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I have never been to Portugal before, and I probably wouldn't have had it on my list except that someone I know lived there, and for a while I thought they might be amenable to me visiting.
I booked the flight before I realised they weren't, and so had a section of my trip that was basically a blank with nothing much planned.
I'm staying in the 'granny flat' (entirely separate spare room/bathroom/kitchenette) of a house with a garden! The garden was the reason I picked the place - that, and the fact that there was supposed to be a dog. Except the host says they're "travelling", but there's someone in the 'house' part of the property, so...I don't know whether to believe them, or suspect that it's a hoax to disguise that the entire place is one of those places that companies rent out.
That said....there's a garden. An actual garden with growing vegies - tomatoes and chillies and cucumber, a pumpkin, grapevine, a tree that I can't remember the fruit of (it's not feijoa or persimmons, but it's kind of like them (ETA: it's "tamarillo")), and what I think might be asparagus, except that it's way too overgrown - and a garden in a rental property seems like a lot of bother.
Anyway, it's a pretty nice space, if small. Clean, neat, and high-ceilings, so I suspect that my vague discomfort with the canal boat was related to the low-ceilinged spaces.
In Porto, I use public transport everywhere - so convenient, everything accessible for someone with legs. If you don't have legs or have health issues, it's going to be really difficult getting around. They kept the cobblestones, so nothing is flat and the rumble of luggage is a near-constant sound all over the city. However, I saw a wheelchair user being towed backwards because there was no safe way to go down to the riverside forward-facing, and whole city itself is a maze of narrow alleys and un-guard-railed stairs.
As I said, for an able-bodied person capable of walking most places, it's fine. Not to mention, there's a 3-day pass that gives you unlimited trips for 72 hours, and I have used it innumerable times on the metro and the bus systems, even going back to my room for the middle of the day and venturing out again in the evening.
On Tuesday, I went on a tour out to the Douro Valley, which is a major winemaking region. It was a group of about twenty in three vans, and I was with a group of 4x twentysomethings and a just-married couple. The driver/guide was chatty and conversational and good at imparting information about the region, the winemakers we were going to visit, and the general history of Porto and the Douro Valley.
Among the rest of the group was a group of 5x twentysomethings who took regular trips together, and they were lovely - at one stop, I ended up sitting between two of them and they were chatty and inclusive and delightful. I would have loved to spend more time with them, but I didn't get their numbers, and at the end of the day their van arrived back at the dropoff point about 10 minutes before mine, and by the time we reached there, they'd dispersed off to their own events. *sigh*
I'm telling myself that things happen as they happen. But it's a bit disappointing to meet people I would have liked to learn more about and then not be able to continue the conversation.
--
Otherwise, I've quite enjoyed the city, the age of it, the history of it as a port town.
I took a walking tour through Porto on Wednesday morning with an actual student of Portuguese history, and it was excellent, with all the little bits and details that I enjoy.
Port towns - towns with rivers or waterways - are alwyas the most interesting in terms of history and politics, because the movement of traad eand goods, the ability to defend a space - those are key things in the flow of power. And there's alwsomething to be seen, and the river running through the middle of the city. There's cathedrals upon castle upon other things, and design choices of the city - the walls that have been built through the centuries and their purposes. Who got pushed in, who got pushed out... The heavy presence of the Catholic church means the inquisition had tentacles here from the 1500s until the early 1800s, and there was a whole era during which the Jews in the city were given the 'choice' to convert, flee, or die.
Interestingly, Porto is probably a more liberal city than Lisbon in the same way that a lot of secondary cities tend to be. According to my guide, it's always been a little on the edge of revolution, with more progressive ideas, in part aided (somewhat ironically) by the church. Early on in the development of the city, the church declarated that the nobility wasn't allowed to live within the city limits. They had to move to the south side of the Porto river, which meant that any fighting between nobles was away from the city, allowing the merchants to (mostly) thrive. Merchants tend to deal with a broader range of ideas than nobility, and so the mindset of the city of Porto was a lot less rigid than that of the south side of the river (Gaia).
The various wars across Europe and the reduction of the nobility's power through the various revolutions, social and economic, meant the south of the river has industrialised and turned 'modern', while north of the river is still 'old city' with the same stone and cement and tiles and terracotta. It's a twisting maze of cobblestones and steep streets. Wooden shutters peel paint on old wooden-frame windows in one building, while insulated double-glazing gleams on the next, and steel security shutters gleam on the house beyond that.
The thing that never keeps being amazing to me is just how steeped in history Europe is, particularly in their architecture and their town design. Like, buildings that are hundreds of years old, still being used in the function for which they were built. Upgraded and developed and retrofitted on the inside, and sometimes the outside, but still...the function for which they were built.
Amazing.
--
Wednesday evening, I went out to the Jardim do Morro, a garden on the south-side of the city, with beautiful views westwards over the river. I ended up at the restaurant just below it that overlooks the river and had dinner, although I was originally planning to have dinner back at the apartment. Gotta say, the food was excellent: squid ink linguine with garlic and tomato prawns, and a dessert of tiramisu.
--
Thursday...I was kind of hoping to do a tour up to Geres National Park, but I didn't book the space I saw in time, and so that opportunity is gone.
I ended up chilling in various restaurants and coffee shops for the day, heading back to the room to sleep and write for a couple of hours. I had a good lunch and a good dinner and a decent sleep, and was ready (so I thought) for the next day's travel...
I booked the flight before I realised they weren't, and so had a section of my trip that was basically a blank with nothing much planned.
I'm staying in the 'granny flat' (entirely separate spare room/bathroom/kitchenette) of a house with a garden! The garden was the reason I picked the place - that, and the fact that there was supposed to be a dog. Except the host says they're "travelling", but there's someone in the 'house' part of the property, so...I don't know whether to believe them, or suspect that it's a hoax to disguise that the entire place is one of those places that companies rent out.
That said....there's a garden. An actual garden with growing vegies - tomatoes and chillies and cucumber, a pumpkin, grapevine, a tree that I can't remember the fruit of (it's not feijoa or persimmons, but it's kind of like them (ETA: it's "tamarillo")), and what I think might be asparagus, except that it's way too overgrown - and a garden in a rental property seems like a lot of bother.
Anyway, it's a pretty nice space, if small. Clean, neat, and high-ceilings, so I suspect that my vague discomfort with the canal boat was related to the low-ceilinged spaces.
In Porto, I use public transport everywhere - so convenient, everything accessible for someone with legs. If you don't have legs or have health issues, it's going to be really difficult getting around. They kept the cobblestones, so nothing is flat and the rumble of luggage is a near-constant sound all over the city. However, I saw a wheelchair user being towed backwards because there was no safe way to go down to the riverside forward-facing, and whole city itself is a maze of narrow alleys and un-guard-railed stairs.
As I said, for an able-bodied person capable of walking most places, it's fine. Not to mention, there's a 3-day pass that gives you unlimited trips for 72 hours, and I have used it innumerable times on the metro and the bus systems, even going back to my room for the middle of the day and venturing out again in the evening.
On Tuesday, I went on a tour out to the Douro Valley, which is a major winemaking region. It was a group of about twenty in three vans, and I was with a group of 4x twentysomethings and a just-married couple. The driver/guide was chatty and conversational and good at imparting information about the region, the winemakers we were going to visit, and the general history of Porto and the Douro Valley.
Among the rest of the group was a group of 5x twentysomethings who took regular trips together, and they were lovely - at one stop, I ended up sitting between two of them and they were chatty and inclusive and delightful. I would have loved to spend more time with them, but I didn't get their numbers, and at the end of the day their van arrived back at the dropoff point about 10 minutes before mine, and by the time we reached there, they'd dispersed off to their own events. *sigh*
I'm telling myself that things happen as they happen. But it's a bit disappointing to meet people I would have liked to learn more about and then not be able to continue the conversation.
--
Otherwise, I've quite enjoyed the city, the age of it, the history of it as a port town.
I took a walking tour through Porto on Wednesday morning with an actual student of Portuguese history, and it was excellent, with all the little bits and details that I enjoy.
Port towns - towns with rivers or waterways - are alwyas the most interesting in terms of history and politics, because the movement of traad eand goods, the ability to defend a space - those are key things in the flow of power. And there's alwsomething to be seen, and the river running through the middle of the city. There's cathedrals upon castle upon other things, and design choices of the city - the walls that have been built through the centuries and their purposes. Who got pushed in, who got pushed out... The heavy presence of the Catholic church means the inquisition had tentacles here from the 1500s until the early 1800s, and there was a whole era during which the Jews in the city were given the 'choice' to convert, flee, or die.
Interestingly, Porto is probably a more liberal city than Lisbon in the same way that a lot of secondary cities tend to be. According to my guide, it's always been a little on the edge of revolution, with more progressive ideas, in part aided (somewhat ironically) by the church. Early on in the development of the city, the church declarated that the nobility wasn't allowed to live within the city limits. They had to move to the south side of the Porto river, which meant that any fighting between nobles was away from the city, allowing the merchants to (mostly) thrive. Merchants tend to deal with a broader range of ideas than nobility, and so the mindset of the city of Porto was a lot less rigid than that of the south side of the river (Gaia).
The various wars across Europe and the reduction of the nobility's power through the various revolutions, social and economic, meant the south of the river has industrialised and turned 'modern', while north of the river is still 'old city' with the same stone and cement and tiles and terracotta. It's a twisting maze of cobblestones and steep streets. Wooden shutters peel paint on old wooden-frame windows in one building, while insulated double-glazing gleams on the next, and steel security shutters gleam on the house beyond that.
The thing that never keeps being amazing to me is just how steeped in history Europe is, particularly in their architecture and their town design. Like, buildings that are hundreds of years old, still being used in the function for which they were built. Upgraded and developed and retrofitted on the inside, and sometimes the outside, but still...the function for which they were built.
Amazing.
--
Wednesday evening, I went out to the Jardim do Morro, a garden on the south-side of the city, with beautiful views westwards over the river. I ended up at the restaurant just below it that overlooks the river and had dinner, although I was originally planning to have dinner back at the apartment. Gotta say, the food was excellent: squid ink linguine with garlic and tomato prawns, and a dessert of tiramisu.
--
Thursday...I was kind of hoping to do a tour up to Geres National Park, but I didn't book the space I saw in time, and so that opportunity is gone.
I ended up chilling in various restaurants and coffee shops for the day, heading back to the room to sleep and write for a couple of hours. I had a good lunch and a good dinner and a decent sleep, and was ready (so I thought) for the next day's travel...
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Porto sounds amazing, thank you for writing this up.
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