The castle in Lisbon.
A Lisbon tram, possibly named 'Desire'.
Firstly. The picture of the river is in Porto, but, before I go any further, this next bit is important. If you are ever travelling to Portugal, and Lisbon and Porto are on your list of places to visit, go to Lisbon first. And away we go.......
So, after a couple of weeks convalescing in Belgrade, I arrived in Portugal - Lisbon more precisely. Incidentally, the day before I left Belgrade it snowed a couple of days in a row, but I digress. On exiting the airport, after an unremarkable, yet delayed flight, I stepped out into a warm, 22 degree c night.
Another city, another dodgy taxi driver, and I arrived at my accommodation to find it dark, closed and locked. Situated in an older part of Lisbon, incessantly banging on the door of my multistory hotel/guest house was enough to anger a neighbour, who rang the guest house owner to complain about my delightful racket; bless her. Thankfully this led to the owner, tucked up on the couch with a cuppa and Netflix two streets away, to wander around to see what the complaint inspiring racket was. Upon identifying myself, she went on to not only let me in, but to tell me that she had tried to ring. As with every country, telephone companies don't cross borders, therefore, my phone was utterly useless until I purchased a Portuguese sim-card, hence no phone reception.
Waking in good time, a scratch and a cigarette later, I discovered that Lisbon was far hillier than anticipated, although it is set upon less step, yet lengthy rolling hills, rather than the satanic steep ones of Istanbul. Sim-card purchased, I began the obligatory free walking tour, and off I went. What I found was beautiful, and bright, and clean, yet architecturally relatively new. The newness of the place was a result of the fun filled 1755 Lisbon levelling earthquake, 8.7 magnitude, it lasted 6 minutes. This in turn encouraged a delightfully large tsunami of equal rights. With the earthquake and the wave combined, 1/3 of the population was wiped out. Uniformity in construction had followed, and Lisbon as it appears today was born. Oh, Lisbon is seriously old, think thousands of years of occupation, and if memory serves, it is the second oldest European capital city, behind Athens, of course.
Beyond the usual assortment of site specific culture and antiquity, the biggest takeaways I have of Lisbon are these:
- Lisbon is stupidly expensive, and there is very little value for money anywhere in it;
- Unless you are physically standing on the wharf watching fishermen unload their catch, the seafood in Lisbon is only fresh between about June and October. Outside of those times it is either frozen and then thawed, or imported. Adding to this, a tour guide said to avoid the Sardines (Lisbon is famous for sardines) until June, for that specific reason. But wait, there's more! Portugal is famous for its cod, they call it 'Bacalhau', it is everywhere, and I suspect it is a national dish. Now, this made me laugh a wee bit. Cod is a cold water fish, and the waters around Portugal are not particularly cold. All cod is imported from around Scandinavia, or Canada, or the north of the UK, and when it's imported, it's packed really heavily salted. As a result of the salt, cod needs a two day freshwater soaking with the water being changed out regularly, prior to cooking. Cod is the biggest deal in local cuisine there is! It's advertised everywhere! The Portuguese pride themselves on it!
Who would have thunk it?
With that now said, Lisbon's array of colour and music is amazing, as are the trams in their attention grabbing finery, and I was lucky enough to go into the world's oldest bookshop whilst there.
.......and then I caught a train to Porto.
Woohoo, Porto!!!
Porto leaves Lisbon completely for dead. It is incredibly beautiful, it is vibrant, it is old, and there is so very much to see and do here.
After arriving on the train from Lisbon, bag on shoulder, rain on head, I wandered the two kilometres from the station to the hotel. The hotel, so I found, is something of a newer contrivance. It is remotely controlled, therefore, to get into the building and your room you require electronic four digit codes. There is no front of house staff, which in turn means there is no one to ask any questions to. If you don't have a phone, or it isn't working, neither can you enter as all codes are sent via a timed link that only activates at the check in time, nor can you ask anyone for help. It doesn't appeal to me at all, and if I can avoid it, I won't be staying in another like it.
Moving on, I love Porto. The city is dominated by the river Douro, pronounced "doo - roh", and, like many other river cities, is actually two cities combined. Porto itself lies on the eastern side of the river, Nova Vila da Gaia lays to the west, with the Atlantic just beyond it. The Celts that first inhabited it, in what is now Nova Vila da Gaia, naming it Cale - "Caal - ay"; as time and language progressed it was later called Gale - "Gaal - ay", then becoming Gal, subsequently evolving into Gaia. After the Celts came Romans, and then a whole swath of warring peoples over the centuries thereafter. Porto, on the other side of the river, incidentally, the port side, was named by the Romans as Portus, which surprisingly means 'port', has evolved into today's 'Porto'. This bit is interesting, the name 'Portugal' is derived from the combination of Porto and Gal, hence Portugal. So the country is named after the two cities.
Both cities are hilly, cobble covered, and right now, cowering under rain and storms. Being on a river, the city used to flood heavily, think 10 or 15 metres, however, in the last 40 or 50 years, dams have been built up stream, and the flow is adequately controlled.
Another nugget of information I found interesting, is that 'Port', as is the drink, comes from here. The really basic tale behind it is that the English had trouble transporting wine from here to England, as wine would often turn, or go off, by the time it got to England. So, to strengthen the wine to last the voyages, local monks were approached with the problem, and those same monks came up with the solution. The answer was to strengthen, or fortify, the wine with alcohol, allowing it to last the distance. So, with 70% alcohol added to the now 'fortified' wine, the product was transportable, and actually turned out to be pretty good. As it started its journey from Porto, and it was unique in flavour, texture, and strength, it became known and sold as 'Port', which is now the port we have today. Again, who would have thunk it?
The Portuguese heartily dislike the Spanish. Nay, the Portuguese hate the Spanish. If you are in the mood for a decent kicking, tell them you thought the Portuguese were the same as the Spanish, or, talk to them in Spanish, maybe have a little joke about Spain, with Portugal being the brunt of the joke. All of these things will get you either a fun filled kicking, or at the very least, a really good hiding. A couple of days ago in a small shop, similar to a tiny version of Coles, I accidentally responded "thank you" in Serbian, not Portuguese. From there, the young lady behind the counter became absolutely furious with me, believing I had spoken Spanish to her. In her anger, she was going to throw me out of the shop, and her wrath was enough to draw staff from the entirety of the supermarket. Sufficient to say, my apologies were profound, my explanations greater, and I paid and ran. She was really, really, cross.
So, Portuguese as a language is nothing like Spanish. Unless formally taught, the Portuguese can't speak Spanish, and the Spanish can't speak Portuguese. They are entirely different languages, even though both have roots in Latin. Portugal was conquered and run by the Moors, who were Arabs, for centuries, hence, Portuguese as a language is, very broadly speaking, a combination of the two, with a hearty smattering of bits and pieces of languages from other delightful conquering peoples. Bless it.
What else? JK Rowling lived and wrote a great deal of the Harry Potter series here, and it is evident within her books and films. As an example, the school clothes of the kids in the movies are quite literally the school uniforms of the local kids in the centre of Porto, flowing gowns and all; I've seen them wandering around. She created a character, a baddy, named Salazar Slytherin. In real life, there was a man named Antonio de Oliveira Salazar who was a dictator of Portugal from 1932 to 1968, although apparently JK Rowling denies any association between the two. There are many other snippets that show up in her books that are derived from here, once more she denies all so I'm told, even though she worked right in the very middle of Porto as a school teacher for a couple of years. That denial has not endeared her to the Portuguese. Such is life.
What else? Everyday I do a different 'free', read broadly into the 'free', walking tour. I cannot recommend them highly enough. These tours have taken me into every nook and cranny of every city I have visited, and Porto is no exception. Since being here I've seen tinned sardines (clearly no longer in the tin) crammed into stone weighted bags, with those bags being added to nets to catch prawns from the river. Big prawns. I've been into the most heavily gilded church in Portugal, apparently between 600 to 800 kg's of gold were used in the gilt, yet, when Napoleons troops were in the city, they thought so little of it, they stabled their horses inside it. There was once a corpse crowned as queen here, years after the previous king had had her assassinated, and I've seen where she sat to be crowned.
The list goes on.
There is so much more to tell about Porto, however, the long faced waitress at the overpriced tourist cafe I am sitting writing in is glaring at me in the hope that I will move on. And so I shall. If you have any questions, please comment below, but make sure you add your name so I know who it is.
My absolute best to all.
N.
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The castle in Lisbon.
A Lisbon tram, possibly named 'Desire'.
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