A good 2022, part 1

2022 was a good year for me, and I hope it was for you too. In the next few weeks I’ll post about some of the things that made my year.

Portugal

My wife (Leda) and I met up with my sister Elise and her husband Gary in Portugal in late May for one of the best tourist experiences I can remember.

Leda, Rolf, Elise, & Gary, Porto, May 2022

We spent a week each in Lisbon and Porto, Portugal’s second-largest city, whose claim to fame is the port wine that was named after it. (Or maybe vice versa?) Porto is about 3 hours north of Lisbon by frequent, comfortable, and well-patronized trains. A few of my friends have asked me, What did you like about it? My reply has generally been, Just… walking around and seeing things! So here are some themes and images that I hope can capture some of what was so special.

Stunning cityscapes

The historic centers of Lisbon and Porto both grew up as port cities at a time when most people walked to get around. They both have a lot of hills, and for centuries, people have built multi-story housing blocks, cathedrals, and municipal buildings so they could be as close to the center as possible. Whether for fortification, for sweeping views, or as an incidental part of the architecture, past generations have left today’s visitors with thousands of spots where they can pause and look out over densely packed, tile-roofed houses toward waterfronts and more distant hills. Some lucky people even get to stay in spots with spectacular views.

Looking over Lisbon’s Alfama district, birthplace of fado music, toward the Tagus River from our 5th-floor walkup Airbnb
Miradouro de Santa Luzia, Alfama District, and Tagus River from our 5th-floor walkup Airbnb in Lisbon
Historic center of Lisbon from the Miradouro da Graça, looking toward the Ponte 25 de Abril over the River Tagus
The River Douro from the Teléferico de Gaia, with port wine warehouses on directly below and Porto off to right.
Parque das Virtudes, Porto, at sunset, looking west down the River Douro. (Check out Elise and Gary in their cute matching outfits in the center.)
Looking from the tower of Porto’s Sé (Cathedral) toward the Luis I bridge and Gaia, the municipality on the Douro’s south bank, Notice the azulejos in lower center? It’s part of a massive depiction of I forget what.
Looking toward Fado Sé from the terrace of the Porto cathedral, with five construction cranes on the horizon. Porto is booming, gentrifying fast. The whole center is now given over to tourism.
Porto from Clérigos Tower.

Walking amid buildings

Getting to viewpoints generally involved walking amid those densely packed buildings, up and down narrow streets and staircases, sometimes walking up stairs within the buildings to terraces and viewpoints that were worth remembering in themselves.

Buildings from the 1400s near the riverfront in Porto
Alfama district, Lisbon
Gary, Leda, & Elise at the Castelo de São Jorge, Lisbon

Art, music, food

Walking amid buildings in Portugal also means a constantly changing streetscape of ceramic tiles (azulejos), ranging from mundane but still pretty to sublimely breathtaking. In Porto, we visited a storefront where local property-owners can take home (for free!) tiles and other architectural elements to replace broken or missing features from their own buildings.

Azulejos everywhere. Lisbon.

You can see a huge array of tiles from historic to contemporary at the Museo Nacional do Azulejo.

Lisbon’s Museu Nacional do Azulejo: so much tile!
Some of my favorite tiles from the Museu Nacional do Azulejo. Upper right is a large mosaic of dozens of commercial tiles.

A lot of major buildings also have elaborate installations of azulejo inside them. Porto’s São Bento Station is a grant example.

Entry hall of São Bento station in Porto, with a marvelous history of transportation running along the top and azulejo portrayals of history in the large panels.

Lisbon is also full of (other) terrific street art—painted and incised murals, graffiti—and both cities have more historic plaques than anyone could read in a lifetime.

The street art along the Caracol da Graça stairway in Lisbon is some of the best I’ve ever seen.

One evening in Porto, we passed by the Casa da Música just in time to drop in for a fado show, a musical form I’ve always enjoyed but now love. The Portuguese guitar appears to be among the most impractical instruments in the world. It takes hours to string, a long time to tune, and special dexterity to play. (The guitarist uses a special set of picks on their thumb and index finger, picking out much of the melody with quick up and down strokes with the index.) I made brief YouTube clips of one of the instrumental pieces and one of the songs. It made me want to chuck everything and move to Portugal to learn this musical form.

Fado performance in Porto. Alfredo Teixeira on Portuguese Guitar, Luís Lumini on Fado Guitar.

And then the food. So much excellent fresh fish! We were on a mission to find the best pastéis de nata (cream tarts) possible in just under 2 weeks and found our favorites at the Pastelaria Santo António.

Favorite pastel de nata, Pastelaria Santo António

And of course, since we were in Porto, we were obliged to tour one of the wine caves and get some samples. If I were ever going to decide I like port, this would’ve been the time, but alas, it isn’t meant to be. We decided to go to the Sandeman tour because we remembered the bottles shaped like the Don. Did your family have one?

Casks of port in the Sandeman wine cave, Vila de Gaia

Trams

Our main exception to foot travel was a few rides on historic trams in both Lisbon (the famous Tram 28) and Porto. For the transit-obsessed among you, Porto might qualify as a worthwhile destination even if you only want to spend a few hours at the city’s streetcar museum. Our other out-of-the-ordinary modes included a double-decker bus to and from Matasinhos, where part of Porto’s fishing fleet is based on the Atlantic coast; the “six bridges” boat tour up & down the Douro in Porto; and the Teleférico de Gaia, on the other bank of the Douro from Porto.

Lisbon’s 28 streetcar is an icon.
The streetcar in Porto that goes to the Streetcar Museum.

Now I’m dreaming of when I can go back! Do you have Portugal memories to share? Or recommendations for my next trip?

1 comment

  1. What, no stats, demographics, in-depth analysis? Just joking, very nice photos and narrative. I need to get some discipline and start chipping away at organizing and curating my collection of photos from cities in China and Italy.

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