Spain and Portugal may both have joined the European Union, but that hasn't thawed their relationship with each other. Spanish weather maps in newspapers and on TV have a blank space where Portugal belongs. A bigger problem for me was that the railway systems barely communicate. There is just one good train connection, the single, expensive, night "hotel train" between Lisbon and Madrid. I looked at traveling between Lisbon and Seville - all day and at least three trains if it was possible at all. Porto to Salamanca - one train, arrive in the middle of the night. Santiago to Porto - leave at 6:30 am or arrive at 9:30 pm, change at Redondela.
I opted to leave early rather than arrive late, but then had problems simply buying a ticket (I had already bought my Lisbon-Madrid ticket before I left home, to be sure of a place). The travel agency in Leon, that had just sold me a Leon-Santiago ticket, said that it couldn't sell international tickets. At the train station in Leon I was told to go to the station in Santiago. At the train station in Santiago I was told that I could only buy a ticket to Porto on the day I traveled. Then, at 6:15 on the day I left, the little line of luggage-laden travelers learned that they could only buy tickets as far as Redondela. At Redondela, finally, I acquired two more tickets - one to Valenca, just over the border, and one from Valenca to Porto. I wonder how long this silliness will last.
My entry to Portugal was also enlivened by armed guards checking passports, who gave a U.S. couple a hard time because they had no European entry stamps. No-one gets European entry stamps these days - I had none in my British) passport, and neither did the Canadian woman across the aisle from me. Anti-Americanism, maybe? The increased difficulty and expense of entering the U.S. has not gone unnoticed.
I took a taxi to my Porto hotel, the Castelo Santa Catarina, which proved a wise decision as it perched on a hill two bus rides out of the center (i.e. the River Douro). I had chosen it based on the description on http://www.specialplacestostay.com/, and was not disappointed. Built as a castle at the end of the 19th century, and covered in beautiful blue and white tiles, it is frozen in time. Clean the crystal chandeliers, redo the window treatments and spread some paint around, and it would fetch parador prices. Instead, I slept under a magnificent chandelier, showered among cupids playing on the bathroom tiles and ate breakfast in a room tourists would pay to see - exquisitely detailed parquet floor, carved panelling, marble pedestals - all for 48 euro a night.
But it was a long way out, and I got good use from the bus pass I bought as soon as I made it downtown. Of course, being out of the center was an advantage the night Porto won the UEFA cup - noisy, singing soccer fans were already converging on the center at 6:30 pm, but only a few happily honking cars made it out to my aerie. In the market next morning I found celebrations still in progress at one end, while fruit and veg were sold at the other. (Oddly, in Portugal, which initiated the exploratory voyages of the 16th century in search of a new route for the spice trade, very few spices are used or sold today.)
When I first visited Spain and Portugal, back in 1970, with my then boyfriend, we flew into Porto, and it has always retained for me an aura of the exciting and exotic. Alas, returning was a mistake, as I found a reality that held few charms. The streets of steeply stacked houses climbing the cliff above the river proved not only hard work going up or down, but seedy as well. I wasn't sure whether to worry more about losing my footing or my purse.
Taking a violently swerving bus across one of the five bridges spanning the Douro, I saw the city differently - distance lent enchantment, or perhaps it was sunshine, or could it have been too much port? In any case, I enjoyed the pastel colors of the buildings (now mostly cafes and hotels) fronting the river and could forget the 211 steps plus unmeasured pavement it would take to reach the cathedral and train station from water level.
About that port. Ever since the British discovered the advantages of adding grape spirit to the Douro wines, port has been brought down to the 'caves' in Vila Nova de Gaia opposite Porto to mature in the spring after the harvest. Once, the wine traveled dangerously down river in rabelos, reminiscent of Viking long boats, with square sails amidships, but now it travels somewhat more safely by road. (Portugal has one of the highest road accident rates around, perhaps related to the cheapness of wine - so cheap no restaurant sells it by the glass. 375 ml. of deep purple local wine cost me 1.50 euros in Regua.)
Most of the big port concerns operate tours of their caves, explaining how the different kinds of port are created and providing free tastings - usually a white port and a Late Bottled Vintage or young tawny. Glasses of other varieties are available at a reasonable price. I timed my tours for late afternoon, so I didn't need wine with dinner. I visited three different houses - Taylors, Crofts and Grahams. All three have informative tours, but only Taylors has an elegant rose garden with white fluffy Japanese hens and a peacock, and Taylor's LBV, rich and robust, was my clear favorite among the ports I tried. (I remain unconvinced that white port IS port, although Graham's effort came closest to an actual port taste. Grahams handles 600 visitors a day, mostly French tour groups.)
Another exercise in nostalgia, a day trip to Portugal's religious capital, Braga, was more successful. I rode a sleek new commuter train (courtesy of European Union money) to a town that has grown (in an unlovely fashion) almost to the base of the hill criss-crossed by the 18th century staircase to Bom Jesus do Monte, but the tour of the 11-12th century cathedral held my interest even before I discovered that the other woman in the little group, although born in Braga, now lived in Raleigh and shopped, as I do, at the Cary Whole Foods. That day, the world was a very small place indeed.
I climbed the staircase to Bom Jesus (on my feet, not my knees), wincing at the graphic depictions of the stations of the cross in the lower reaches (Gibson's 'The Passion' must have been very recognizable to Catholics), but rode the little funicular down. The upper half of the staircase, which shines boldly white from a distance, was in full sun, and I climbed with my umbrella doing duty as a sunshade - never mind other people's pictures. I did not feel that I derived any spiritual value from this exercise, although I'm sure it was good for my legs and lungs.
In Braga I also did my first re-supply shopping of the trip, the two sample sized toothpaste tubes I brought having run out. I walked into a Farmacia, marked by a green cross, and combined English, Spanish and mime. I think the mime was the most convincing. In these places you don't pick out what you want, the pharmacist does it for you, but the toothpaste he chose seems to work, and taste, fine.
A side trip up the Douro covered new ground, although I traveled up to Regua in a very old train: the upright bench seats upholstered in brown leather, the dirt of ages coloring the floor, the grimy windows all suggested this could be one of the trains I rode out of Porto 34 years ago. Although the Douro valley was well-endowed with more high-priced vines, it was not quite the rural retreat I had envisaged - the enduring prosperity of the port wine industry was marked by towns where I had expected villages and by new development in those towns. A bold, new autostrada strode across the valley, its construction, as in Spain, financed by the European Union.
The narrow gauge railway from Tua to Mirandela, however, was everything I could ask - snaking ever higher into the mountains, a steep drop to a river on one side. Mirandela, too, with a riverside park and with flower-filled wheelbarrows decorating its Romanesque bridge, was beyond criticism. (I decided to ignore the fact that now it can also be reached by the autostrada.) A shorter narrow-gauge trip, to Amarante, suffered a little in comparison, but the town's old bridge, the Tamega river and the Sao Goncalo church were charming. I lunched in a cafe by the church, on the main square, and the waiter introduced me to the woman sitting next to me, his 93 year-old grandmother. I should look as well at her age.
It seemed that everywhere I went in Portugal had been built on a hill, and Coimbra, the university town that proved to be my favorite Portuguese destination, was no exception. In fact, it was built on two hills, the old town on one, and a newer town on another across a valley. Recently a thoughtful town government installed an ingenious elevator-and-funicular combination (conveniently terminating close to my hotel), to make the old town more accessible, although you still need to be pretty agile once you reach the top. The university, Portugal's oldest, is, of course, in the old town, and boasts the most remarkable library I have ever seen - early 18th century, 300,000 leather-bound books, detailed gilt Chinoiserie carving between the books and frescoes above them.
Just outside Coimbra in Conimbriga was one of the westernmost outposts of the Roman empire, much more luxurious than Hadrian's Wall. Beautiful mosaics are still in place, and the fountains the graced one courtyard will still play in return for 50 cents. The site is a plateau, dropping sharply to a ravine on two sides. I reached the outlying ruins through a meadow lavish with wildflowers, most hosting tiny curled snails. I had managed to track down the relevant bus stop in time to catch the early bus, and my timing was impeccable - I was half-way round the site before the sun came out, I ate cherries sitting alone in the House of the Fountains, and left for a cup of coffee and the museum just as several school groups arrived.
Back in Coimbra I met an interesting Irish-Australian couple cycling from Paris to Istanbul in the recommendable Flor de Coimbra restaurant. (They made it, despite the summer heat.) They had been seeing some of the rural Portugal I remembered, where strangers were welcomed as a rare event. While I saw the occasional reminder of times past - a woman in black with a basket on her head, a man trudging home with a hoe over his shoulder - for the most part the towns I visited were firmly in the 21st century.
Even my last, rural, stop, near Caldas de Rainha,had an autostrada nearby. I had intended this to be a rest stop, with meditation and Reiki on offer, but Obidos, Alcobaca and Batalha proved too tempting. Obidos - impossibly pretty, white-washed, and flower-bedecked fortified town. Alcobaca - austere 12th century Cistercian monastery. Batalha - exuberant 15-16th century church, with an exuberant local saint's festival in progress when I arrived, with a long procession of local women, some in traditional dress, elaborately decorated baskets of bread balanced on their heads, heading out of church and round the town. And Caldas da Rainha itself charmed me with an admirable park, good patisseries and a remarkable ceramics museum (http://www.ipmuseus.pt/cgi-bin/ipmuseus_en/fs_museus.html select Museu de Cerāmica). I did put in one rest day, with Reiki, but although I enjoyed my hosts, Ton and Ineke, and their family, I felt a certain amount of cabin fever relying on them for transport (since A Colina Atlantica was a long trek from a bus stop).
I could write much more about Portugal. About the food - lots of veggies in the markets, virtually no veggies in the restaurants, except for some excellent potatoes. The suicidal bus drivers. The disappointing sea front and beautiful gardens in west Porto. The 5 euro watch I bought when my watch strap broke. How the fishing village of Nazare is now a booming tourist town. How I got stuck in Lisbon for an afternoon with my luggage because all storage lockers were blocked for security for Euro2004 - especially ironic since if it weren't for Euro2004 I would have been staying in Lisbon and not needed a locker. (I wound up in a shopping mall, looking at lockers that were as firmly off limits as those at the train station. I suppose there are worse places to spend an afternoon - I had my hair cut and caught up on my email.)
I hear southern Portugal is becoming overdeveloped and overrun. Northern Portugal is still a great destination.
Sent from Ferrara, Italy, 29 June, 2004
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