A Portuguese Jaunt

Yesterday I took a mental health day. It's a day in which I get in my car and go wherever I feel like going, leaving all responsibilities behind for one day. Yesterday I decided to go to Porto in Portugal. It's about two and a half hours away from where I live. I've been there before and I like the city. It's similar to cities I know in Spain, yet different enough to know I'm in another country.

It's an old city and the first time I saw it was on a rainy day. Its tired buildings with crumbling façades, dirty ceramic tiles, and peeling paint made it seem ancient and poor.

A row of houses.

 

It looked as if it wanted to retire from the modern world and rest quietly forever on the banks of its river. The next time I saw it, it looked old and poor but lively instead of tired. That day it looked like an old grandmother who threw on her brightest shawl and put on her reddest lipstick to go to the fair. The sun was shining hot and it was near the Eve of St. John, the patron saint of Porto. Garlands were hung from house to house in the narrow streets and banners hung from balconies and windows. The sun picked out the still vibrant colors in the façade tiles and added to the joy. Yesterday was partly cloudy, and though the garlands have disappeared since June, there was still a feeling of eagerness, of joy in a city that tried to do the best with what it had now, and proud of what it had had in the past.

Many of the buildings in Porto have their façades covered in colored tiles. Sometimes the tiles will create a large mural. That is the case inside the train station, where the four walls of the vestibule recreate stories from the history of Portugal in tiles. Other times, it's simply the same repetition of the same pattern. It's completely different from the

The train station's vestibule.

houses here in Spain. In Galicia stone houses have the stone uncovered. Other times, if the stone used was small and unpretty, the walls were covered with cement or clay and painted. Newer houses are largely made of brick (cheaper) and the covering cement is painted. They used to be mostly painted with cheap whitewash, so houses were white, like the famouse "white towns" of Andalucía. But in these later years you can find houses of all different colors. In Porto some of the buildings are painted in different colors, the rest are covered in tiles, and only very few have the stone by itself. Generally, those are the historical buildings, such as the house where Henry the Navigator was born.

Porto is a hilly city. When I visit somewhere new I like to walk it so I can see it better. I avoid the sightseeing buses because they're too expensive and I might not have seeked out every landmark in the town on my own simply because they're not interesting to me. For example, Porto has a botanical garden, but I've never been because I'm more interested in the life in the streets. The bus would probably have taken me by there. But the problem with walking is cities like Porto. All those hills, up and down. I reach an intersection, look up a street and it seems interesting. But it's uphill. Let's say my legs hurt for a couple of days afterward. My lungs open up, too. It's the same whenever I visit somewhere new. When I go to a neighboring town, I always want to park as close to where I'm going as possible. I don't want to spend time walking distances. But when I go to a place I've never been, I will walk until my feet cry uncle. My husband doesn't understand it, and complains of all I made him walk on our vacation in France last year. When he complains I ask him if he liked the experience. Then he's quiet, but he looks at me and says "But you made me walk kilometers!" To me that's the best way to see and understand a place. And that's why I like to travel, to learn and understand new places and different people.

There are different customs, too, that are curious. In some of the older restaurants they will serve you a helping of rice along with the steak and fries you order. Portugal is also famous for its ways of serving cod. A sign that, historically, they fished far and wide. Yesterday I saw young men dressed in black suits, white shirts and tie. There were also women dressed in black skirt suits. They all had long black woolen cloaks. I asked a couple of them who were sitting on a bench, talking, if they were university students.

Two upperclassmen.

 

They made me think of the tunas in Spanish universities, except that these young people had simple black cloaks without ribbons and weren't playing instruments. They told me they were, and that it was the first day of class. All the upperclassmen dressed identically with the black suits and cloaks to welcome the freshmen students at a special ceremony. How curious. A custom to help impress upon young people the seriousness of the educational journey they were setting out on. I only wish they did that elsewhere, too. 

Despite understanding written Portuguese quite well because of its similarity to Galician, spoken Portuguese is another thing. Sometimes I can figure it out, but to avoid misunderstandings due to the similarity of our languages, I prefer to speak in English. Almost everyone understands it and speaks it. More than anything because there is no dubbed television in Portugal. Series and movies are shown in their original version with subtitles. From the day a baby is born, he is subjected to English as soon as the television is turned on. Every day children hear it, so even if they don't study it every day in school, it's still present in their lives. I have found that more people in Portugal understand English than people do in France. Last year I had to rely a few times on my memory of high school French from thirty years ago. While it's good to check out phrases and hear some examples of the language of the country you are going to visit to understand the most basic requests, still, it's glory to understand and be understood completely. And English is becoming the universal language.

Yesterday was a relaxing day in a charming city that I will visit again some day in the future. Because I do plan to return.      

Two friends fishing on the Douro river.