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Published: October 4th 2015
I set off for another life abroad on September 20, 2015. This time, my end destination was Ourense, Spain to be an English teaching assistant. But the cheapest plane tickets took me first to Porto, in Northern Portugal. No, I’d never heard of it either, even though it’s the second-largest city in Portugal and the namesake of Port wine.
Once I booked my tickets, I was pretty chaotically continuing to work my multiple jobs and prepare for Spain, so I wasn’t exactly ‘excited’, just more focused on details. But when I started researching for my 1.5 days in Porto, I truly started to get motivated. And, it was way better than my high expectations! (Although the pictures are sub-par and not really representative of the sum total!)
My flights were with an economy Portuguese airline, SATA, so in my traveling, I’d been surprised to hear a lot of Portuguese that sounded very unfamiliar. I had expected it would sound more like Spanish, but there are a lot of ‘zh/j’ sounds, which makes it sound more like Russian to me. It definitely wasn’t as intelligible (with Spanish) as I anticipated it would be, but in the
course of my time in Portugal, I was able to pick up some very similar words to Spanish, especially numbers. I spoke to the hostel worker in my rough Spanish and I think she spoke back to me in Portuguese, and we understood each other.
My flight got in around 11am on a Monday, and I took the (clean, new) metro to my hostel, which was near Bolhao metro station (same metro line). (Buying metro tickets is a little complicated, but there was a worker at the airport to help foreigners. If you have a background in Spanish, like me, you’ll basically be able to fumble your way through it. Know: you need to ‘validate’ your ticket before your journey, but not after, and you can re-use your paper ticket 'Adelante'.) The metro was the first place I really felt I was in Europe. Oddly enough, it was that you need to push a button to get the metro door to open if you want to get on or off.
My hostel (Cool Hostel) was only a two block walk from the metro, which is really why I booked it (I had a lot
Capela Das Almas
With azulejos, but my camera was accidentally on b&w :-)of stuff). It’s just off a pedestrian shopping street called Santa Catarina, and one of the first sights is a blue-tile-covered church (azulejos are the blue tiles popular in Portugal).
After a short nap, I set off on a walking tour. Luckily I’d downloaded a map on my Kindle ahead of time, because I didn’t come across a free tourist map until later that day. About 2 minutes away from the hostel, there was an accordion player in the street. Over the next couple of days, I encountered a few other buskers, as well as some pedestrians jokingly dancing to the music. The weather was perfect, and tons of Portuenses (inhabitants of Porto, according to Wikipedia) were out shopping and sitting at tables outside on sidewalks. I’ve never been to Italy, but the vibe I imagine there is a similar vibe—a very ‘outside’ culture, sometimes with friends yelling across the street to say hi.
The city is colorful, hilly, older but well-maintained, and on a river very close to the ocean. As I was walking around, just everything was beautiful. The sidewalks are rarely concrete—usually bigger rocks, or cut stones arranged in designs. After
a few hours, I decided it was one of those places I could live in.
One of the first landmarks I happened upon was the Church of Saint Idelfonso, which is also covered in azulejos. Up a nearby hill is the Torre Dos Clerigos, which is a church bell tower you can climb up for a few euros. I made my way to the top, and got some great views of the city. The church next door had some interesting decorations, including a lifelike Jesus laying down after being crucified. When I first saw the glass case, I thought there might be some kind of religious relic, like a saint’s hand or something, but crucified Jesus was also a bit of a shock.
I headed to Avenida dos Aliados, which is kind of a boulevard with trees and a fountain in the middle, because I saw on my electronic map that there was a tourist office there, where I could get a paper map. Unfortunately, all I could find there were for-profit tour-booking agencies, so I continued walking down to Sao Bento train station, which has more blue-tiled artwork inside. It was really that
I just walked and stumbled upon more landmarks. It’s that kind of city. When you get tired, there are plenty of benches, plazas, parks, and cafes to rest at. The furthest I made it up to was the Se Cathedral, where there conveniently was a real tourist office, where I got a map for the next day.
I went back to the hostel and was so sleepy I went to bed early, but . . . no surprise, I was totally jet-lagged and woke up at 2am. Bad sleeping the first few days in Europe! Breakfast was ham and cheese on bread each morning, which I got tired of the first day.
On my way to another area, I strolled through Bolhao Market. It’s an old-school two-story building with a central courtyard and vendors around it. There are especially fruit and vegetable vendors, fish stalls, meat/sausage places, and some smallish restaurants. Older people strolled around, talking to/bartering with vendors and shopping.
One of my main ambitions this time in Porto (figuring I’d return because it’s so close to my city in Spain) was to visit Lello Bookstore. It’s a late 19
th century building that JK Rowling hung out in when she was writing HP. I was more interested in seeing it just because of its pretty design. I headed over there the second morning, but due to its popularity, they seemed to be only selling tickets for people to go inside, with the line stretching halfway down the block. It bothered me that a place as ‘pure’ as a bookstore was so profoundly adapted into a tourist attraction. So I decided to skip on it.
Instead, I took the metro across the river to Jardim do Morro station. This side of the river is technically not Porto--Gaia instead. It’s actually where they make a lot of the wine, though! Then they send the wine back across the river via boat. It was a really pretty view of Porto, and especially of the riverfront neighborhood of Ribeira. I ventured on down a hill to be on the level of the river and walked across an ‘Eiffel Tower’ style bridge to reach Ribeira on the other side.
Ribeira is the ‘must-see’ neighborhood recommended in guidebooks for Porto. The section nearest the river is just tourist restaurants, but
further back and up the hill was an older, stone neighborhood. It’s not a car-friendly, being that there are tiny lanes and lots of steps. It reminded me a bit of Dubrovnik, Croatia and Nagasaki, Japan (which were also wonderful hilly, water-bordered smallish cities). What probably made it more picturesque were the curves and balconies with plants and laundry.
At that point, I was ready for lunch, but I was far from the Bolhao Market, where I’d planned to have lunch. I saw a different market on the map, Mercado Ferreiro Borges, which was closer, so I headed over there. Unfortunately it is a market in name only, because it was recently renovated to be more of a nightlife place like Station Square in Pittsburgh. So that was a no-go for lunch. I wanted to ‘go local’, so I just walked into a ‘cafeteria’ (meaning a place that serves bread, sandwiches, and drinks, but it’s not with a food line like in American schools). I went with the safest option (the one I could guess what was inside), which happened to be Portuguese-style pizza, but instead of tomatoes under the cheese, there ended up being a layer
of ham, along with bacon pieces on top. Boy, was I sick of ham, cheese, and bread, but it seems like I couldn’t get away from it. And yet it was a satisfying lunch because it also included some kind of pop, which added refreshment and calories to my body after a lot of walking out in the sun.
I walked over to a park to read and relax for a bit. As I was sitting reading, I saw two groups of older men gathered around a bit further away. From afar, I guessed that that some were playing chess and others were watching, but when I walked over, I found that they were actually playing cards around two tables. Generally, I think I liked Porto so much because a lot of life is lived outside. As a tourist I felt like I got to see a little more of their culture because it was so accessible.
I was right near the library, and if I have spare time on trips, I like to check out the local library. Libraries also usually have a decent bathroom and internet access. (But in fact, Porto had
a number of public places with free access to wifi.) The library was actually in an old cloister. I was in awe of it. There was a central courtyard with a stone arcade around the perimeter. One could sit out near the sunny fountain and read. The books were upstairs in an older, mustier kind of place (ie. with ‘character’). I bought some wine on my way back to the hostel, just a small bottle for myself with probably 2 glasses’ worth. It was ‘Port’ style, but white. I thought Port wine was red, but I really had no idea.
My master plan was to grab my food and go to a small park (Praca de Lisboa) with the wine and read some more. I had spied a guy the day before drinking in the park, and after some internet research it seemed to be okay, so I did it! Just sat with my back on a tree in a public park, drank wine, ate some cheese and apples, caught up on messages (due to the free wifi), and read. There were others at pretty much every tree, with a group of young people sitting together also
drinking. Just a great atmosphere!
The next morning I sadly (to leave) and excitedly (to see my new city/region/country), headed to the Campanha train station via metro. I’ll write about that and my new city/life in the next post!
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Billl and Kathy Oxenreiter
non-member comment
Porto is pretty cool!
We will get you some followers, the photos and comments are very enjoyable.