Day 7: Porto

March 8, 2023

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This was our day to check out Porto, although we will be back at the end of the tour. The weather today could only be described as attrocious, with rain and high winds. The only saving grace was that the rain and wind sometimes almost stopped, before returning. This gave a bit of a chance to recover and not be shivering. Since this is a bicycle tour to a "warm" country I was steadfastly wearing shorts and one merino long sleeve under a raincoat. Dodie had pants , but otherwise both our approaches were cavalier. Tomorrow, when we actually take to the bikes, you can be sure we will be doing it with more clothes!

The bad weather misted in what otherwise would have been stellar townscapes from this very interesting city. Otherwise, I think we did get the idea of what the place is all about, and hopefully the photos below will be mostly able to convey it.

We started off with the included breakfast at our Gallery Hostel. As with the rooms and overall decor, it is not blow your socks off, but solidly a cut above. The breakfast had the full complement of croissants, pain au chocolate, coffee cake, scambled eggs, boiled eggs, bacon, cheese, ham, espresso machine, and of course the obligatory, iconic, pastel de nata.

Nice surroundings at Gallery Hostel. Those are of course the typical blue painted wall tiles.

Dodie has her rain poncho on, ready to brave the elements.

The street where our hostel is is just a bit beyond the historic centre. As such, though it is narrow and old, the street lacks the real impact of what you see downtown.

Walk a block from the hostel, and you begin to see the typical Porto architecture - with narrow buildings, faced with tile, many tall windows or doors, and cast iron balconies - reminiscent of Marseille.

Aside from sightseeing we had three main objectives for our hike around town. We needed more strong tape, to repair our bike boxes, and it seemed we needed a local SIM, given that British Lycamobile was not playing nicely. Finally, we were searching for an ebike shop that might have a charger to replace ours, the one that fried as soon as plugged in.

The hostel staff had pointed us to a possible store for packing tape, but we ran into one by accident very quickly. It caught my attention because it had a kettle for sale in the window. We had earlier scoured the entire Yucatan for a kettle with no luck (and now we have brought one from Walmart along). The kindly storekeeper patiently put up with our Google Translate as we explained the exact type of tape we wanted, and - he had it! We paid in cash and Dodie went through learning the numbers and discussing our change in Portuguese. Dodie has picked up the challenge of the Portuguese language, while I feel my brain - heavily dosed on Spanish in Mexico, will not tolerate yet another language.

The kindly shopkeeper had just what we needed, and a lot a patience too. This kind of small shop is typical for Porto city, although there could well be some mega malls or such on the outskirts.

About ten minutes more walk time and we entered the true old centre of Porto, recognizable by all the souvenir shops, selling identical portrayals of Portuguese art and culture.

The old centre is filled with houses like this

Tile patterns like these are the Portuguese thing. They are well represented in the souvenir shops and in the buildings on the street too.

The Clerigos church tower is the tallest structure in Porto. This sure is not Vancouver!

The streets began to tilt down to the river. Soon we would wind down along really small alleys.

From the hills above the river one can look out at parts of the city below. There we lots of photo ops, but mostly the camera had to hide from the rain.

Before plunging down to the river, we passed the Porto cathedral.

The Porto cathedral was started in the twelfth century and continued to be developed and expanded until the eighteenth. It is in the centre of the old town, but does not rule the old town as could be the case elsewhere, with a tall cathedral that heads up a central square, which is maybe surrounded by shops. Rather this cathedral is not particularly tall or massive, and it sits on its own hill, seemingly not much integrated into the surrounding town.

What the cathedral does have is a stunning cloister, and very gilded chapels, with ancient frescoes and paintings.

The cloister has much blue painted tile.

A detail of the tile painting. We are not sure if the tile is painted with glaze and then fired, or if this is just paint on white tile.

A weird Last Supper - with the heads on a little funny, and a very forelorn dead rabbit? At least one of the twelve disciples has had too much wine!

No idea what the objects to left and right are. But note also the blue painting and the gilding.

The pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostella was a big thing for us some years ago, when we got our "Compostellas" through having our "creancials" stamped at churches along the way. Now we are back close to Santiago, where "The Way" is still a big thing. Here in the cathedral is a prime spot for getting a creancial or a stamp, but they do not appear to be offering refuge or support to pilgrims.

We exited the cathedral and on the small square in front of the cathedral there was a great view toward the river. But not only was the view obscured by mist, the wind here was near hurricane force. We really had to lean in to make any progress, and we were not excited to think we could have been, or soon will be, trying to make progress in conditions like this on the bikes.

We left the cathedral area and began to wind our way down to the river, through really small streets that were necessarily car free.

Narrow and beautiful streets took us down to the river.

Here too was evidence of the Camino. The signs generally guide toward Santiago, but by way of churches along the route. This one points back to the cathedral we have just left.

Nearer the river we ran into some wine stores, featuring of course wine from the Douro region.

This one was half grocery store, showing that this amount of local wine is just normal.

At last we reached the river, and the famous Louis I bridge, designed, we have read, by the Eiffel of Tower fame. This bridge is always mentioned as the centre of the old town.

Along the river are restaurants with outdoor seating. But not today!

This is a cruise boat, so the wine barrels are only symbolic .

On the opposite bank are more Porto style buildings.

The bridge has an upper and a lower level. The upper level starts high on one bank and ends high on the other , while the lower level just crosses closer to water level. We will take the lower level tomorrow. It's under construction, but we checked to see that it is passable by bikes.

A funicular near the bridge boosted us back up the bank. At 4 euros each the short ride was quite costly, but we had already been walking for quite a while!

Back up more toward the centre of town, we came to the train station. We stepped in, because it featured - yes, more blue painting.

Here and below are three train station images.

In the commercial centre, such as it was, we turned our attention to the two chores - replacing the dead charger and also looking for a new SIM. We found an e-bike shop and were told - no hope - all the chargers in use are proprietary designs and not compatible with generic batteries. However we learned of a possible shop at Espinho, down the coast, that we will hit tomorrow. OK, we'll see.

About the SIM, we had been counting mainly on Lycamobile, which had worked for us in England where we bought the SIM and then in France. But of late Lyca has been eating our balances prematurely, and even after phoning customer support, we are not sure why. The latest story we think they told us was that our EU roaming package only supplies 5 gB of data (much less than the 20 it would give in England) and does not include any telephone service (unlimited in England). We stopped in at Vodaphone (after a long search for the shop) and learned that they would offer a one month only, tourist deal of 25 euros for 10 gB and 500 minutes or 10 euros for 5 gB and 500 minutes. These offers could not be topped up after a month at the same rate. Online top up would be about twice as costly. These offers did not excite us at all, and we walked on, finding just one other phone store in 10 km of walking the town. The second store offered 5 gB from "Moche", which is a discount sub-brand of MEO, which I take to be a major local supplier, for 10 euros. This one, apparently, can be topped up online at the same price, and did not need to be activated on the spot, as was the case for the Vodaphone "deal". We bought the Moche but put it in the backpack. We'll research Lycamobile a bit more before switching. But what happened to the really cheap rates from "Movistar" that we thought we read about in a Cycleblaze forum? Maybe only in Spain - definitely not here!

Now we plodded on, starting to quite feel the chill, after about 10 km and 7 hours outdoors in the rain. We passed what we think was probably City Hall, and used the GPS to aim for home.

City Hall, on Avenida Dos Aliados- a main meeting place in the city.

As we walked we were a little unsure of whether we were really heading the right way, so we stopped to ask a random fellow in the street. He was really sweet, spoke perfect English, and put us on our way. But he triggered an observation that I had to check with Dodie: Including four guys who were staff at the Hostel, the ticket taker at the cathedral and the one at the funicular, the random guy on the street, and then the waiter at our restaurant later on. All had been young with dark hair and beards, and I assumed, rather handsome. So checking with the lady - Dodie - were they really something special. Oh yes! Dodie had noticed, and mentioned also their "melting dark brown eyes". "They are, they are ...", she said, "... I love Portugal! I only have a photo of one - Paulo from yesterday, but if there are any lady readers, you could confirm or deny this observation! The last time something came up on tour was in Denmark, when I noted the young, tall, blond, women. Yes, Denmark was great too!

The Hostel also has a restaurant, and since today is International Women's Day (no relation to the above sexist topic), they were offering a special menu. This included a free glass of wine, which Dodie declined. The substituted a "mocktail" for her. Maybe sometime in this wine region we'll try a little. The menu included a shrimp and chorizo pea soup, pork meatballs, and a mango-mousse dessert, to which we added a vindaloo pastry. We found all these dishes to be delicious, though Dodie deposited all the shrimp on my plate.

The final excitement for the night was when we sent Dodie off to the remote garage with the new rolls of tape, to rebuild the bike boxes. I retired to the room to write the blog. But after 1 1/2 hours began to worry, and went down the street to check. The thing is, the garage door is controlled by a fob, with four buttons, and this is the only way in or out. I pounded on the door, but there was no response. The bike boxes are quite deep in. Finally, with more pounding, I got an (annoyed) response from Dodie, who only then made to raise the garage door. So it was just then that what I thought might have happened did happen. She really had no clear idea of how to get out. To be fair, 99.44% of parking garages in our experience have door raising buttons on the wall inside, somewhere. This one, though, only worked with that fob. Dodie rather hit a few buttons on a few walls. Lucky thing, we later learned that there was one button in there that kills the power, and with it the fob function.

I went back to the hostel to get someone to do the rescue. But by the time help arrived, Dodie had just randomly hit the right fob button, and she was free! This was the first time that I saw, however briefly, two of those "melting brown eyes" from the hostel slightly annoyed.

It's ok, though, we are off tomorrow. The boxes, are on their own, and should cause no more drama in the world of parking garages.

Today's ride: 10 km (6 miles)
Total: 10 km (6 miles)

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