Ode to Light (Guerro Junqueiro)

Porto, Friday June 12

Our first very slow start to the day (in our Airbnb apartment). No need to make it to the hotel breakfast room before it closes, hurray! Time to dawdle, put on a load of washing, wait for the hot water to replenish, shower and head-off.

The first target was the Cathedral. We wended our way up lanes and down alleyways, around tight bends, past Caraveggioesque groups of juvenile delinquents (giving us  sideway glances and sizing us up) quickly ascending steep stairways, past heavy old wood doors opening into lounge-rooms, dark cafe shops (with maybe 4 tiny tables for 2 & they don’t do black tea in Porto!)

 until we traipsed up the final ramp (phew!) to face the Cathedral - closed for siesta b/n the hours of 12:00 to 1:30! The cathedral is decked out as most of the facades of buildings in the old town in ceramic tiles depicting one scene or another in blue. The cathedral resides alongside the Bishop’s residence but the Bishop’s residence actually takes up more space per square metre than the Cathedral. Apparently, this was payment to the Bishop when during the Spanish Inquisition the Bishop was instrumental in making the Jews (which made up 5% of Porto’s population at the time) disappear.

We wandered around behind the bishop’s palace and found a lovely, secluded garden in front of a museum dedicated to Guerro Junquiero, a Portuguese poet from the 19^th Century. One of his poems, Ode to Light, had been printed onto ceramic tiles and hung on a wall next to a large statue of him. If only we could read Portuguese.

Many of the beauties of Porto are “hidden gems” like this.

We then decided to head to the cable car ride across the Doura River and walked over on an amazing bridge which has 2 levels. Pedestrians and trains cross over on the top level and cars on the lower level. 

The Cable car ride is a spectacular entry to the 27 Port wine stores which operate on the opposite side of the river to the “old town”. We stopped for a snack and enjoyed a foot long ham and cheese roll, a large vanilla slice with beautiful flaky pastry (the Portuguese are very good at pastry) and 2 cups of coffee for 5.25E – everything is extremely inexpensive in Porto (in France one latte was 4.50E). Then purchased 2 bottles of Rose Port Wine – lovely distinctive intense red berry flavours and caught the cable car back up to the top level of the bridge.

We headed home and joined Karol and Michael for a quick walk to the commencement of our Porto walking food tour with Andre our guide, 3 young German men and a young New York couple. Andre gave us a lesson in Portuguese, introduced us to at least a dozen of his “favourite” food places, including fresh food markets and Portuguese eating experiences - like the 6 layered sandwich of sausage, toast, ham, toast, pork, toast, bacon, toast….(you get the idea) with different sauces along the way. We stopped at 6 different restaurants and cafes and enjoyed about 7 local wines/ports/muscatels with delicious pastries, sausages (cold and grilled over charcoal), cheeses, sardines, olives, yellow lupins, burgers, eclairs & coffees. Andre enthusiastically informed us about Portuguese history, architecture and customs between detailed explanations about the places we sat at and the food we ate. Then made a reservation for tomorrow night at a good restaurant nearby, named LSD. Should be a great trip.

We arrived home about 9:00pm listening to the drums banging as the town is heading into the season for celebrating various patron saints like St John, St Anthony & St Francis.