If Victorians think that Dan has paralysed the state capital with too many public works, they should spare a thought for the people of Porto. A new metro line is being built through and under the city and once vibrant parts of the city are now noisy, dusty, traffic clogged and generally unpleasant. The work is complicated because every time the workers find some antiquity work stop instantly for it to be investigated and exhumed. One area was held up for 12 months due to one such find. But for all that Porto is a beautiful little city – well not so little actually, about 1.3 million souls. But it has a character that seems to be all its own, like so many European cities. The good people of Porto appear to know how to live well.
The day of our arrival was one of semi-comatose impressions, a kind of hazy impressionistic feeling, as if living in a French impressionist painting by Edouard Leon Cortes. We caught the metro from the airport to the centre of the city, which was surprisingly easy, but rather crowded, our AirBNB was a five minute walk away. Dinner at an over-priced vegetarian restaurant, where the food was okay, but not a patch on Marion’s cooking, then home to bed.
The following morning we decided to put on our “big boy tourist pants” and do a walking tour. This left at a civilised hour, allowing for coffee first from a street café, then a gathering of the walkers by 10.30am. Nuno, our guide, was a personable guy of about 35-40 years. He had been a sports teacher in an earlier life, but with a passion for Portuguese history, he had reinvented himself as a walking tour guide. He was passionate about his country’s history, but had a few blind spots, especially in relation to the rather disastrous colonial period. But being good polite people we all nodded and left a few clangers go through to the keeper. By far the most interesting part of the walk was through the old medieval part of the city down by the river, below the Bishop’s Palace. Tiny narrow streets flanked by ancient apartments, filled mainly with locals, often rent controlled. This area has been UNESCO World Heritage listed since 1996.
The city has passed what seems to be a very sensible law, only building that are all going to be AirBNB apartments can become AirBNBs. You cannot buy an existing apartment in an existing block and convert it to AirBNB. This seems to have acted as a natural brake (that and a very hefty fee to establish and AirBNB), on this phenomena ruining the city centre, as it has done in Barcelona, driving locals to have to live in the far outer suburbs. There is a recognition that the tourist dollar is important, but so is the quality of local lives. Nuno assured us that we can be guilt-free as tourist in Porto!
Another interesting story related to the conversion of an old Convent into an important central rail station. The Sao Bento Railway Station in old town Porto used to be a convent, built originally in 1518, it then at some point became a Monastery which in turn was largely destroyed by fire in 1783. It was then rebuilt as a convent again. At some point in the early to mid 19th century it was decided that a railway station would be constructed on the site, incorporating the existing building with its magnificent tile frescos. There was just one problem, the nuns who lived there had the right to stay in the convent and no work could commence until the last nun had died. One nun lived on, alone, in the convent for another 56 years, finally dying in 1892, at which point work commenced on the Station.
As a guide he indulged in quite a lot of national stereotyping, which I found quite funny, luckily everyone else in the group did as well, but I can imagine in a different, perhaps more ‘woke’ group he may have found himself in greater trouble. For example when we paused for a 15 minutes break for toilet stops, refreshments etc., he told the Chileans they had 3 minutes, the French had ten minutes, the Germans and Canadians he said could take as long as they like (because he was confident they would follow orders and be back in the 15 minutes). Anyway it was pleasant enough meander, but not the most riveting walking tour we have ever done.
The next day we decided that we would try to see a few of the supposed “must sees” of Porto. The Livraria Lello Bookshop, the Tower, and the Golden Church. The Livraria Lello is an exquisitely beautiful old bookshop, unfortunately, when she was writing the Harry Potter books, JK Rowling lived in Porto. She used the Livraria as a model for the library in the books, the bookshop is now famous, not for its exquisite craftsmanship, its bookish learned atmosphere, or its elderly, eccentric owners, but for bloody Harry Potter. When we arrived the queue to enter was already a street long, the bookshop has had to resort to charging an entrance fee and limited entries and exits etc. It has been reduced to a carnival side show. We passed on by, much as I would loved to have seen it, but not in those circumstances.
On arrival at the tower the queue was almost non-existent, at last we thought, an undiscovered gem, we bought tickets to climb the tower, entry at 11.00am. We came back and headed up the tower, the path taking us first through a maze of bewildering, and meaningless (to us) Catholic icons. Then we started up the medieval staircase towards the top, it was a bit squeezey but we made reasonable progress. Once at the top we found at least 10,000 Spanish tourists taking selfies from every possible angle and clinging desperately to the best vantage positions. An American women spoke for us when she said to her husband, “We went through all that, for this?”
With this experience any remnant desire we had to see anything even vaguely touristy died, a quick and, I think, permanent death. The Gold Church, with its 600 kilos of ill-gotten gold, could go jump in the lake, we needed an out of the way café/bar where we could get a coffee and watch life flow past.
Later that afternoon, when we had found a lovely little street bar to have a drink and watch the world go by, we were stunned to see a couple from literally around the corner from us, in Caroline Street Clifton Hill, walking by. Marion had undertaken training at some point with Sue, and still saw her regularly at ‘The Star of Sorrento’ our local supermarket. They have been renovating an apartment in Porto since 2017 and come here every year for March, April and May. This is the way you get to appreciate a place like Porto (not that everyone has to buy an apartment of course), but by living there for time and learning its rhythm, its character, its flavour. We were painfully aware that this was not going to happen on such a short stay, but we had learned enough to know that Porto was definitely one of the places in this world that would reward such an effort.
