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Published: March 15th 2014
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The adventure of getting to Lisbon was already starting fabulously, I thought, as I cracked open a beer in the waiting area for my flight and casually struck up a conversation with a super cute Italian girl. Chiara (love that name) was a make-up artist on films who today was traveling to Lisbonna (as the Italians called the city) to learn to surf. I felt like I was in a Fellini film when we spoke because by nature she was so romantic!
The flight was delayed and we circled the Oceanic city a few times before landing. When we landed I was happy to see Lucia waiting for me in the greeting area with her huge beautiful smile and deep enigmatic brown eyes. I gave her a hug and a kiss. She gave me a gift of postcards and then we had to rush to catch our train in time to go north to Portugal's second largest city, Porto. Porto is known as Cidade Invicta" or "the invincible city" because throughout time it has never been occupied by foreign forces.
Being in Portugal again and greeted by this beautiful Brazilian who I had met a few weeks earlier (see
travelblog episode 9) was like a dream coming true. I brought myself down to earth and breathed knowing that this was real and I must have had some great karma built up to be such a lucky guy. When we arrived in Porto two and a half hours later it was late but we had energy so we went out. It was summer and in Europe if the sun is not risen you're still partying in the hot summer nights.
Just to make things interesting here and to reiterate, Lucia was Brazilian and could only speak very broken English but she understood Spanish because it's so close to her language. I spoke in my broken Spanish and communication turned out to be fine. When we really needed to communicate complicated issues we reverted to google translate. We stayed in a small family run hotel that first night.
The next day Lucia called her friends Raquel and Bruno and we met. A lot of what was going on was in Portuguese and hard for me to understand but it all worked out that we were to stay with Raquel and Bruno on the futon in the living room for
as long as we wanted and they would take us to all the best places to eat and drink around town and we were to worry about nothing. Hosting us as if we were royalty.
In European cities you can walk everywhere! Especially small ones like Porto. The first night Bruno took us to a cafe that had live music and served sangria, beer and sandwiches 'til 3 am. I soon discovered that Bruno played lead guitar and worked in the bookstore and was a tortured struggling artist like myself!
It is sort of a blur of happiness when the 4 of us were together and when we were partially together but I can say that the early August days and nights were long and we always had a story to tell and a food to eat and a friend to meet. Raquel and Bruno were the greatest hosts ever.
One day in particular stands out, I think it was a Wednesday morning; which makes it even better. Bruno & Raquel took us all to a little sandwich shop, Sao Bento, run by two brothers that fight over everything. They harvest their own white wine and serve
hot little spicy Portuguese pork burgers of delight!
Both Bruno and Raquel had the day off and we sat dining and talking about the country and acting and loving and fighting and singing. Next thing we knew we had drank 4 bottles of the delicious wine. How did that happen? We were still in awe as we left and paid our bill, which probably wasn't more than $50 including our food (a testament to affordable Portugal).
We walked on the top town areas where the bridge passes over the rio d'ouro, "The gold river". We saw the birds and the bridges. Onward in time and downhill in the "Cidade Invicta", as the sun was setting over the Atlantic in the distance. On the river there was a guitar and someone sang.
I grabbed Lucia and we danced and swerved and swayed to the rhythym of time. I looked at her, she at me. Blue eyes into brown eyes. Ocean into earth. Words can't express the bond we had. The energy that radiated in the aura between our soft bodies. Time stopping eternally for us with eachother and in eachothers worlds was all there was, and ever would
River of Gold
Rio D'ouro means River of gold in Portuguese. Its the name of the river running through Porto be!
The water of the river flowed behind us though. Losing itself to the infinite sea. It's constant movement collided with our idealistic imagination of how we wanted our worlds to be. To see one another mirrored in the others' eyes forever with eachother and lost in the surf of passion that we had found. Denying to realize that this magnificence was moving by its very nature. It was the tragedy of deep young love that we danced to that night on the river of gold in the invincible city.
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