This is the third part of our three part trip. The second can be found here and the first here
Well how best to round off two weeks of outdoors adventure? Why, with a mini city break of course! The perfect way to ease ourselves back into the hectic London lifestyle after our fresh air overload. Portugal offers several exciting cities, however given that we had already been to Lisbon this year; Porto was clearly the obvious choice.
The fact that the city revolves purely around strong alcohol was by-the-by…
The Portuguese Territories part 3: Porto
It would be impossible to talk about Porto and not mention Lisbon. As our significantly smoother flight from Madeira glided (glid? glidded?) calmly into the airport that was mercifully not carved out of rock as the last two were, expectations were similar to those of our New Year’s escapade. Nice sites, blends of Mediterranean and Northern European sights and large amounts of pastry.
Porto, however, is not Lisbon. Porto is its very own beast, with quirks and intricacies all of its own. For a start the hills of Porto make the hills of Lisbon look like sandcastles, the relentless up and down ensures that all the locals have calves of steel and bums you could bounce a coin off. Second you notice that there are a lot of people piled on top of one another. I know we were there in more peak tourist time, but even so, the concentrations of people one on top of the other was truly impressive. Every inch of space not at a 90 degree angle is utilised, rickety buildings piled on rickety buildings lean precariously over the streets several stories taller than you’d expect to be healthy. This isn’t to say that the city feels cramped, if anything it makes it feel more alive, a true port town should be a veritable beehive of activity and by does Porto live up to that.
Speaking of beehives, it’s impossible to talk about Porto and not talk about their very own ‘honey’. I am of course, talking about Port wine. The entire city is steeped in the heady thickness of the port, brought down by barge and lorry from the nearby Douro valley vineyards, the entire south side of the river is devoted to the industry of processing, aging and selling barrel after barrel after barrel. Mind-blowing amounts of the stuff go through the city on a daily basis, and even more mind-blowing amounts of it are drunk by the heady tourists. Tour after tour after tasting experience after crippling hangover rolls through each of the wineries, enthusiastic locals grappling with wasted tourists on their sixth tour of the day, making full use of the selections of wine offered. Frankly I was in heaven.
When I say staggering amounts of it get produced, I mean it: In 2013, there were 8.7 million cases of port sold, at a value of $499 million. In a year. Which perhaps doesn’t sound so monumental but if you consider that this much is sold out of a city that only has a population of 290,000 people that is a phenomenal amount (enough for every one in the city to have 30 cases a year, or 360 bottles, just under a bottle a day). It’s an interesting one as well, port wine is an internationally recognised variety of drink and commonly drunk the world over, however the entire lot comes from this one little town in the north of Portugal, churning out strong wines that are almost unanimously agreed to be the source of the worlds worst hangovers. I think we should all raise a glass and a paracetomol to Porto to salute its efforts to ruin sunday mornings.
What was wonderful about Porto though was the variety. I suppose this had been a holiday of variety however the difference here was the variety of experience rather than landscape. Walking the streets of Porto you are never bored. In a single afternoon I went to an exhibition of Picasso’s print work, had a port wine tasting in a disused gallery, came across a small street party with a lady singing Fado music (look it up, it is hauntingly beautiful), toured a cathedral, ate in a converted railway station, got lost in the backstreets looking for a piece of street art, bought a t-shirt in a modern shopping mall, watched the sunset from the dominating viewpoint of the bridge and much much more. Honestly there are few places I’ve visited on my travels that truly encapsulate that great feeling of anticipation, the feeling of experience and intrigue in another culture, that allows you to immerse yourself so completely without feeling like you’re being an imposition or an outsider.
Never once did I feel compelled to sit on the sofa and just take a day off, never once did I decide that maybe I’ll just do the one thing today rather than fill it. There was an infectious energy to the city that invited and enticed you onto the next thing, even if the next thing was just another wine tasting (seriously the wine is so good there it’s worth it even if that’s all you do).
Don’t be fooled though, this isn’t a huge city. It isn’t Rome or Paris or some other vast capital that you can be lost in for weeks, this is a reasonably small port town and its limitations are such, the things to do aren’t endless. But that’s OK for me, it means that you can go for a long weekend as we did and really experience the city, rather than coming away feeling as though you only scratched the surface. It’s a place that you can throw yourself into wholeheartedly and come out of the cultural whirlwind four days later breathless, but enriched entirely by the experience, nothing left lacking. It is one of my favourite places I have ever been and I very much look forward to going back there in the future.
And so ended our adventure, as all adventures do, with an anticlimactic scramble for a late night flight home, a weary trudge back to my London bed, and a day spent distracting myself from the fact that sadly reality was back, we were no longer intrepid explorers climbing insurmountable heights, drowning in hot waters or nursing fortified hangovers. Now we were desk jockeys once more, the yoke of mundanity re-lashed to our backs. The glory of an experience like this though is that the yoke feels a little looser now, the lashing less tight, the shoulders feeling strong enough to shrug it to the floor should we ever get the urge to stand tall once more. Few places have strengthened or moved me as much as these three little pockets of heaven, few places have seared themselves into my retinas so hard that they still sit there glowing when I close my eyes. Blazing sunsets and volcanoes and bridges and rivers and waterfalls and jungles and deep, powerful, unyielding feelings of inextricable emotion and memory burning into the deepest part of our soul, deep wells of passionate joy there to tap into all thanks to these incomparable spots that we had the good fortune and privilege to experience, if only for a fleeting moment, like dust motes blown softly through sunbeams.
Obrigado Portugal.
