Porto

Saturday 7^th & Sunday 8^th November, Porto.

The apartment that we found was on rua St. Catarina, one of the main shopping streets in the town. It was on the first floor, overlooking the street which allowed us to watch the action in the street. While we were there we had a South American Andean band playing its haunting flute and drum music, a young mime artist and clown making balloon sculpture for the children and the many sellers of lottery tickets and roasted chestnuts filling the street with smoke.

More disturbing than this was the large number of beggars and homeless people, many of whom were disabled. There was the old couple selling lottery tickets by day and at nights sleeping in a shop doorway. There was a guy with three or four dogs, one of whom had a litter of puppies. He drew large crowds and probably raised more money than any of the beggars or street artists. It was very hard throughout the weekend to keep walking past these people and not give any money, but our budget also was lean and we simply couldn’t afford to give them anything. We suppose that this will help a little for when we get to even poorer areas with hundreds rather a handful of homeless beggars.

In the apartment above ours, were a couple of local lads who we never actually met. We only heard them. First on the Friday night when they returned home and apparently started exercising in a “gym”. At first we thought they were “making out”, but soon realized that they were running on a treadmill and bouncing some sort of ball. Their sense of humour came out later during the weekend. We had left Steve’s bike shoes outside the front door due to their foul smell. . After the smell had dissipated we took them in. That afternoon when we returned there was a another pair of old sneakers left in their place. We assume by the lads above. Karen spent a good half hour making up a little message in Portuguese to leave on them.

The area around the apartment was well served with cafes and bars as well as a wonderful old market building. The building had seen better days and parts were held up with scaffolding. That did not deter the traders who set up their stalls anyway. There were two levels. The lower level had stalls all across the floor selling veg, flowers, meat, fish, bread and non consumables. The upper level was a balcony all the way around selling mainly fruit and veg. the scaffold also served as good perches for the many pigeons that frequently dive bombed the stalls trying to steal a morsel, much to the annoyance of the stall holders. We chose a stall at random to buy our vegetables. The two old ladies running the store were overjoyed as we bought so much stuff.

Our initial view of Porto was not a good one, arriving late, in the dark and rain, with the first views of derelict buildings and run down areas. However over the weekend our views changed and we came to really like the place.

On the south side of the river Douro are the many Port Wine producers. Such famous names as Grahams, Croft, Porto Cruz and others and the most famous of them all Sandemans. The Sandeman brand is said to be the longest enduring brand image in the World. We walked along the south side which was, bustling with tourists and locals as well as many Africans selling artisan type goods.

Each of the wine lodges operates its own river tour on one of the old Port wine barges that were used to transport the wine along the river Douro.

The views across the river to Porto are stunning, being ideally suited to make “jigsaws” out of.

The river itself was teaming with fish. At one drain outlet there were so many of them that you couldn’t tell water from fish.

It is crossed by six bridges and on Sunday morning we visited the art gallery (its free on a Sunday) which had an exhibition about Porto’s history and the importance of the different river crossings in forming that history.

In the evening we took the opportunity of visiting one of the Port Wine lodges to be educated about the different types of port. We rolled home.

Whilst we were enjoying Porto, we were also struggling with trying to facilitate travel to Spain to take up a possible housing sitting opportunity. The day we arrived we had an email alert about the prospect, which was to sit a house for four months near Lubrin, near Almeria, Spain. We couldn’t believe the coincidence as this was the place we had holidayed with our friends, Phil and Krystyna at the old Cortijo, El Modrano. In fact the guy who posted the advert knew El Modrano and it seemed to us that this was an ideal opportunity. We committed to make arrangements to get there asap.

We had already planned to travel to Lisbon with our bikes, by bus or train as we suspected that the journey by road out of Porto and down the coast would be a difficult one. The train authorities said we would have to try on the day and check with the local station before we bought the ticket and even then the bike would have to be in a bag, but there was no charge The Renex bus station told us that we could take our bikes, provided the bus trunk wasn’t full with luggage, but there was a charge for the bikes of euros 9.40 each. We also had to enquire at bike shops about bags in case we couldn’t take the bikes as they were. Finally we opted to catch the bus at 13-00, (the least busy time).

Whilst we were looking into bus times we also passed what is the thinnest house in Portugal, which existed apparently due to an obscure law in the past that said two churches could not share a common wall. the house is the bit in the middle, with a single doorway. Apparently it is (or has) been lived in.