Porto – the Lonely Planet called it “gritty” 3 times

After two days there, I really started to enjoy Porto. It’s not the usual touristy spot – we hardly heard any English spoken there (if any). I really started to get the feel of a “real” Portuguese city, and felt like a “traveler” finding my feet, way off the beaten path. Once we found our sense of direction, I got comfortable exploring this very foreign-feeling place.

So what about our first day there? To be honest, at first I thought we had made a huge mistake going there at all. A substantial percentage (a quarter?) of the buildings we walked past were derelict, with broken windows or crumbling walls. We were ripped off at dining establishments twice(!) in the first day (and somehow they adamantly defend themselves after charging us different prices than the posted prices). To top it off, a darkly overcast sky always makes the picture seem more dire than it actually is. Overall, one has the sense of a once-grand city that has fallen into relative poverty.

(First impression – may not look bad, but this view avoided the derelict buildings.)

Even the only laundromat near the city center was in some creepy tunnel along with public facilities:

But like I said, I grew to like (love?) the place (sidenote - when thief/restaurant person #3 tried to charge us a higher-than-posted price, we had learned – we simply walked out and went to another place – one advantage of paying first at a counter - since we hadn’t gotten the food or eaten yet).

But I digress. I grew to like Porto and its treasures – In the 18^th & 19^th centuries, it was a thriving center, with port wine production and a banking boom. Prior to that, it was great medieval center with navigation expertise, and way prior to that, of course, a Roman city.

The Sun came out…

The city is in a gorgeous natural setting: it is situated along the Douro River, on hills. The Atlantic coast is just a few miles away.

When the sun shines on the buildings on the hills, it’s a very unique view to take in.

The buildings lining the river (and the hills behind) are almost idyllic.

And on the other side of the river, is the port wine district – but I’ll get back to that in a few minutes.

The City center:

In the city center, there several notable historic buildings:

The Cathedral:

The Porto cathedral was built from 1110 to about 1220, and underwent some Baroque changes in the 17^th & 18^th Centuries. It’s another staggeringly enormous cathedral – if you zoom in, you can see people near the door and front steps (not the people close-up in the foreground).

Casa-Museo Guerra Junqueiro

This is a house built in the 18^th Century, that houses a vast collection of art & artifacts that were donated by the heirs of the poet Guerra Junqueiro.

Included in the collection was some fine 17^th-Century silver,

And glazed dishware from the 15^th Century.

The Stock Exchange:

The stock exchange was built in 1841 to give the city economic credibility and to impress European investors. So, the interior looks a little bit like a palace. (No pictures are allowed, so the interior picture - which is of the show-stopping Arabic Hall - is from a website).

Igreja and Torre dos Clerigos

This church and tower (separate buildings) were built in 1763. We climbed the tower, the highest in Portugal, up 225 winding steps.

The alterpiece had carving that was characteristic to other churches that we went into in Porto:

So… as we found out in our travels, Portugal doesn’t seem to have much of a safety code. As a prime example, this picture is taken at the top of the country’s highest tower… And a child (or just about anyone) could fall right through the posts.

But the views are sure beautiful – just don’t slip.

The Riverfront – city side

Next to the river, these archways were built as storehouses for the goods (port wine) being traded.

Here’s a picture from the river:

And the area under the arches opens up to restaurants and homes:

The riverfront is one of the prettiest places in the city…

So one night we had dinner there – and enjoyed some views to the other side of the river, the Port Wine side.

Livraria Lello

Here’s another treasure – an Art Nouveau bookstore called Livraria Lello.

The exterior:

The interior, first floor:

Old buildings and narrow streets with stairs:

This building we stumbled upon is pretty cool – called the Torre (tower) da Rua de Baixo, it’s one of the oldest surviving buildings in the city – it’s from the 13^th Century.

Other streets…

This one with a view of a medieval wall in the background:

Over to the “other side” of the river – with port wine cellars!

We walked over the Pont Luis I Bridge (the higher level) to get to the other side of the river. If the structure looks vaguely familiar, it may be because it was built by none other than Gustave Eiffel.

First stop, Taylors, established 1692 (first a shipping company, and entered the port wine business about a century later). It’s a small, family-run company and the tour group was really small. We waited for the tour to begin in this crazy-looking tasting room:

The tour was great, the casks are huge.

The next stop was Croft, a much bigger cellar with a much bigger group – but the property and grounds were really old.

One thing I haven’t mentioned yet is that Porto has really distinctive way of using tiles on both the interior and exterior walls of the buildings. Most of the churches have some tile-work on the outside, as well as ordinary houses:

The coast

Where there is coastline, we will go to it… so we took a short tram ride out to the sea.

Porto… a gritty city, but also full of treasures… and a couple lovable dogs. It’s not the easiest to get around – first, because Portuguese is a tricky language, (and very few people speak English), and second, there are more than normal predatory people, trying to make a buck off a foreigner. But it's a great city to explore once one is comfortable with a language barrier – and the occasional miscreant.

Madrid, Ole

Both of us had been to Madrid before and remembered it to be a really big city without much to see. But we found the city to be a lot more charming this time around and enjoyed our time walking the streets, admiring the architecture and discovering its hidden gems. Our accommodations were in a great location, right in between and 2 blocks away from both Puerta del Sol and Plaza Mayor, two of the main squares.

Puerta del Sol is a lively square that has several major shopping streets radiating from it. There is always something going on there, like street performers, mariachi bands, or groups of police officers. To the right of the picture is a pretty government building and on the other side of the square is the famous bear and tree statue, which is Madrid’s coat of arms.

Plaza Mayor is the historic main square that is lined with apartments and government offices. It is a huge rectangular space and the red colored buildings pop in the sun. This is in the heart of the old district of Madrid that has a wonderful collection of narrow winding streets.

We strolled through the western part of the city by the Royal Palace and then along Calle Gran Via, the main commercial street of the city that is lined with many large and beautifully decorated buildings (amongst some ugly modern ones). Some of the buildings we passed along the way were the Opera House, the monstrous Bank of Spain, the above Metropolis Building, and the below enormous Palace of Communications Building.

One of the stranger things we have come across on our trip was this graffiti dedicated to us, “The Yuens!”. Somehow they must have known we were coming. It was serendipity that we would walk down this part of the city and see this graffiti created by some random social deviant in Madrid.

The next day we went to the Royal Palace of Madrid to catch the changing of the guards. It isn’t the most elaborate in the world, but something that is great (especially when compared to Buckingham Palace) is how few people are there and how close you can get. There isn’t a barrier between you and the guards, just a guy there making sure people stay behind an imaginary line. They also surprised us with guards mounted on horseback that rode so close you could pet the horse as it sauntered by.

We headed back to Plaza Mayor to join up with a walking tour run by the information center. We were happy to find it since it was really affordable. The walking tours in many cities, if they are even available, can be outrageously expensive, but Madrid’s was about 4 Euro (sold!). A short distance from the Plaza Mayor is the Mercado de San Miguel, the only remaining covered market in the city. It has been well preserved and enclosed with glass, and houses stands of overly priced (but high quality) foods and goods.

A little ways further, our guide buzzed us into a monastery that is home to an order of nuns that chooses to have no physical contact with the outside world. He said that most of the nuns these days come from South America, since the Spanish don’t find this way of life very appealing. These nuns carry out a tradition of making baked goods that you can buy through this Lazy-Susan. There is a price list of what is available and you just tell the nun on the other side what you like. You place your money in, the Lazy-Susan gets turned and out comes your baked goods. The nun serving us that day was especially talkative, warning us to be careful of the ‘ladrones’ (thieves). I guess if we were cut off from the rest of the world, we would want to converse as much as possible when someone did decide to drop by. Someone in our group bought some cookies and was nice enough to share them, and they were delicious.

After bidding our talkative, cookie baking nun farewell, we bent our way through Calle Del Codo, which translates to Elbow Street, and ended up in the Plaza de la Villa that is flanked by the City Hall. Most of the streets and plazas have these tiles with corresponding pictures, which is a really nice touch.

We concluded our tour in front of Restaurante Sobrino de Botin, which is the oldest continuously running restaurant in the world according to the Guinness Book of World Records having been established in 1725.

Another interesting gem in Madrid is the Temple of Debod, a gift from Egypt to Spain for their help in saving many of their temples after a huge flood. It was taken apart then rebuilt in its current space. There are only two other Egyptian temples outside of Egypt, one in the Met in New York and the other in the Netherlands. The inside is really well preserved and includes a few rooms with hieroglyphics adorning the walls. There is also an upstairs portion with some very informative and interactive exhibits where we learned about the area that the temple came from on the Aswan.

Not sure what this building is, but I thought it was interesting enough to get at least a mention. For better or for worse (it is hideous and beautiful at the same time), it’s definitely a noteworthy piece of architecture.

We took advantage of the free evening at the Reina Sofia Museum and checked out some of the highlights. The most impressive was Guernica, by Picasso. It was a painting in response to bombings carried out during the Spanish Civil War. It is massive, measuring about 12 feet by 25 feet. It was also interesting to see some of his studies that he did in preparation for the piece, which were exhibited along another wall in the room. The museum also had works by many other famous modern artists, like Miro and Dali (one of his paintings shown below). We also visited The Prado (during their free evening hours), which has a number of masterpieces, our favorites being Goya and Durer; unfortunately no pictures were allowed.

We visited the Royal Palace, an absolutely massive building. It was closed on one of the days we were there to host Prince Charles of England; they still use this palace for official functions, although the Spanish Royal Family lives in another palace. We got to see just a few of the hundreds of rooms. Again, no photos, so we can’t show the highlights that include a grand staircase entrance, throne room, state apartments, huge collections of weapons and armor in the armory, and the most interesting section the pharmacy, which houses hundreds of jars and urns containing every sort of herb and medicine.

We spent some time in the Retiro Park walking the expansive grounds and reading. There are some really nice green spaces, tree lined lanes, fountains, buildings, and streams.

The best part of our time in Madrid was getting to spend time with our friends Angela, Ali, and Ryan, who were traveling through Spain and met up with us. We spent a couple days wandering the city and sharing some excellent food and drinks and enjoying some good conversation, something we lack when on our own in non-English speaking countries. We look forward to seeing them more often when we return to San Francisco.