I Love Port(o)

Wednesday, January 10, 2024

Oh, Bruno and Manuel, where fore art thou? Our tour guide, Isabel, was not quite up to the standard we have gotten used to. Our “small group” Porto city tour was 20ish people, a group of 7 of which spoke Spanish. I have never been on a bilingual tour before, and it is quite a bummer. Obviously, everything takes twice as long to do in both languages, and I felt like Isabel was very fluent in Spanish and our English got a bit lost in translation. She was not organized at all – she lost the couple from Finland, and we had to apprise her of that. We met Canadians first – from near Niagara Falls. It was their first trip to Europe. They had heard that Portugal was tops for retiring to in Europe, so they were coming to check it out. But then their daughter adopted Asher and the other one (6 and 2) from foster care quite suddenly last November, so now they will be staying put. But the trip was planned, so here they were. We really enjoyed chatting with them while the Spanish was going on during our first stop at the train station. The tiles in the lobby were all hand painted by the same guy. The Canadians and Keith really liked the creepy kids in the corner.

Even though it was guaranteed not to rain, according to the weather, it started to pour after the train station. We ran away from the cathedral and to our bus. Were we supposed to go in? I guess not. We had raincoats and umbrellas! I gave my umbrellas to Canada because they had believed the forecast. We stopped by the bookstore that JK Rowling is supposed to have been inspired by while she was writing her first book in Porto. It is 8euro to get in, but if you buy a book, it goes toward that. Time was not budgeted to go in; perhaps we will go back.

Next we went to the first port winery ever, still in business since 1756 (the year after the earthquake). The king said make some wine over here and it became the Real Companha Velha and still is. The barrels are ENORMOUS. The big ones hold 55,000 liters. The holding tank holds 1,000,000 liters – and is set into the floor with enough space around it that if it broke open, they would have a very tasty swimming pool, but none of it would flood anything. Keith chatted up the Finlanders, who had been found. They were delighted to hear he plays Finnish folk music and plays at a Finnish church. He also told him his Finland joke (What is the difference between Finland and Russia? Russia has better neighbors.) (They laughed)

We tasted three different ports. Port is sweet. We had super sweet, pretty sweet, and slightly less sweet. I loved them all. I sipped them, then I just drank ’em right up. I would have bought some, but coming with only backpacks and no checked bags, we have no way to get them on the airplane. There is white port and there is red port. The more aged the red port is, the lighter the color becomes. The 50-year-old port is the color of bourbon. I noticed that Frasier and Niles drink a lot of port and that is bourbon colored. I always thought it was odd, because I just thought port was red. Learning, learning! After my drinks, I was thinking that I was sticking out my tongue and touching my nose with my tongue, so then I was touching my nose to see if I was doing it and then I was laughing and then I was just touching my nose and sticking out my tongue and laughing and I did not know that Keith took my picture. I really enjoyed trying port.

Canada turned out to only be on the tour for a half day, but we drank with Florida/Georgia. These were very, very fun people. Richard and Jeffrey, Michael and Leslie. They are all from Atlanta, but Michael and Leslie just moved to south Florida for his job (used to be in Coke, but now is in wine). Richard and Jeffrey winter in Florida…because Georgia is too cold. That was a delightful conversation. We had lunch with them as well. Lunch was the Porto specialty Francesinha. It is a “sandwich” made with layers of toasted bread, assorted hot meats such as roast, steak, ham, and sausage, over which sliced cheese is melted by ladling a near boiling beer and tomato sauce over it. And there’s an egg on top. It is usually (and was) served with french fries. I am really glad we had it, but it wasn’t something I need to have again. Keith agreed.

We took an hour boat ride down the Douro River, going under the six bridges. It was breezy going upriver, but we snuggled like TV people, and it was really great. Most people stayed inside, but forget that. Of course, Jeffrey is too cold in Georgia, so that made sense. We noticed that there are a lot more buildings with tiles on them than we saw in Lisbon.

We took a ride down the beaches on the Atlantic Ocean and stopped at the Cheese Castle. That is not its real name, but Isabel told us that is what they call it, then spoke in Spanish and we never heard why. That was the way it was for most things. The waves were beautiful and the fort-ish castle fun to walk around.

This evening we headed for the McDonald’s Imperial. It is supposed to be one of the fanciest McDonald’s in the world. It had lovely chandeliers, but wasn’t too fancy otherwise. We went out looking for somewhere (else) to have dinner and it started to pour down rain. Again, it had said 0% chance of precipitation. We headed back to a restaurant we had just seen and had Mexican food for dinner (I wasn’t really too hungry after all the breakfast and lunch excessive eating, and Mexican seemed just right).

We went back to McDonald’s because Keith had heard they had the little Portuguese pastries that he loves and were surprisingly good there. They didn’t at that McD’s, so we had McFlurries. Mine was not flurried at all. The candy was just on top. I liked it a lot that way.

We walked all around the neighborhood after dinner. The rain had stopped, and it was just beautiful out. It was 53 degrees, which felt perfect with our jackets on, but unzipped. We window shopped a lot and read menus for our dinner tomorrow. I was going along and Keith said, “That was our people.” We stepped back and sure enough, there were Richard and Jeffrey, Leslie and Michael (I made up all the men’s names, but someone did call Leslie Leslie) sitting in the front window of a restaurant. I smooshed my nose right onto the glass, they laughed, we waved, and it was nice. People are always the best part, aren’t they?

Our hotel is at the top of quite a hill. When we walked down this morning to meet the tour, I said we would be calling an Uber to get us home. Luckily, when we left the train station, Isabel took us into the metro station and up two escalators, where we came out near the cathedral AND OUR HOTEL. We brilliantly escalated home after enjoying our sort-of-level evening walk.