houses in Gaia; however, before the, ahem, strenuous tour we had a light lunch of two local specialties,
morcela (a pork blood sausage, served with local cheese melted onto bread, for me) and
alheira for Howard, a sausage made of various types of meats (i.e., whatever can be scraped off the butcher shop's floor!), bread, and spices. Both were very tasty.
Among the three establishments included in our tour were the posh
Bodega Calem and
Porto Cruz. While our third stop,
Quinta dos Corvos, was rather unspectacular, the first two operations were as impressive in their architecture and modern in their lighting as any fancy
bodega in Argentina, Chile, New Zealand, or California. Unfortunately, the personable guide for this almost four-hour walking tour (definitely an hour too long!) delivered his spiel in such a machine-gun-fire fashion that Howard and I just looked at each other as if to ask, "How much of that did
you understand?" And
we were the native speakers on this tour. Three stars only. Sorry.
Howard left on Monday, and I continued my solitary exploration of town. Since most, if not all, museums are closed on the first day of the week I ended up drifting around the Gaia and Afurada districts in search of seafood. But in the low season, most restaurants in Afurada, at the mouth of the Douro opposite of Foz and the recommended spot for the freshest seafood anywhere, appear to be closed, and the few that may actually open don't do so until the early evening. With rain moving in I didn't want to take a chance of getting stranded and took an Uber back to my general neighborhood. And so, finally, I ended up indulging in one of Porto's culinary specialties, a
franceshina. The closest we come to something like this is a triple cheeseburger with a few pieces of bacon added, slathered with a mildly spicy beer-and-tomato sauce, and topped by an over-easy egg. Wisely I had ordered my
franceshina without French fries or any other sides, which meant that I didn't explode. This extraordinary and well-beloved dish is only about 75 years old, having been invented by a Portuguese expat
restaurateur in France who wanted to create something similar to the
croque monsieur but with similar yet different ingredients. Well done, Senhor da Silva!
For my penultimate day in Portugal I had booked another daylong excursion, this one to the cities of Braga and Guimarães. The tour operator had contacted me the day before, asking me whether I would like to change my excursion to the Douro valley since I was the only client, but since I had already done that tour I turned down the offer—and to my great surprise the tour company honored my booking. José, the middle-aged son of a fisherman from Matosinhos, was my driver and guide for the entire day, and I learned everything I had ever wanted to learn about kings, dukes, and especially
arcebispos.
We first visited the Bom Jesus do Monte grounds and church, which impressed mostly by the water-powered funicular, the one and only in the world. This site, just outside of Braga, would be spectacular in sunny weather as it overlooks the birth cradle of Portugal, an area that drips with history. We continued to the old town of Braga where we visited the impressive cathedral; the double organ with approximately 3,000 pipes is spectacular, and other parts of the church are equally amazing.
We had lunch (included in the tour) in the very nice restaurant
Diana. My choice was the octopus and bean stew (
feijoada), which more than made up for the fried octopus filets that I had had earlier in the trip. And the
vinho verde was simply perfect. Properly stuffed and after a nice, personal conversation over our lunch, José and I continued in intermittent rain to Guimarães, where we visited both the castle as well as the palace of the first kings of Portugal. My short description doesn't reflect the quality of the tour and sites we visited, but for the sake of brevity I want to just give this advice: If you find yourself in Porto and have the time, consider both of the day tours that I embarked on.
Just on cue, the sun at least partially reappeared on Wednesday, my last day in Porto before flying home on Thursday. I spent time visiting some installations in the Galeria Municipal do Porto, a modern art complex in the middle of the Jardins do Palácio Cristal. The gardens overlook the Douro, which never ceases to amaze with its bridges and steep slopes. I continued to the Museum of Photography, which is housed in the former prison and court of appeal—nextdoor to the Hitleresque Palácio do Justiça. (In a perverted twist, the Lady Justice greeting visitors to the Justice Palace is not blindfolded and dangles her scales like an afterthought by her side while prominently displaying her sword, just to make a point that harks back to Portugal's dark years.) The Centro Portugues de Fotografia includes some interesting historical photos and an impressive collection of cameras.
I forewent a visit to the
Livraria Lello, a tiny bookshop that attracts hordes of Harry Potter fans as JK Rowling is (falsely) said to have done much of her work sitting by one of the windows. Thanks to these crowds one now has to pay a tenner and wait in a long line to catch a glimpse of the inside, including an apparently rather elaborate double staircase. Similarly, I couldn't get myself to walk up the narrow stairwell of the Torre Gallegos, yet another landmark. Instead I paid a visit to the tiny
Farmácia Vitália, Porto's longest-operating pharmacy, which operates a small museum in its basement. And then, let's not forget the "hidden house," the most narrow house in Porto squeezed between two churches!
There were other sights that I either passed by or actually entered, sometimes just for a couple of minutes. One can take in only so many churches, so many altars, so many tiles and frescoes. And, walking around Porto, one can take in only so much of the construction fences and barricades, the pedestrian detours, and the traffic jams that make themselves known with the persistent use of the claxon. The extension of the metro's pink line is especially noticeable, and it appears that nobody knows how long this project will take or when it will be finished. Sidewalk closures to accommodate a house renovation are everywhere, taking much away from the lustre of the past.
Food and beer on this trip were plentiful and satisfying. I popped by five microbreweries, and even if their IPAs didn't knock off my socks their offerings were fresh and well balanced—it's not their fault that I like hoppy, floral brews the best, and Europe's offerings are generally much more moderate in that regard. The local dishes in the various restaurants were appealing and tasty, truly enjoyable. I had the first tripe in many, many years, and it was as delicious as
tripas can be! And how can one go wrong with honey melon topped with ham or all those other
tapas?
One evening in a small restaurant, I had a chance to talk to three male buddies, all of them in their mid-20s, who had been sitting at the next table. After they had asked me about "America" and Trump I put the question to them: How do you feel about Porto and your life and future here? Two of them were living with their parents because they don't have money to pay for an apartment; the third one just recently had moved out thanks to a newly found secure job. That was what troubled the other two the most: finding a decent job that would allow them to start their own life and maybe a family with the girlfriend they all have. Sure, they could try to move to another country (all spoke good English) within the EU, but they all said they love Portugal and want to stay and help bring it back to where it rightfully belongs. The days of the Salazar dictatorship (how else to call it?) are still in people's minds, but so are the glory days before things went to pot. These three were hopeful, if not optimistic, despite the continued problems around them, and one can only hope that their dreams will come to fruition.
Like so many countries in Europe, Portugal has much going for it, but there are many hurdles to overcome. With the havoc that the new US administration is unleashing not only on its own citizens but also its European allies and the world in general, the future has become even more unpredictable. The country will undoubtedly endure, but there may be more broken tiles and abandoned dreams than anybody would want.
Jürgen
A little after noon we picked up the car, gave Brock a handsome tip and thanked everyone profusely. Everything was back in order, and we marveled at our good luck in what could have been a major mess. We made it to the race site in time to do a partial course inspection, and the next day's race was almost routine—had it not been for the fact that with about 550 racers we had the largest turnout for a NICA race in Texas ever. With it came the usual hiccups and challenges, and when we started to head home around 3:30 p.m. we were dead tired. Sandy doesn't know how to drive a stick-shift, and it was a long drive home. When I had dropped her off at her house and made it home it was almost 10:00 p.m. These weekends are pretty rough.
Just yesterday I went on an all-day tour to Tulum and Coba, an excursion that I had planned for Sunday but that was rescheduled because the tour operator suddenly realized that they didn't offer the trip on any other day than Tuesday. Never mind. It was a nice tour, with only another three travelers who were pleasant and helped the tour guide, Mildred, make this a memorable excursion. I had been to Tulum many years ago and couldn't believe all the new tourist infrastructure that has been put in place to handle the hordes that now arrive via the newly opened Tulum international airport as well as the highly touted Tren Maya, which is now operational but appears to lack the number of anticipated passengers.
Of course, the ruins at Tulum still are spectacularly situated right on cliffs overlooking the Caribbean, and the fact that visitors are no longer allowed to clamber up and down the various monuments and pyramids is to be lauded as well. As a matter of fact, I was pleasantly surprised that the site was nothing like the totally overrun Chichén Itzá, which over the years has become a complete circus. Even more pleasant were the more intimate ruins at Cobá, which has the tallest pyramid of the entire Yucatan at 42 meters.
We concluded our tour with a decent buffet lunch and subsequent visit to two cenotes, or sinkholes, where we got a chance to cool off. Once again, the lack of big tour busses meant that we actually got to enjoy the experience, something that I had not expected to this extent. (Mildred, our guija, had told us that just two days earlier she had been leading a tour of about 60 tourists, and it had been hell.) I had booked the tours though Viator, which has become my go-to travel resource for such excursions.
