Is there anything more indulgent than travelling in your imagination, idly and luxuriously? It’s sometimes preferable to reality, with all the planning and discomfort. When growing up, reading was both vice and escape, favorite books as a child were those about leaving a place of comfort to seek out adventure and to gain for the first time an appreciation of both the destination and self, whether it was real in the case of Laurie Lee’s journey to Spain or Tolkien’s fictional adventures in Middle Earth. But most often I surrender to real travel; planes and cars, adrift and disorientated in order to absorb some of the marvels the world offers. Travelling with expectancy can also be problematic, what we conjure in our imagination differs greatly from being on the ground, and that was my experience with Porto. Our trip started in this northern Portuguese city and then had us travel down the wild, sparce Atlantic coast to the southern tip of the country from where we made skirmishes into the Algarve. Then a few days ago I drove almost the entire length of the country from below Lisbon back up to the airport in Porto. The following day we woke early in the weak morning light to fly back to New York in time for a Vietnamese dinner with friends and then drove up to our home in the Northern Catskill mountains. So a sense of forward motion is still with me and provokes a restlessness that fuels hunger for the next trip.
It was only when we arrived in Porto that I realized that to experience this city was the conclusion of a long term yearning that had multiple origins. There was never anything specific, just snippets of information; its name seemed to appear unexpectedly on airport screens when I was reluctantly boarding flights to work destinations in South America that I had no wish to visit, so I felt it was tempting me, offering a different choice, an alternative life almost. I had also recently seen in several design articles innovative remodeling of the typical old terraced houses that I found refreshing and forward thinking, there was optimism in the pale Californian colors and simple forms. There were the overheard conversations between artists indicating that there is a movement from Berlin to this more affordable, livable city and there is the appeal of a second city rather than a capital as in Europe these are increasingly being wounded by mass tourism and so now I would take Utrecht over Amsterdam, Cologne over Berlin, Naples over Rome and Porto over Lisbon.
Porto is a city whose name succinctly describes its purpose, its one divided by a wide waterway that quickly narrows into a river that forms a deep vein into the heart of the country. The Romans saw this natural port locations strategic value quickly, a position the very edge of their world and a perfect geological rift and named both the city and the country after it. Homes and buildings cling onto the steep slopes like barnacles on a rock, there is beauty in its disorder, in the differing housing styles and finishes, distressed terrace houses butting up to modern sleek apartment blocks. However our first stop was in an affluent beach suburb and we used this hotel to explore the shorelines and its many excellent restaurants. It was pleasant to stroll to the beach paths and hear the cry of the gulls and smell the saltiness of the Atlantic, whose winds were brisk and cool in June. Much has been made of the migration to Portugal from wealthy Americans and Northern Europeans, German accents were heard wherever we travelled and yet it felt like Northern and Southern Europeans were cohabitating nicely or at least complacently in this pleasant climate. We were a little surprised at the prosperity of our suburb, glancing at the real estate windows and recoiling at the prices, admiring the expensive cars and manicured properties. But its location so close to the city yet still with a beach and places to watch the sunset into the Atlantic with a cocktail was enviable.
We quickly found that the food was mainly from the sea and was fresh but unadulterated, several restaurant’s we visited had a tank where you could select your fish or lobster, something concurrently theatrical and callous. The typical famous dishes in Porto are too hearty for us, the heavy meat based sandwiches; the francesinha and the bifana’s and despite a hard sell from a taxi driver we passed on the bacalao as we’ve had plenty of these before and the very thought of tripas a mode was dismissed immediately despite positive reviews from the late Antony Bourdain. Food tells us so much about a place and in this working class town pragmatism rules; fish is salted for a reason, sandwiches are dense to satisfy hunger and to fuel physical work, the stomach of a cow is eaten because it could not be wasted.
In the time we spent along the coast in Comporta we dined in places designed by the finest architects and designers like Vincent VanDuysen and Philippe Stark, overlooking wind swept and largely empty beaches. In both cases the designers displayed a high sensitivity to natural resources and indigenous materials using cork, tile and terracotta for example without being heavy handed. Europeans seem to have a natural, understated, elegance when it comes to dining and I will always remember the peach colored sky announcing sunset. While tourists like myself with perhaps shorter or less reliable memories, or with a more pressing need to embrace each moment of beauty, rushed to the terrace gripping our cell phones and cameras.
One morning we attempted to walk into the city center along the shoreline which was dotted with historic ruins and crumpling fortifications. Everything appeared closer on the map, and the day was a little too hot and we found ourselves resentful towards both the city and each other. From nowhere an explosive argument developed and I still don’t know how that fuse was lite, Mary walked in one direction to the hotel and I was left alone to fume and find it myself. I arrived before her but couldn’t stay in the room as she surely must have got lost, but half an hour later she appeared behind me and we talked about something else as if nothing had happened, all the hostility and unkind words were forgotten as quickly and mysteriously as they had surfaced. There is a point where the Ocean meets the river taming its wildness where you find the characteristically shaped fishing boats sulking in their redundancy. Visitors like us are drawn to fishing villages and ports for their picturesque nature but we rarely consider the suffering inherent in their history, the men vulnerable at sea the women and children perhaps even more so at land, financially and physically. And so there is a fog of sadness in the face of these modestly tiled cottages by the water, I imagine they are repositories of arguments, bitterness and joy, emotions that are elevated well above our own thanks to the extreme dangers of their time and the unforgiving nature of the Atlantic. Perhaps there is a reason why some houses are neglected, never to renovated thanks to the emotional weight they carry, the loneliness of a loved one being far away, one who might never return and I recalled a conversation with my grandmother who lived in a town next to a major English port who told me that twice in her life she ran from her home in terror at the sight of German warships, once during the first world war and again in the second. I think of the weeks I have been away on business and how I could never do this again, even after a few days apart from Mary the food I eat tastes flavorless, the TV programs I watch become grey and humorless. I think of Saturday mornings when I slip out of bed to pick up a newspaper and maybe a croissant in New York and return to see her occupying my side of the bed, curled up and with her head heavy on my pillow.
My expectations of the city differed from reality in so many ways. I had not anticipated the steep aspect of Porto, it is a physically challenging place, to walk from the river to the higher monuments and train station is hard, there is a reason why there are so many tourist buggies carting people around. I had pictured it narrower and more intimate somehow and compact where in fact it is a large spread out city. It is also one with two halves and all the time we were there we didn’t visit its south side although we viewed it with curiosity. To this day I cannot imagine how one would cross it, the bridges were certainly too high, the most famous Dom Luis de Porto apparently has a pedestrian crossing which I didn’t have the energy or head to attempt, there are ferries that do the job, but I’m embarrassed to say that the only time we were there was when our taxi driver to the airport made a wrong turn. Strange to have this split city seemingly in conversation with itself across a river. We left early in the morning of a national day of festivities, we saw later on line the explosions of fireworks and the quaint traditions being kept alive, preserving their history and sharing celebrations, crowded noisy and joyful, but this was not how I wanted to remember the place and I’m glad we got out in time.
jnmanson 