Porto, Portugal

From Lisbon we took the bus north to Porto, looking forward to staying put for a full fortnight there. We settled into our Airbnb across the road from the busy Santo Antonio hospital with ambulances coming and going at all hours, and lines of horrendously loud diesel buses stopping and starting below our window all day long. We were grateful for the double glazing and shutters which successfully blocked the noise when it became too much.

It was delightful to experience cooler, more pleasant weather in Porto, with the influence of the sea breezes from the Atlantic Ocean keeping temperatures down to a much more agreeable level, while out-of-control wildfires were decimating the Greek countryside and islands, and intense

heatwaves effected much of Europe.

Porto, known as the city of bridges, has six magnificent bridges crossing high up over the Duoro River which runs through the city. It’s very picturesque with its, often ramshackle array of terracotta-tiled buildings cascading down the slopes of the Old Town to the river’s edge. Porto has only become a tourist destination in the last 15 or so years, and prior to this the Old Town was reportedly crime-ridden and filled with dilapidated tumbledown buildings. Since then, millions of euros have been injected into the economy and everywhere you look around the city, there are cranes dotting the skyline and facades of historic buildings shrouded in scaffolding in the process of being cleaned and restored.

Porto Old Town has huge charm though, with narrow cobbled streets twisting

and turning steeply up to the more modern upper town and the sprawled-out city beyond.

From our walking tour guide, we learned that the 25th of April is hugely significant to the Portuguese, as it is to New Zealanders and Australians, but commemorated for a very different reason. After nearly five decades of brutal dicatorship by Antonia de Oliveira Salazar's regime, that brought about censorship, discrimination and suppression, the Portuguese army joined the rebel groups and overthrew the government. The story of the bloodless coup that occurred on 25th April 1974 (Freedom Day) is remarkable. A particular song was played on primetime radio to alert the rebels to begin the coup, followed by a song banned from the radio at the time. Surprisingly, the official guards of the presidential palace laid down their weapons and joined the rebel groups. People gathering outside the presidential palace placed carnations into gun muzzles, which is why the day is also remembered as the Carnation Revolution, and marks the beginning of the establishment of democracy for Portugal.

We also learned about the famous Portuguese glazed ceramic tiles, ‘azulejo’

meaning polished stone in Arabic. They started being used in Portugal in the 13th century when part of the Iberian Peninsula was still being ruled by the Moors of North Africa. As well as being delightfully decorative, they serve a practical use to preserve warm temperatures inside homes and they also offer some degree of protection from fire. Traditionally, the tiles are all hand-painted before being applied, jigsaw-fashion, up onto the walls to form a story-telling picture or pattern.

Over time, tiles decorating walls on the inside of homes of the rich and elite spread, in the 1800s, to their use on the outside of buildings, subsequently becoming a huge part of Portuguese popular culture.

The interior walls of the railway station in Porto (Estacao de Sao Bento) are spectacular for their highly decorative blue and white tiles relating the story of everyday life in Portugal, and all the way round the top of the walls, the history of transportation in Portugal.

Cork is one of Portugal’s biggest and most important exports, producing more than 50% of the world’s cork supply, the bulk of it made into wine bottle stoppers. It takes up to 25 years before the first bark can be removed from a cork oak tree. A further two harvests are then needed (about 18 years in all) before the tree produces cork of sufficient quality to make wine stoppers. Fascinating stuff. Cork products are cheap and widely available and make for good light-weight mementos to take back to New Zealand!

Part of the plan for our time in Porto was for Nicola to knuckle down and do some serious work, as the next tourism season was rapidly approaching and there was much to do to prepare for it. During our time away, we have been fortunate to engage a new administrator and whilst in Porto, to make a great (remote) start to the training and orientating process.

Highlights of Porto:
Igreja das Carmalitas & Igreja do Carma: Two churches built side-by-side but with a tiny house sandwiched in between to bypass the laws at the time of construction, which forbade them being built adjoining. Why they needed two churches so close together was not explained to our walking tour group, but they each have stunning intricately decorated interiors, both worthy of a visit. The tiny home in between is one-room wide and several storey’s high but wedge-shaped, so roomier than you would expect when looking from the outside of the building.

River Duoro: The stunning river running out to the Atlantic Ocean a couple of kilometres downstream, has Porto on one bank and the city of Gaia on the opposite. Both are stunning to view from the other side, and the picturesque flat-bottomed river boats (rabelos) line each bank, now for the photographic spectacle, but originally designed to carry large barrels of wine without getting stuck in the river’s shallow waters.

Vila Nova de Gaia: The city is especially famous as a hub of the renowned Portuguese port wine industry, and for its many warehouses and cellars offering tours and tastings.

Dom Louis I Bridge: The double-decked metal arched bridge, closest to Porto Old Town, is impressive to walk across and take in the incredible views on both sides of the river, upstream and down.

Franchesinha: This famous local Porto dish is not for the fainthearted. It consists of layers of toasted bread and assorted hot meats such as roast, steak, wet-cured ham, linguiça, or chipolata over which sliced cheese is melted by the ladling of a near-boiling tomato-and-beer sauce called molho de

francesinha. It comes with fries, and the half-serving we shared was more than enough to cope with, definitely not Heart Foundation-ticked! Delicious though.

Evidently old-time residents of Porto are known as ‘tripe-eaters’ but we weren’t brave enough to sample that local delicacy.

One day we took the bus to the Foz district where the Duoro River meets the Atlantic Ocean and hired bikes to ride along the picturesque coastline. There are craggy rocky outcrops interspersed with gorgeous yellow sand beaches with hundreds of people sunbathing and paddling in the shallow water but very few actually swimming in the cooler Atlantic waters. Bruce braved the ocean for a short dip, but Nicola much preferred the tepid warmth of the Mediterranean, Adriatic or Aegean Seas – very spoilt, I know.

World Youth Day: We were surprised to find ourselves amongst the gathering-up of hundreds of thousands (approximately 450,000) of Catholic 18 to 30-year-olds from around the world, who spent time sight-seeing in Porto before moving on to Lisbon for World Youth Day. WYD was actually a six-day event, from 1 to 6 August, with the Pope due to arrive the day after we flew out of Lisbon, and expected to stay there for most of the event. We were very grateful that the mass movement of all these young people did not impact on our bus journey back to Lisbon and our flight out to Luton, UK.