A Tale of Two (Portuguese) Cities

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Should we carry quickly on south, or tempt fate by slowing our transit down once we reach the Portuguese coast?  That was the question I left you with in my last post, when I described our southern migration toward warmer skies.

Bruno would have carried on straight south, but we were passing so close to cities that hold such sway in my imagination that I couldn’t help but tempt fate (I told you in my last post that I’m unable to transit with my eyes closed!).  And so, we thought-up a compromise – we would slow down just enough to give me a quick taste of Porto and Lisbon, and then resume our transit south.

Below is thus a tale of two pit-stops in the most tantalizing of Portuguese cities.

A Tale of Porto: Beaches, Ribeira Riverfront, and Wine-Tasting

I couldn’t jump out of the car fast enough when we arrived in Porto.  Actually, we were camped south of town, on the other side of the infamous Douro River.  But here, on this sunny Sunday, the city was fully alive.

Here was a coastline stretching as far as the eye could see, and along it, both a bike path and a boardwalk.  The sun was out, the locals were out, and I wanted – nay, needed! – to be out too.  At this time of year, you have to take full advantage of good weather, especially in notoriously rainy Porto.

Bruno and I spent most of that first day cycling along the bike path and walking over the dunes on the boardwalk.  We biked in one direction, past beach cafés, to a small white hexagonal-shaped chapel on a bed of rocks at the very edge of the water.  In the other direction we rode past the estuary bordering the city proper, and caught our first sight of the six bridges to Porto.

Porto is a majestic-looking city.  Sat at the point where the Douro River throws itself into the Atlantic Ocean, its riverfront buildings are long and narrow, with an abundance of windows.  The pastel paint and bright orange roofs face south and sparkle in the sun all day, their hues changing with the strength and angle of the sun.

It was along this riverfront – Ribeira, it’s called – that Bruno and I spent our next day.  We donned our walking shoes because we’d planned to walk up the hill to explore the entire city.  We wanted to see the São Francisco Church, the Stock Exchange Palace, and the Mercado de Bolhão.  But every alley we turned onto seemed to lead us back to the river.  Eventually, we decided just to go with it.

On our side of the River, in Vila Nova de Gaia, we took part in the quintessential Porto experience – a port wine tour.  Porto not only gave its name to Portugal, but also to a sweet fortified wine called vinho de Porto.  This delectable wine is barrelled and bottled in Porto, and you can still see boats with wooden barrels bobbing in the water on the riverfront.  The grapes, which are grown 100km away – in the Douro River Valley – used to be transported to Porto this way, but now the boats are merely nostalgic, albeit charming, nods to the past.

We’d driven through the Douro River Valley to reach Porto because it’s considered by some to be the best drive in the world.  It was, indeed, both beautiful and fascinating.  The river meandered through the hills, where villages of whitewashed homes with orange roofs popped out around each bend.  On the hills between the villages was vineyard after vineyard, each announcing its company name with a giant sign in the center of the hill.  It reminded me quite a lot of the hillside vineyards of western Switzerland, minus the signs.

It is the microclimate and special soil of the Douro River Valley that makes the perfect port wine grapes.  We didn’t know this at the time, though – we learned this at the Ferreira Wines processing facility, one of many plants along Porto’s piece of the Douro River.  For a few euros, we were given a guided tour of the facilities followed by a port wine tasting.

To make port, the grapes’ fermentation process is halted after a few days by adding clear, flavorless brandy.  This fortifies the wine, of course, but also allows some of the grapes’ sweetness to be retained.  Port wine is thus a perfect aperitif or dessert wine, best drunk in the Portuguese way – with chocolate, cheese, or nuts, but never with one’s meal.

Our tasting of port involved one of each of the three main types – a white (always served as an aperitif), a tawny (reddish brown because it’s aged in small wooden barrels; can be drunk before or after a meal), and ruby (deep red because it’s aged in giant vats so has less contact with the barrel and the air; is always drunk as a dessert wine).  As a tawny, we were given a 10-year old bottle, which is a blend of many different ages of port that average out to ten years and give the port a consistent Ferreira flavour.  And the ruby we tried was a 2011 vintage special harvest, which is made from a single grape harvest deemed to be exceptional.  This last wine is only made occasionally because not every year’s harvest fulfils the criteria needed to make an unblended port.  (According to a quick internet research, 2011 was widely declared the best vintage year in 20 years, making my port tasting even more special!)

I may have walked out of Ferreira Wines a bit tipsy, but at least the buzz came with newfound knowledge of both port wine and the essence of what makes Porto tick.

A Tale of Lisbon: Pastries, Fado, and Ceramic Tiles

When faced with only two full days in a European capital city, what is the most efficient way to start?  A walking tour, of course.  Though I don’t join them often, I have a thing for free city walking tours.  They help to make sense of the history behind all the big, beautiful buildings that, admittedly, can begin to look alike after enough sight-seeing in Europe.  And they give me a connection to a local person that I would otherwise need time to foster.

I joined Discover Walks Lisbon, and ended up being the only one (Bruno had had his dose of city in Porto).  My private tour with Pedro in Lisbon’s west end, Belém, revolved mainly around Portugal’s Age of Discovery.  We saw statues of Portugal’s famous explorers, enumerated Portugal’s many old colonies while stepping over the world map mural donated by South Africa, and discussed Portugal’s legacy around the world as we walked past a Thai temple.

I sensed Pedro’s pride in his country’s history.  There was a theme to his narrative – the Portuguese were the first to do a lot of things, but were never recognized for them, never made famous for their contributions.  Pedro seemed to feel that his country was small but mighty, that they’d influenced more than their fair share of world history, and that he was proud to be Portuguese.  I found this insight even more interesting than the facts Pedro shot off.

After the tour, I wandered around Belém, photographing the ceramic tiles that are so often on the façades of Portuguese homes.  It turns out that, in the 18^th century, Portuguese people often kept ceramic tiles of saints in their homes for good luck.  After the terrible 1755 Lisbon earthquake, many homes, being made principally of wood, were burnt to the ground.  Only the ceramic tiles remained.  Thereafter, covering one’s façade with ceramic tiles became popular as a way to prevent fire from burning down one’s house.

If you’d asked Lisboans thirty years ago what they thought of the ceramic façades so common in their country, most would have scoffed and dubbed them old-fashioned peasant adornment.  Nowadays, though, most locals nostalgically gush over the bright-colored patterns of the ceramic façades.  I agree, so much so that I opted to eat my lunch with a bunch of locals at a cafeteria covered in ceramic tiles.

The fog had lifted after lunch, so I walked along the water to properly look at the bridges and the Monument to the Discoveries.  I popped into the massive Jerónimos Monastery and then waltzed next door, to the Pastéis de Belém.  The pasteleria dates back to 1837, when the cash-strapped monks next door started a pastry business.  Pastéis de Nata, small flaky tarts filled with custard cream, have been famous around Portugal ever since.  I brought some home to Bruno and we bit into them together.  One word: delicious.

Maybe it was the pastries, but the following day I was able to convince Bruno to come into Lisbon with me.  We wandered up downtown Baixa’s main pedestrian street, which was filled with buskers, Christmas decorations, and stir on this sunny Saturday afternoon.  We ate, of course, more Portuguese pastries.  Then we walked past the São Jorge Castle into Alfama, the old Moorish part of Lisbon.  By this point it was evening, leaving us wandering up and down narrow alleys in the dark.

It’s so rare these days that I visit a city after dusk, but there was a reason I’d managed to convince Bruno to – I wanted to witness a fado performance.  Fado is a style of traditional Portuguese music that originates in Alfama.  The slow, nostalgic music generally involves a male guitarist (playing a Portuguese guitar, which is rounder and double-stringed) and a female vocalist.  Nowadays, fado is performed most often as dinner accompaniment in small tourist restaurants.  Even though it’s a tourist cliché to see fado in Alfama (like the port-tasting in Porto, perhaps?), it was one I wanted to partake in.

Walk in the lower alleyways of Alfama around dusk and you will see loads of restaurants advertising fado performances that evening.  It’s a challenge to pick a restaurant – you can never be sure whether the group performing will actually be good, or just there to lure in tourists – so we chose based on an early start time and the availability of vegetarian food.  And we actually lucked out – Fatima Moura’s five-person group at São Miguel Restaurant was great (at least to my untrained ear).  Thank goodness we got lucky, because the food was expensive (albeit yummy) and the drinks ridiculous ($5 for a small bottle of water?).

There were three guitarists, one of them on the Portuguese guitar, and another who sang sometimes; and of course, two alternating female singers.  Fado music is centered on the melody of the singer, who generally has a deep, strong alto voice.  It’s nostalgic music, full of longing, broken hearts, and hard times, but it’s not always slow.  I found similarities to traditional Greek music and Eastern European gypsy music, but that might just be because of the stringing techniques and the foreign language.

I loved getting to see live Fado, but in retrospect, I’d have preferred a different venue.  The place was pretty empty, except for tourists that would wander in, eat, and be out in an hour.  The band would play 3-5 songs and then take a break that felt endless in a restaurant where it was too expensive for us to draw out our meal.  After 3 hours and only fifteen songs, we were the last in the place so decided to call it a night.  I’d love to see Fado again, but in a serious venue where people are there for the music, if that’s possible to find.

It was the Best of Times, it was the Worst of Times

With less than a week spent between Portugal’s two largest cities, it’s little wonder my tales come down to a few visual impressions, trivial facts, and clichéd tourist experiences.  The truth is I’ve been struggling with the pace of our travel in Europe.  There is so much history to experience in each square inch of European space that I perpetually feel as though I’m merely skimming the surface.  What often results from my visits is a feeling of dissatisfaction and frustration buried underneath my enthusiasm.

As a slow traveler and amateur writer, I’ve come to expect a certain depth or uniqueness of experience from myself when I visit a place and then write about it.  I want to share some inimitable inkling of a place with you; I want to experience something beyond the typical tourist-package.  I want to dig deeper, to gain some glimmer of understanding.

But that’s hard in Europe, especially when you’re in transit.

I’m working on accepting that.  To appreciate the fact that I’ve stepped foot into cities that, a few years ago, I wasn’t sure I’d even get the chance to visit at all.  To feel grateful and lucky for my experiences, however brief, superficial, or formulaic they may be.  And to tell myself that I’m doing some sort of reconnaissance mission for our better, longer, slower trip to Europe one day.  That’ll be the trip that will do the likes of Porto and Lisbon, two cities worthy of a wonderful tale, justice.