Porto, Day 1 (Tuesday 10 September)
It was time to go to Porto. The metro station at Baixa-Chiado is incredibly deep, although I can’t tell if it is more dramatic that the escalators down to the new Sydney stations; but we looked at the cobbles and the stairs at either end of the escalators and decided to book an Uber to the station. Ten years ago, we would have disdained such weakness and financial profligacy, but this is now. It was a genius move, as we were at the Oriente station in 15 minutes.
The train was fast but not high-speed, and we reflected on what a 200 km/h train could mean to communities across NSW. Apparently there are plans to run the TGV into Portugal, which could be interesting. We arrived in Gaia, across the river from Porto, and hopped on a taxi for the last few kilometres. The moment we saw the topography of Porto, we understood why it would have taken another 45 minutes by train to get to Sao Bento station in the middle of the city. The Douro is a deep chasm between the two towns; and while Porto isn’t as steep as Lisbon, it is a fair hike down to the river.
We have fallen in love with our accommodation. Casa Carolina is a B and B rather than a hotel, but it is a converted mansion with enormous rooms from the end of the 19th Century. It is certainly double the size of our bedroom at home. The lack of air conditioning is more than compensated for by the open windows and constant breeze, which is always there in the afternoon.
As soon as we were settled in, we walked down to the town hall, which was only 12 minutes away. The central station, Sao Bento, is halfway down the hill for five minutes and then a few minutes to the Cathedral. It is a small city of a quarter of a million people, and most of the population has moved to cheaper satellite towns as the metro develops. The afternoon spent on our tour with our guide, Tiago, soon made us aware of Portugal’s continuing economic disadvantage compared with the rest of the EU.Wages are only three-quarters of those in Spain and half that in France and northern Europe, so Portugal experiences regular diasporas, and the population is only 10 million. But is is a place we really like and would return to.
There is a great deal we won’t see in this short stay, but suffice to say that it is a far older city than Lisbon but has yet to experience the full horrors of foreign investment. The old streetscapes are being renovated, so the tiled facades remain but the old buildings are more habitable; but the cost of housing means that these apartments are often bought by foreign retirees, used as holiday and short-term accommodation, or bought by wealthier families who displace the old communities. It is such a familiar story.
I won’t bore you with all the history we learned, but Porto, like Lisbon, has strong English connections going back to the Seven Years War, visible on the roofs of the port wine warehouses across the river. Tomorrow, we visit the Douro, where it comes from. The less said, the better about the bookshop with the enormous queues where J.K. Rowling claims she didn’t write Harry Potter. At least the facade is a stunning Arts and Crafts concoction.
