A three-hour train ride to the north of Lisbon is the second largest city in Portugal; the beautiful riverside nestle of Porto. But the way I’ll remember it is as the city that invented the heaven like nectar of Port Wine!
The city is stunning from a far, but up close she falls apart a bit. There’s a certain charm to this decay (as we found in Lisbon too), but it feels like this place is on the verge. It could either fall completely to ruin and never recover or she could bounce back and be a very cool and a super popular place to live and visit.
The historical center near the river was awarded World Heritage Status by UNESCO in 1996. Whilst many would consider this to be positive and amazing, I’m not sure if it’s done the city much good. It became very expensive and complicated to renovate or change anything and so many people and businesses moved out of the city. The outskirts boomed and new suburbs and shopping malls were built. But the heart of the city seems to have almost been left in gloomy tatters. Huge corporate headquarters, factories and rows and rows of apartment buildings are now standing (barely) empty, rotting and lonely. If they can bounce back from the decomposing restrictions in front of them, then the city has a chance, but I feel that there is a twinkle of regret that says that it might be too late.
I don’t want to regurgitate a history lesson, but there are some interesting facts that I found out whilst here.
The Romans first settled here in the fourth century and referred to it in Latin as Portus Calle, and it has been continuously inhabited since. The original name was shortened to just Porto and when the trade lines opened up between the British, they misunderstood the language when locals referred to Porto as ‘O Porto’ (the port), and forever more they incorrectly added the ‘O’ to the name. So now Portuguese called the city Porto and much of the English-speaking world Oporto.
Residents of Porto are also known as Tripeiros (tripe eaters). The legend goes that when the king wanted to conquer North Africa in 1415, the town sent all of their meat with the fighting fleet and all they had left to eat was the cow intestines. So even today tripe with beans is a signature and loved local dish. I’d rather eat my shoe!
Whilst the citizens of Porto are unquestionably Portuguese, they like to be regarded as culturally separate from the rest of the country and are often heard saying “o Porto é uma nação” (Porto is a nation). They also often say, “Porto works, Braga Prays, Coimbra studies, and Lisbon gets the money.” They feel like a lot of their industry and export supports the economy. From the amount of Port Wine we saw here, there might be some truth in it.
The city is proud of their official coat of arms quote, “a muito nobre, sempre leal e invicta cidade do Porto” (the very noble, always faithful, and invincible city of Porto). This is usually shortened to “a Cidade Invicta” (the invincible city), a title won because of Porto’s unparalleled resistance against Napoleonic troops during the Peninsular war. Hotels and bars around the city have today even adopted the love for this phrase calling their businesses things like Invictus or The Noble and Loyal.
We find that the best way to get to know a city is just to walk around it. So the first thing we did was to join a ‘free’ walking tour. Pedro happily shepherded us around the city for a couple of hours pointing out its highlights and history. It was refreshing to just follow someone else instead of deciphering maps and pamphlets.
We thought it was odd and interesting that every university student wears a black cape in Portugal. We had observed it in Lisbon as well, but didn’t really make too much of a note of it. It wasn’t until we saw thousands and thousands of academics herding their freshmen counterparts through the main city square that we took notice. We just so happened to pick the one day of the year when every single university student descends on the city centre for the annual Cortejo de Queima das Fitas (celebrate being a student) parade. The spectacle is a right of passage that every freshman willingly participates in. Each faculty is required to dress as a group in wild and crazy ‘uniforms’ and is made to drag, carry and wear strings of tin cans as they cavort around the city. The students in the older years, who all wear the capes, carry huge wooden spoons and direct the eager freshmen. They are made to do all manner of asinine things like crawl on their hands and knees, chant war-cries, push shopping trolleys with a 44-gallon drum strapped to the top and beat it incessantly with sticks. Sometimes they’re made to wait at every red light crouched on the ground, and when it turns green run possessed like William Wallace up the street. It’s all very amateur in terms of any event and there’s nothing ‘parade’ like about it except that everyone follows the same street path, but it’s very fun and relatively safe. There are street cleaners afterwards and the police close off roads. Mums and Dads wait patiently to take photos of their protégés. For us it was like watching the seniors initiate Harry Potter and his mates into Hogwarts.
It’s not surprising that the black-caped university students reminded us of scenes from a Harry Potter movie. JK Rowling actually lived in Porto for 3.5 years, married a guy from here and wrote the first book whilst living here. We visited the café where she penned the first book. In heart of the city there is a stunning bookshop, Livraria Lello, which was recreated for the shooting of some scenes in the movies. A magical place where books are stacked from floor to ceiling, ornate wood paneling with figures of kings line the walls and a grand twisting timber staircase flows through the middle of the shop. It has been voted as the third most beautiful bookshop in the world and although we haven’t seen shop one and two, we think they’re right in placing this one in the top few.
We continued on our walking tour and saw the beautiful blue painted ceramic tiles at the main train station, churches, towers, city squares, monuments and cool bars and cafes to come back and visit later.
There’s a monument in the main city square that subtly depicts a story about King Pedro IV. He always said that his heart belonged to the city of Porto. When he died in battle, someone took him a little too seriously and so cut out his heart and it’s now in a ‘tomb’ in the Lapa Church and the rest of his body is in Brazil.
There’s the usual scrawl of shitty city graffiti around Porto. But one unique one that we found is of one thousand origami paper cranes spray painted around city alleys. Each one is individually numbered. There is quiet a following of people who have tried to discover all one thousand. The last one for some reason is said to be in Rio, Brazil.
Every year on the 23rd June, the people of Porto celebrate Festa de Sao Joao do Porto, a festival in tribute to John the Baptist. The festival has been held in the city for more than six centuries and last from early afternoon often until sunrise the next morning. It’s apparently crazy busy and super fun. For some reason it’s tradition to hit each other over the head with garlic flowers, or more so these days, soft toy hammers. A few years back the old church in the centre of town, at the core of the party, had a statue of Johnny stolen. So the city replaced it with a horribly basic and actually quiet ugly new one that nobody is likely to want to steal.
The symbol of Portugal, the black rooster, is everywhere around the city, but mainly in tourist shops as sculptures of every size and adorning every souvenir possible. The story goes, that a man was being trialed for murder. He said he was innocent and to prove it he said that the nearby roasted chicken (hence the black) would get up and sing. They killed him anyway and when he died the chicken got up and yoddled. Now it’s a symbol of the whole country. I wanted to buy one of the colourful paper mache or timber sculpture ornaments. But Zab quipped that it’d be the equivalent of us having a stuffed cane toad or a boomerang hanging on our wall at home. So we’re leaving Portugal without one of their kitsch cluckers.
Here’s a free tip for future travelers thinking of coming to Porto … don’t come on a Sunday! The city is like the moon surface. Nothing is open and there’s no one around. Bars, cafes, restaurants and shops all close. People apparently head to shopping malls on the outskirts of town or go to the nearby beach if it’s a nice day.
It was depressing to walk down their main shopping streets, Santa Catarina and Galeria Paris and see every second shop front empty and boarded up. The world money cramps have hit hard here!
99% of Porto is Catholic. We visited a century old ‘catholic shop’ that sells wax versions of literally every part of the body. Livers, hearts, ears, eyes, face, legs, knee, or whatever part of the body which is giving you grief. You take the wax body part to the church and offer it to have the body part cured. It’s a very old-school belief, but one that is still practiced today.
The boutique Arcadia Chocolate shop sells the most divine liquor chocolates, which we just had to sample. Thinking of you Mum & Dad!
We’ve seen street side sellers pedaling their roasted chestnuts in NYC, England and throughout Europe. I’ve whistled the line from the Christmas carol over and over whenever I see them, but I’ve never bought or tried them. So today, in Porto, was the day. They’re ok, but much softer than I expected. I was hoping they’d be like a giant macadamia nut. Fail!
The view from the prominent high position of the Monastery across the bridge to the old city is noteworthy.
The city used to be connected with trams. Now only three lines run and they’re mainly for tourists. The number one tram that we caught down to the Foz area was an interesting ride, but a fairly bland destination, so we got back on the authentic timber rattle bucket and went back to the centre of town. Zab, with a few port wines for courage, wanted to drive!
The Mercado do Bolhão, is a traditional market of fruits, vegetables, fish and meat, but it isn’t worth the time if you’ve ever been to a decent fresh food market elsewhere in the world. It’s small, underwhelming and remarkably normal.
A tourist pamphlet that we picked up from the hotel listed a few things we can say to piss off a local or get smacked.
- “I like Lisbon better”
- Why don’t you speak Spanish?
- I don’t like Portuguese food
- What bridges?
- Wasn’t port wine invented by the Brits?
There’s apparently a huge rivalry between Lisbon and Porto. Much like the rivalry between Sydney and Melbourne, it’s in fun … mostly. They both unflinchingly love their football teams and they both love their beer, just don’t rub your brand in the face of the other city. Sagres is brewed in Lisbon and Superbock in Porto. When the main city tower was being restored they needed money, so they sold advertising to pay for the work. But when locals awoke to find a huge Sagres beer banner blazoning the side of their beloved icon, there was uproar and the city residents said that they would rather pay for the renovations themselves rather than have Lisbon’s beer brand looking down at them.
The only culinary creation that rivals the tripe goop mentioned above is their beloved Francesinha, which literally translated means Little French Lady. Porto is just about the only place in the world where you can find it, except for some low quality wannabees in nearby northern cities. Be warned though, this is a heart clogging plate of harden-the-fuck up! Essentially it is toasted bread then a layer of beef, then bread, then pork, then bread, then ham, then bread, then sausage, then bread, then bacon and bread on top. It gets worse! It’s all covered with melted cheese with a fried egg on top, then drowned in a spicy tomato and beer based sauce. It’s all served over a bed of fries which soak in all of the juice and sauces just so you don’t miss out on any goodness. If you order a wine or softdrink, or worse still water, to go with it, you get booted out of the city or drowned in the river. It must be drunk with beer! The Francesinha has been considered one of the ten best sandwiches in the world. I was curious to try it, but my inner vegetarian hippy was smacking me around my love handles and said that he would choke me if I even glanced its way again.
The city is very proud of its bridges, two of which are designed by Gustav Eiffel. Most importantly, for us, they connect the old city with the port wine district of Gaia.
Although the vineyards of all of the port wine manufacturers are about 100kms away up the river, the internationally famous export is mostly all stored in gigantic warehouses, known as caves, in Gaia.
We chose to avoid the shiny big corporate cellars and do our tours and tasting at two of the smaller wineries and ones that are still owned by the families that started them in the 18th century … Taylors and Croft. At both of these wineries about 25% of the grapes are still crushed by foot today and some of it is stored in barrels that can hold 100,000 liters of the ruby gold!
Port wine has the same name restrictions as Champagne from France. Only port wine from Porto can carry the esteemed label. Anything else has to be called dessert wine, fortified wine or any other version of it.
It’s is said that women are like port wine, they just get better with age. Whilst we couldn’t afford to even taste a bottle of their 1870 vintage we still loved the warehouse tours and we learnt a lot about the process and history. The ten-year-old tawny and late bottled vintage that we sampled were delicious. Dad, you’d love it here! If we’d have re-mortgaged the house and bought you a bottle of the 1870, you’d have to finish it within a couple of hours otherwise it goes off. Do you think you’ll have any problems with this?
During the 18th century, France was Britain’s main wine supplier. But there was some war and they decided that they didn’t want to buy wine from them anymore. So in 1703 the Methuen Treaty was signed which meant that no taxes were payable on wine from Portugal to Britain and textiles the other way round. The port wine industry and the city boomed and even today there is still a strong British presence in the names of the wineries and with the Oporto British School (one of the oldest in Europe), the cricket clubs and lawn tennis. The problem with transporting the wine to Britain however was that during the long voyage it would often go bad and turn to vinegar. So they came up with a method for stopping the fermentation process early, which also made the wine sweeter and that’s how port wine was invented. A great outcome born out of necessity … or is it greed. Not sure which, but we’re happy it exists.
Porto is a delightful city to visit for a few days and we very glad that we made the journey. We earnestly hope that it’s still standing for our kids to travel to one day. Please restore and retain your beautiful tiled buildings and history. Maybe the planets will align and they’ll pull their finger out, find some money, retain their huge student population and will rebuild the city and be known for something more than just the city that gave birth to the famous Port Wine, Harry Potter and a fast food chain of piri-piri chicken joints in Australia.
chasingsummers2012 