Porto was still buzzing when we arrived at lunchtime Christmas Eve. By evening a quiet had descended upon the city. The few people out were running last minute errands, picking up a wreath-shaped fruitcake from the pasteira, cleaning house, or getting started on the Christmas dinner.
We wandered the hilly streets of Porto for a little while. Assuming that we would find nothing open, we had already stocked up on bread, cheese, olives and fruit. We were set, but we wouldn’t pass up the chance to have a glass of wine somewhere if the opportunity arose.
The other half of “we,” by the way, is Trish. Trish was one of my flight students, now a friend and travel buddy. We met up in Lisbon a week ago and have been wending our way north since then.
Lisbon was one of the most interesting cities I’ve been to. Growing up in California, the influence of Central and South America is pervasive. Every region has its immigrant communities from south of the border, and if you grow up in California, you grow up with the artifacts of these communities – the pastry shops, juice stands, emphasis on fresh vegetables and fruits, meat markets – I must be hungry because all I can think of at the moment is food. But it’s hard to grow up in California and not learn at least a little bit of Spanish.
Well of course, Spain and Portugal are the homeland for people from Central and South America. It’s the Old Country. Like Anglos in the United States travel to Britain, people from south of the border travel to Iberia. Nowhere is that more true than in Portugal. I have met almost as many Brazilians here in Portugal as I have Portuguese. And they’ve brought their New World culture with them to influence Portugal in a way that you don’t see Americans influencing Britain… I think. It may be that I’m too much in the middle of it to even notice.
However it is, being in Lisbon felt a lot like being in California to me. They import as many South American fruits and vegetables in Lisbon as we do in the Mission District of San Francisco. The New World is somehow very present. Unless the reality is in reverse, that the Old World of Portugal and Spain is much more present in the Mission District than I ever recognized. I suppose that is more likely, but I haven’t been able to wrap my brain around that yet. That’s what I love about traveling – I always learn as much about my home and myself as I do about the people and places I visit.
In any case, Trish met me in Lisbon and we hung out there for a few days before heading north. She wanted to see Fatima, which is a pilgrimage site for the Portuguese, so we stopped there for a short visit on our way to Coimbra (cu-WEEM-bra), a small university town. Then it was Coimbra to Porto on Christmas Eve.
There are a lot of Catholics in Portugal, but they seem to take their Santa Claus as seriously as they do their Navidad. Santa is all over this place, climbing into chimneys and windows, inflated to massive proportions in public squares. By nightfall Christmas Eve, though, the town was quiet and the santas were still. We happened by a wine bar with the door opened and cautiously poked our heads inside. The sign said the place was open, and there were two people sitting at the bar… we took a chance and went in. Of course, it ended up being some wine bar owner getting a head start on boiling the Christmas codfish. The other two guys were regulars who just popped by for a quick drink and a Bom Natal. He’d just forgotten to turn the sign around, but we didn’t discover this until he’d already poured us a glass.
We downed our wine and continued our walk. The streets were empty, the lights were beautiful, and the river that feeds out into the Atlantic took my breath away when I first saw it.
After Christmas, Trish wanted to buy some port wine for her wife so we hit the port wine caves on the other side of the river and partied with some of the other travelers we met there. Trish’s backpack was already almost as big as herself. Now that she’s added two heavy bottles of port wine to it, my job is to make sure she doesn’t tip over.
Next stop: Gouveia, a small town in the mountains from where we hope to make our way to Madrid. We’re piecing together, however, that crossing the Portuguese Sierras from Gouveia to Madrid is sort of like crossing the Sierras in California… in December. It may look reasonable on the map to use Tioga Pass if you don’t know what you’re doing, but once you get there… another story altogether. So, we’ve got tickets from Porto to Gouveia, and from Guarda to Madrid. Guarda is the Portuguese equivalent of Mono Lake… i.e. of having crossed to the other side of the mountains. Now all we need is that one little piece in between, Gouveia to Guarda… stand by.
Random pictures, the order of which I apparently can't change...
Trish, getting rid of her pack of handi-wipes in hopes of lessening the load, now that she's got 2 extra bottles of port to haul around. Futile.
Port wine tasting with our fellow Americans.
Traditional day-after-Christmas stilt race along the river.
Cool graffiti in Porto.
The Hall of Toilet Seats... we never figured out why this one corridor of our otherwise very tasteful and well-appointed hotel is decorated with wooden toilet seat covers.
Pastries in Porto.
Halfway up the hill to the university in Coimbra.
Pastries in Coimbra.
The only photo I took in Lisbon... looking down the trolley tracks toward the river.
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