Advertisement
Published: August 10th 2008
My journey to Porto didn’t exactly get off to a smooth start. I knew I had to catch a train to Coimbra B railway station but wasn’t sure which train to catch. I couldn’t see the train status screen. The bane of the blindy on the road. There were two trains waiting to leave so I had to make a choice. Naturally I made the wrong choice on the advice of a guy waiting on the platform. Got on the train which was totally empty. I waited a minute or two and still no other passengers. I saw people walking toward a train on a far platform. Got off the train and flashed my ticket in front of a railway official. He directed me to the other train on the far platform. This train was almost full which made me feel a bit more confident. Still I wouldn’t relax until it pulled out at 09:12 which thankfully it did. Settled into my seat and took in the sights during the not so scenic three minute journey. Got off the train and asked another official where the Inter City train left from. He pointed to the right so I waited on that
side of the platform. He then yelled out to me to go across the tracks to platform one where passengers were waiting. The Inter City train turned up on time and people with cases, backpacks stepped on board. Got in the wrong seat and had to move. A young female passenger who spoke good English showed me to my seat which was occupied. This passenger momentarily became a de facto railway employee. She pointed out to the woman sitting in my seat that she needed to move. As it turned out I had an empty seat next to me for the whole journey. Once the train left the platform it wasted no time in powering up to warp factor eight. It was quite pleasant watching the countryside rapidly zip by while I relaxed in my comfortable seat. It took a little over an hour for us to reach Porto which was pretty well exactly on time. I got off the train to be greeted by a couple sharing an overly cathartic moment on the platform. Followed the heard of commuters toward the exits and hoped there’d be some cheap digs in the vicinity.
As it turned out there was
a street full of shops just across the road from the station. It looked promising on the accommodation front but I wouldn’t know for sure until I got within a meter of each shop front. A blind man has to virtually smell the pension to know it’s there which can be confronting, given the dubious hygiene of some establishments. This is always the toughest part of travelling for me. Arriving in a strange place without any pre booked accommodation. On the positive side I was there in the morning (as opposed to night) and a full day before the weekend. Logically I shouldn’t have had a problem finding a place. But logic doesn’t always rule in this world. I walked past several cafes and then saw those beautiful two words, vacant rooms. I walked up stairs to reception and was greeted by a friendly middle aged man with a good command of English. So far so good. I asked how much were single rooms? 20 or 25 Euro was the answer depending on whether I wanted a shared toilet or not. He grabbed my heavy back pack and hauled it up to the room I wanted to check out. I
told him I was only looking and this was the first place I’d seen. I wanted to walk around the local strip before committing to one place. That didn’t seem to worry him. A few doors down found another place which had a room with all facilities for 20 Euro. A good deal but the tariff didn’t include breakfast and the guy there spoke no English. Walked up the road a bit and came up empty. Tripped on the curbing of the narrow footpath and fell A over T. Luckily my laptop broke the fall. Actually it wasn’t that bad. More embarrassing than anything else as a group of locals gossiping in the street witnessed the whole thing. I gingerly walked back down the road and found another place I’d missed on the first sweep. This place was dirt cheap at only 10 euros a night but the dirt on the blanket put me off so I gave it the flick. Kept walking and turned the opposite corner. Squeezed past a parked van and brought my foot down on angled piece of curbing which slightly sprained my right ankle. Something I really didn’t need with a full back pack to
tote. I checked into the first place I’d seen a minute later figuring that I’d probably permanently maim myself if I walked the streets any longer. How do those hookers do it?
The guy on reception would have been a natural at filler busting in parliament. Boy could he talk. He showed me a map of Porto of which he was very proud. He was also proud of the city of Porto as well. Told me where I could get Port tastings and where the old city was located. Said it was only a twenty minute walk to there. That was close enough for me and confirmed I wasn’t in the boom docks as it were. Most people would probably have headed straight off to the tourist attractions. Not me. I checked out the local shops and found a shop front oasis that sold cold cans of Super Bock. I bought one and consumed its cold alcoholic bubbliness in the privacy of my room. I was feeling really tired after virtually no sleep the night before. Still I felt I needed to explore the area so I left the pension and walked all the way up a steep road.
A steep road that provided little more than exercise. There was no architecture of any note or shops of any interest. There was a church at the top of the hill. Yawn! I was thinking that maybe four days here was four days too many. I walked up another road in the opposite direction which showed marginally more promise. The streetscape was a little more inspiring but nothing to write home about. Passed by a cemetery which was the highlight of the walk. Doesn’t that tell you something? The shopping strip around the square there was almost devoid of people. I returned back to the hotel picking up a chocolate waffle, a pack of Lays chips and another can of Super Bock. Fatigue set in once more after the booze was downed, the chips were chewed and the chocolate waffle waffleated. You had to chocolate coat the waffle yourself by squeezing a sac he of chocolate syrup onto the surface of the cake. Sounds disgusting and looked disgusting to boot but tasted yummy and gave me a real shot of attaining my diabetes goal. I watched a bit of in room TV. Quite a good selection of channels. Much better
than was on offer n Coimbra. Several movie channels, plenty of entertainment stations and BBC, CNN and Sky News as well. Something I didn’t expect was the porno station which left little to the imagination.
I tried adjusting the blinds in my room soon after I settled in. By pulling a thick nylon ribbon on the side I was able to open but not close them. There was no other controls and I just couldn’t see how they worked. The manager simply pulled the bottom of the ribbon out horizontally releasing tension in the mechanism. The blinds slid shut. Simple when you know how. He also showed me how the window opens conventionally but also via a bottom hinge allowing it to swing out from below. I looked on in awe at this hi tech Euro wizardry. I felt like James Bond being shown the latest gadgets by M. Walked around the corner and bought my third and final can of Super Bock for the day. The owner’s six year old was serving. I thought the proprietor would take over the transaction seeing I was buying alcohol but no, he blithely allowed his son to take my money and
give me change. Is this legal over here? Does anybody give a stuff whether it is or isn’t? I’d spent some time lying down on my bed that Thursday. I was really tired and I was more than happy to switch off the light at around 10:00 and grab some shut eye. Some time in the early hours a dickhead in the street started mouthing off while occasionally blowing a whistle. That’s right, a whistle! Was he a traffic cop practicing his craft, a soccer ref suffering from insomnia or just an inconsiderate imbecile without two brain cells to rub together? It didn’t take the jury long to draw their conclusion. In spite of this interruption I got a sufficient amount of sleep to make me feel half human. I tried out the shower which wasn’t as good as the one in Coimbra but passable. Took forever for the hot water to come through. How much water is wasted this way throughout the world each day? Sampled the breakfast downstairs which was very basic. Two rolls with butter and apricot jam plus a pot of coffee with an equal amount of milk. Got three cups of coffee out of it.
More if I’d equally distributed the warm milk and coffee.
Met the manager’s wife. She was someone who would also easily qualify for the talking Olympics. Said she heard I was Australian and observed that Aussies and Canadians have a lot in common. Similar sized countries with a similar ethnic mix from Britain and Ireland. She told me that she and her husband lived and worked for several decades over there. Now they both have Canadian as well as Portuguese passports. I headed off to the centre of the old city. Got to the river fairly quickly and took a few shots with the camera. The houses by the river were a bit run down or totally uninhabitable. Strange seeing that this would normally be prime real estate. There was some development taking place higher up but the properties closest to the river looked abandoned. Manager’s wife told me that the socialist governments of the past had brought in rent control on these properties. Landlords who couldn’t increase rents stopped maintaining the dwellings. I wandered across the bridge which was clogged with fat arsed tourists dodging the light rail cars that passed by every few minutes. Scaled a hill
in a nearby park to get a view of the surrounds. There wasn’t much to see. I’ll say one thing for Porto, it’s consistent. There isn’t much to see anywhere. Coimbra beats it hands down. Wandered along steep streets in the centre of town. Been there done that. All ho hum to this veteran traveller. Returned to the pension. Did some writing, watched TV and drank cold beer. Had a meal at the bar next door. Half a chicken and chips with rice. Cheap and very nasty. The chicken was the worst I’ve ever had in that it was mainly bones. Just awful! The glass of red I ordered was fine but didn’t make up for their terrible tucker. If only 007 was here as well as in Coimbra. Hit the sack as a new group of dickheads chatted outside in the street. Don’t these people have homes to go to?
Saturday morning I wake up just before 07:00. I know this because some obnoxious guest left her room shortly after 07:00 and talked at what seemed 100 decibels. She was bellowing to her friend who was probably deaf. I couldn’t believe how selfish she was. Did it ever
occur to her that people may still be sleeping? I was confronted by the manager as soon as I headed downstairs to have breakfast. He introduced me to his son who set up the wireless internet there. I couldn’t get it working the previous day although my laptop recognised their network which had a strong signal strength. I said I’ll have breakfast first and then we can tackle the internet problem. Half an hour later his son begins fiddling around with my laptop trying to get it to logon to his network. After an hour of getting nowhere his son asked the assistance of a French guest who apparently had some expertise in this area. As it turned out he didn’t. It was just another dead end. The son had one last go at it. I’d pretty well given up and just wanted to check out the city via the metro system. That’s the thing about hard core computer nerds. They are like a socially inept dog with a bone. They just don’t know when to give up. Luckily the manager’s son wasn’t hard core and conceded defeat after another half hour of futility. I walked across to the information
booth at the metro station. They have a relatively complicated ticketing system in Porto. You really need an information person to help you out. There are quite a few zones, each with a corresponding ticket. On top of that you can go mono modal or multi modal. And if that wasn’t enough choice there was one hour tickets, twenty-four hour tickets and seventy-two hour tickets. The girl there was quite helpful and directed me to the correct platform.
Validated my ticket and waited for the light rail to arrive. Didn’t have to wait long. The vehicle showed up a minute or two later. It was basically two of the new Melbourne trams joined together. The journey was quick and trouble free. Got out and checked out the sports stadium from outside. I’d been told by the manger’s wife that there was a big shopping mall there with an equally big supermarket. When I first got off at the station I couldn’t see it but as I walked around it came into view. It was your standard three level shopping mall. Hermitically sealed off from the real world and totally soulless. As I traversed its length I came across a
couple of kids riding what appeared to be robotic animals with jointed legs. Never seen that before. No sign of a supermarket though. Found a mall directory hidden away under the stairs. You guessed it, no mention of a supermarket. My previous experience in Europe made me think if there was a Pingo Dose look alike here it would be in the basement area. So I sort the lowest point in the structure and there it was. I wandered in and found a huge variety store with numerous check outs. I checked out a few aisles and found Lays potato chips so I could do a price comparison. To my surprise they were the same price here as in one of the mini marts. Seems the only advantage here is a greater range, not that it was stunningly greater. Bought some decadent looking chocolate pastries and a bottle of port. Not that they had a huge selection of the local drink on hand. Hey this is called Porto isn’t it? I also found packs of peanuts, a real coup over here where nuts are hard to find unless you are roaming the streets. Left the mall via an exit corridor
bordered on one side by an incredibly kitsch multi colored glass window. Where were the taste police when this was erected?
Dropped off my shopping and discovered that shop selling cold beer had already closed for the weekend. It was just after 13:00. Got back on the metro and rode to the Senhora da hora metro stop. Why this stop? Because it was the furthest one I could travel to. That’ll teach me, it was utterly uninspiring. Grain silo on one side and featureless suburbia on the other. Spent less than five minutes there soaking up the non existent atmosphere before catching another tram into the centre of town. Got off at Trindade stop where I had to change lines. Not as easy as you might think as the inadequate signage in this country came into play once more. I had a couple of false starts before finally finding the right line who’s entrance was hidden around the corner. What made things even worse was some art work that looked like legitimate directions from the metro map. Got to the last stop before the bridge over the river. It was the centre of the old city. I’d been there
the previous day but what I hadn’t noticed last time was the internet joint located upstairs. I walked up the rickety stairs and found out that it only cost one euro an hour to web surf. For some reason they quoted a half hour price which was also one euro. Why not just say minimum charge one euro? Anyway the great news was they were happy for me to use my laptop. Finally I found a decent place to log on. Got online and found the speed was good as well. Wish I’d noticed this place earlier. I’d gone to a local internet café the previous day that was a bit of a pain. Screaming kid in the café plus a keyboard that makes it hard to get the @ symbol. Really handy when you want to logon to hotmail. It was heaven having use of my own laptop and I took full advantage.
Passed by several stations on my way back to the local metro that I swear didn’t display their names on the walls. There seems to be no consistency with signage over here. Some stations are easy to identify whereas others seem to hide their identity.
I presume these mystery stations did have some ID on them but they certainly weren’t McGoo friendly. When I got back to the pension I bought a beer from a local café. I showed the guy behind the counter the change I had in my hand. I hate Euro gold coins. It’s really hard to tell the .20 euros from .50. I probably got ripped off badly there as he seemed to take everything I had. On top of that the can wasn’t even that cold. Later on I polished off the remaining contents of the port I’d bought earlier in the day. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Didn’t seem quite as bright an idea at 01:30 when I awoke from an alcohol induced slumber. Made it a bit hard to get back to sleep for the rest of the night. Not surprisingly I got up late Sunday morning and didn’t make it to breakfast until 09:00. Made an attempt at tackling the backlog in my travel diary. After a couple of paragraphs my head began to ache. It was now official, I had a mild hangover. Decided to rest for an hour before heading off
to the internet joint to post my updates. Thought I may have had a few hours left on my twenty-four hour metro ticket. It flashed red which I guess meant I’d used it up. So I walked to the centre of the old town to connect to the cyber world. As I headed off some cretin blasted their car horn near the pension. Not once or twice but dozens of times. Not in short bursts but for prolonged periods. I really have to question the sanity of people over here. It was a lot more peaceful in the city centre hooking up to the internet. Again I had an excellent connection and again the guy running the place showed no emotion even when I complimented him on the service.
Walked back through empty streets that could have been the setting for a post apocalyptic movie. Passed by a charming young guy who spat on the ground right next to my foot while walking with his girlfriend. He followed up with a loud clearing of the throat. Generous of him to share the phlegm. Hold onto that man, he’s a real catch, honey. I popped down to a café I
‘d bought a roll from earlier in the afternoon. I ordered a meal of a roll with coke which is advertised on the counter. The woman took my order and then served someone else. I stood there wondering what the hell was happening as she served yet another customer leaving me for dead. But the real bonus was I got to be jammed in like a sardine there. People bumped into me every thirty seconds as they tried squeezing between the impossibly narrow space between tables and the counter. I gave up and walked out in disgust. I was really over Portugal at that moment, especially on Sundays and especially in Deliverance country that is, Porto. Later went to the mini mart to buy some food. I figured at least I’d get served there. Some loon was ranting at the top of his voice. Ranting is big over here. I started to think Porto is one big psycho ward. The check out chick thought this guy was amusing. No one else seemed to. It’s normal in Porto to hear people bellowing at the top of their heads at all hours. Kids can run amuck screaming out loud in the streets,
shops, anywhere. A very strange culture in this city. Let me rephrase that; no culture in this city. To think I was contemplating staying over a week at one stage. You’d have to pay me to spend one additional night here. Agadir actually compares more favorably in that it has decent food and grog on tap seven days a week. Hard to believe I’m only a few hundred Ks from Seville. May as well be on another planet. It will be so good to be back in civilianization, touching down in Pisa later in the day.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.099s; Tpl: 0.016s; cc: 12; qc: 51; dbt: 0.0606s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
JC
non-member comment
Thanks Lloyd
Yep, thanks Lloyd for what has been a thoroughly entertaining couple of months. I've put off my plans to tour Africa and Portugal at least - not because I don't like what I read - love it in fact. It's just that I feel I've already lived it. How could I top those Lloydly adventures? Porto bothers me a bit. For your sake, I'm glad you're leaving - imagine grog sales ceasing at 1PM Sat. This place was just not set up for you. Don't know how you got through it old man, though the shouting people in adoration of the Lloyd seems to have gone over your head. I expect it was like the masses gathering under your window as in "Brian". Thanks again Lloyd. Safe journey home. Catch up soon.