Amo Te Porto
Okay, this has taken ages to get out. My apologies. The last week has occasionally made me question whether I truly knew what hectic meant. After getting back from Spain on Saturday, I swang over via Bristol, my alma mater, to catch up with friends there (and celebrate a birthday - are you enjoying being 30, Gaz?). Got back to Cambridge Sunday evening, and the intervening days have been mad, mostly because I've been trying to do all the things I should really have been doing whilst swanning around Iberia. So I've been to the Dentist, and done more shopping for travel stuff than is probably good for me.
But, to go back to the traveller's tales, time to tell you a little about Portugal. Portugal is lovely. The people are lovely, the food is pretty good, the weather's rather nice, the wine is wonderful, and the beer tastes really quite good coming over from Spain. Though the language is confusing. Having only seen it written before, and after meeting a few Brasilians, I figured it'd sound a lot like Spanish. WRONG! Portuguese, when spoken by the natives, sounds to my ear more like a Slavic language than a Romance one (i.e. it sounds more like Czech or Slovene than Spanish!). This would have been an utter nightmare were it not for the fact that the Portuguese themselves seem to have a talent for languages and their English is often great.
Our arrival point, as noted before, was Lisbon, nestled by the mouth of the River Tejo/Tajo/Tagus (delete according to linguistic preferences) and flowing over a series of hills like a comfort blanket. After the obligatory breakfast out on the terrace of a cafe in a square (as John kept noting, "Wouldn't it be nice if there were places back home like this...?" - though yes, I know, they'd only actually be much use maybe 30 or 40 days a year...), we dumped our bags at our Residencial (the Dom Sancho I, on Avenida de Liberdade - quite a nice option in my opinion) and went exploring. In my case, this involved taking an elevator ride that seemed to have been transplanted from the 19th century, trundling up the hills on the antique Funiculars (like trams running up slopes of around 45 degrees, for those unfamiliar with the term), sampling some Bacalhau (salt cod, which is a bit of a local speciaility), wandering around the Bairro Alto district up on one of the hills and going on a cruise on the river.
That last (the cruise) seemed a great idea beforehand, but became slightly less so as I realised that I was the youngest person on the boat by at least a clear 10 years. It was also getting horrifically muggy and overcast, making me less comfortable and the light less favourable for my photos. In the end, I did get a nice view of the Parque des Nacoes ("Park of the Nations", built from the Expo 98 site), including the Torre de Vasco de Gama (Vasco de Gama Tower) and the Ponte de Vasco de Gama (Vasco de Gama Bridge). They're quite keen on de Gama in Portugal, unsurprisingly. The bridge is bloody impressive, though - the damned thing's 18km long! They had to take the Earth's curvature into account when building it. I also got to see Belem down at the very mouth of the river, where (you guessed it) Vasco de Gama sailed from. All of which was quite pleasant, but not really worth the 2.5 hours of my life and the money I paid for it. Still, never mind.
That night, we decided to cop out somewhat, and go to an Irish bar/pub for dinner so that we could watch the England footie game on TV. This led to probably the most expensive meal of the trip (mmm, steak...), and a decent start to the evening. We even got to see England win. Unfortunately, our conspicuous consumption caught up with us somewhat as the evening wore on, finding us all quite tired such that we went home relatively early.
The next day, we departed Lisbon on the train up to Porto in the north. Porto, it was generally agreed at the end of our trip, was probably the nicest place we went to. Personally, I loved it. It's a beautiful old city, cascading down the hills into the River Douro and facing up to its twin, Vila Nova de Gaia, across the way. In another of my incongruous comparisons, I was reminded of Newcastle and Gateshead in terms of the physical geography of the area (especially with the series of linking bridges).
That evening in Porto was spentdown by the river, first having a quiet drink or two in the deck-chairs which one enterprising bar-owner had set up out on the grass by the river over in Vila Nova de Gaia, and later in a lovely little restaurant back on the Porto side. We then went on our near-obligatory long ramble in search of a bar which all 3 of us were happy with, ending up fruitless back in VNdG, before we had an extraordinary piece of luck, and stumbled into another Irish pub. However, unlike those in Granada and Lisbon we had seen, this one was truly, horribly tacky, and enlivened yet further by a musician (if such he can be called) who had me in stitches, and John and James looking deeply pained, as he butchered his way through various classic songs. Ahhh, such fun...
The following day, Thursday, was our last in Porto, and indeed in Portugal, so we headed off across town again, stopping to climb the Torre dos Clerigos (church tower on top of a hill - stupendous views, but meant I was doing my asthmatic camel impersonation yet again) before heading back over ot VNdG, where John and James went to look around a Port warehouse (yes, the warehouses for the Port are actually the other side of the river, not in Porto itself) and I drifted bissfully off to Republica de Cerveja ("Beer Republic"). Yes, I had found a micro-brewery, so was a happy bunny. After another memorable riverboat tour (this time we ended up with a whole boat-load of late-middle-aged Italian tourists...), the latter parts of which were snoozed off, we headed up the Funicular (a new one here, unlike the old beauties in Lisbon) and back to our Residencial (the Dos Aliados, just off Avenida dos Aliados - another I would certainly recommend) before realising quite how late it was and rushing back to the train station.
There then ensued another 3-hour doze back to Lisbon, an unfortunate affair whereby we were waiting so long in a restaurant in Lisbon for dinner that we had to just go or risk missing our sleeper, and another overnight ride back to Madrid. No Canadians this time, though there were a nice couple of San Franciscans, two other Yanks (one a member of the truly scary section of the American Nation), a Kurd with whom I ended up conversing mostly in German and an Aussie lass. More revelry in the bar carriage, this time transferred on to our berth afterwards, leading to very little sleep.
The lack of sleep probably explaining why, other than meeting up with my cousin Liz (who was in Madrid at the same time), I got pretty much nothing done that final Friday in Madrid. Went out for dinner and drinks in the evening, starting off back at our old friend El Espejo, on Recoletos, and rumbling around in typical fashion. Eventually, I left John and James assuaging their hunger with churros y chocolade at San Gines, and wandered home, taking an unscheduled incursion into an Irish bar in order to burn off a few more Euros. Ended up chatting to more Americans and, shock horror, a Spaniard. Trudged home around 4am, to catch the 4 hours or so sleep I could before heading for the airport.
And that, basically, is what I did on my holidays. The holidays, though, are over. Now the proper travelling begins. In 8 hours time. Which means I'm going to get around 3 hours' sleep. Ah well. Until next time, dear Readers, Adios!
But, to go back to the traveller's tales, time to tell you a little about Portugal. Portugal is lovely. The people are lovely, the food is pretty good, the weather's rather nice, the wine is wonderful, and the beer tastes really quite good coming over from Spain. Though the language is confusing. Having only seen it written before, and after meeting a few Brasilians, I figured it'd sound a lot like Spanish. WRONG! Portuguese, when spoken by the natives, sounds to my ear more like a Slavic language than a Romance one (i.e. it sounds more like Czech or Slovene than Spanish!). This would have been an utter nightmare were it not for the fact that the Portuguese themselves seem to have a talent for languages and their English is often great.
Our arrival point, as noted before, was Lisbon, nestled by the mouth of the River Tejo/Tajo/Tagus (delete according to linguistic preferences) and flowing over a series of hills like a comfort blanket. After the obligatory breakfast out on the terrace of a cafe in a square (as John kept noting, "Wouldn't it be nice if there were places back home like this...?" - though yes, I know, they'd only actually be much use maybe 30 or 40 days a year...
That last (the cruise) seemed a great idea beforehand, but became slightly less so as I realised that I was the youngest person on the boat by at least a clear 10 years. It was also getting horrifically muggy and overcast, making me less comfortable and the light less favourable for my photos. In the end, I did get a nice view of the Parque des Nacoes ("Park of the Nations", built from the Expo 98 site), including the Torre de Vasco de Gama (Vasco de Gama Tower) and the Ponte de Vasco de Gama (Vasco de Gama Bridge). They're quite keen on de Gama in Portugal, unsurprisingly. The bridge is bloody impressive, though - the damned thing's 18km long! They had to take the Earth's curvature into account when building it. I also got to see Belem down at the very mouth of the river, where (you guessed it) Vasco de Gama sailed from. All of which was quite pleasant, but not really worth the 2.5 hours of my life and the money I paid for it. Still, never mind.
That night, we decided to cop out somewhat, and go to an Irish bar/pub for dinner so that we could watch the England footie game on TV. This led to probably the most expensive meal of the trip (mmm, steak...), and a decent start to the evening. We even got to see England win. Unfortunately, our conspicuous consumption caught up with us somewhat as the evening wore on, finding us all quite tired such that we went home relatively early.
The next day, we departed Lisbon on the train up to Porto in the north. Porto, it was generally agreed at the end of our trip, was probably the nicest place we went to. Personally, I loved it. It's a beautiful old city, cascading down the hills into the River Douro and facing up to its twin, Vila Nova de Gaia, across the way. In another of my incongruous comparisons, I was reminded of Newcastle and Gateshead in terms of the physical geography of the area (especially with the series of linking bridges).
That evening in Porto was spentdown by the river, first having a quiet drink or two in the deck-chairs which one enterprising bar-owner had set up out on the grass by the river over in Vila Nova de Gaia, and later in a lovely little restaurant back on the Porto side. We then went on our near-obligatory long ramble in search of a bar which all 3 of us were happy with, ending up fruitless back in VNdG, before we had an extraordinary piece of luck, and stumbled into another Irish pub. However, unlike those in Granada and Lisbon we had seen, this one was truly, horribly tacky, and enlivened yet further by a musician (if such he can be called) who had me in stitches, and John and James looking deeply pained, as he butchered his way through various classic songs. Ahhh, such fun...
The following day, Thursday, was our last in Porto, and indeed in Portugal, so we headed off across town again, stopping to climb the Torre dos Clerigos (church tower on top of a hill - stupendous views, but meant I was doing my asthmatic camel impersonation yet again) before heading back over ot VNdG, where John and James went to look around a Port warehouse (yes, the warehouses for the Port are actually the other side of the river, not in Porto itself) and I drifted bissfully off to Republica de Cerveja ("Beer Republic"). Yes, I had found a micro-brewery, so was a happy bunny. After another memorable riverboat tour (this time we ended up with a whole boat-load of late-middle-aged Italian tourists...), the latter parts of which were snoozed off, we headed up the Funicular (a new one here, unlike the old beauties in Lisbon) and back to our Residencial (the Dos Aliados, just off Avenida dos Aliados - another I would certainly recommend) before realising quite how late it was and rushing back to the train station.
There then ensued another 3-hour doze back to Lisbon, an unfortunate affair whereby we were waiting so long in a restaurant in Lisbon for dinner that we had to just go or risk missing our sleeper, and another overnight ride back to Madrid. No Canadians this time, though there were a nice couple of San Franciscans, two other Yanks (one a member of the truly scary section of the American Nation), a Kurd with whom I ended up conversing mostly in German and an Aussie lass. More revelry in the bar carriage, this time transferred on to our berth afterwards, leading to very little sleep.
The lack of sleep probably explaining why, other than meeting up with my cousin Liz (who was in Madrid at the same time), I got pretty much nothing done that final Friday in Madrid. Went out for dinner and drinks in the evening, starting off back at our old friend El Espejo, on Recoletos, and rumbling around in typical fashion. Eventually, I left John and James assuaging their hunger with churros y chocolade at San Gines, and wandered home, taking an unscheduled incursion into an Irish bar in order to burn off a few more Euros. Ended up chatting to more Americans and, shock horror, a Spaniard. Trudged home around 4am, to catch the 4 hours or so sleep I could before heading for the airport.
And that, basically, is what I did on my holidays. The holidays, though, are over. Now the proper travelling begins. In 8 hours time. Which means I'm going to get around 3 hours' sleep. Ah well. Until next time, dear Readers, Adios!
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