Going Out The Door

Mid-afternoon and it won’t be a surprise to anyone that we are sitting in a plaza having a cerveja. This will likely be a longer post as we want to catch up on the last few days.

Tomorrow, we’re starting the Portuguese Camino de Santiago, beginning in Porto, Portugal, and ending up in Santiago de Compostella, Spain.

If you’re not familiar with the Camino, it is a pilgrimage to the tomb of St. James the Greater, one of the 12 discipiles of Jesus.

Before really launching into this first post, we want to get a few big “thank yous” to some folks: to our friends Betsy and Gary Saddler for a lift to the Detroit airport, to Scott Piroth and Nan Borer for offering to walk the pups and especially to Diane Fisher our amazing dog/housesitter.

Back to Porto. It has been full of great food, port, wine, beer…and ragweed. Bleh.

Robin found a hotel for us that’s smack in the middle of Porto – if you search for Central Porto on Google maps, the pin is in the plaza in front of our hotel. From there, it’s a short, if not necessarily easy, walk to many of Porto’s sites – the Cathdedral de Porto, the water front of the Duoro river, the Mercado do Balhao, the Time Out Market, the WOW district. Lots to do, for sure. 

As for the not-so-easy walks, that’s down to the fact that Porto is both very old and very hilly. Founded by the Romans, I’m convinced at this point that the 2,000-year-old city was where stairs were invented. Not perfected mind you, but conceived of, prototyped, and experimented with. The stairs here are among the most varied, un-even, and irregular that I’ve encountered. They get you where you’re going, but it’s often an adventure. On the other hand, the hills do make for some great vistas, and the architecture in the city is amazing. 

First night here we hit the Time Out center, about a 5 minute walk from our hotel. It’s a food court where Michelin-starred chefs have booths and it was fun picking and chosing among so many options. Then back to the hotel where we were asleep by around 9:30 pm after having been awake for 32-34 hours.

After sleeping for a solid 13 hours after the Detroit-Philly-Lisbon-Porto trek, we emerged to a beautiful day and promptly set about exploring the local environs.

First day was probably our busiest because, as noted above, we slept 13 hours. Didn’t get started until noonish, but we covered the Sao Bento train station with walls covered in the traditional Portuguese blue tiles (and right around the corner–we can see the station from our hotel window and unfortunately also hear the chimes for every departure notice); the Cathedral of Porto, where we will return tomorrow morning for our first stamp in our credential book (more about that as we go); went down a gagillian steps the Duoro River, then another gagillian back up the hill to a large park with a book festival going on.

A quick note about the book festival–we loved seeing that on a Tuesday at 3 pm, so many people took the time to attend a book festival, and were buying books!

After that we made our way to the local sporting goods store for a new walking stick (can’t really pack them in carry-on bags), then wandered back to the hotel where we had dinner and again crashed hard.

Second full day was a slow start (lack of sleep) but we still managed to get in a port tasting (who knew about white port??), and Tom made dinner reservations at this fantasic restaurant Cozinah dos Flores. Our favorite things to do when we are traveling is eating and drinking and we often look at Michelin guides to find what they call “gourmond” restaraunts–not necessarily starred, but considered great food at (kinda) reasonable prices. This was certainly in the catagory. A really wonderful experience.

So we begin our Camino on the morrow, and we’re just enjoying another beauty of a day in Central Porto – eating, drinking and chilling out before we start. I have to say, the people here are great and I understand why folks want to live here – seems like they know how to combine work and play into the good life.