Dashing and Bold Adventure: Porto, Food, and Black Capes

I’m having a hard time deciding where to begin. We came here to Porto on Monday. I couldn’t read the car number or the seat number on the train ticket they sent me. I kinda remembered it being in car 4 and that’s about it. So the train came and we shoved our way into car 4. After getting our luggage situated, we lingered in the aisle hoping the empty seats would show themselves to us. We finally took two seats close by and settled in. Five minutes later a girl told us they were her seats. We staggered down the aisle to two other vacant seats. Half an hour later the ticket guy came through. We were dreading the confusion. He stopped at our seats and said our names! Apparently, we’d somehow found our seats. Isn’t that amazing?

We have a cute back yard at our Porto place to relax in, which is where I’m sitting right now. We’ve wandered aimlessly as usual, trying food, coffee, beer, and wine. I read ahead of time that there were certain traditional Portuguese dishes to try, such as pastel de bacalhau, Francesinhas, pastel de nata, and sardines. I was pretty excited about trying the pastel de bacalhau, which is codfish in a crunchy fried ball. We went to a place with a line out front. I got my crispy, crunchy cod thingy and took one bite—it was disgusting. It had that really strong fishy taste, so I handed it to Joe because he’ll eat anything. He took one bite and we threw it away, then we got a beer to wash the taste out of our mouths. Next up was the pastel de nata. This is a tiny flaky pie of egg custard. It was delicious but a little sweet for me. I already mentioned the pureed sardines… that was surprisingly good.

The major thing I was determined to eat was the Francesinhas—a thick fried ham and cheese sandwich with an egg on top and covered in a sauce. It’s affectionately called a gut-bomb. I was hugely disappointed. First of all it wasn’t hot, wasn’t fried, was made with thick/cheap white bread, and the sauce was bland. Just my opinion, but that’s all I have.

Another thing to try is Ginjinha. This is the famous cherry flavored drink that’s supposed to be good for your health. We actually found the super old shop in Lisbon. I made Joe go in because I hate hard alcohol. It’s just a bar counter right inside the front door. People pop in to get their Ginjinha in a shot glass. They down it and leave. I took a tiny sip and it was pretty good—very sweet like a cherry liqueur. Speaking of liquid—you can drink the water here and it tastes good. Just specify to the server that you want tap water.

On the subject of food; The menu usually has dishes for two. Be sure to ask. They don’t mind giving you a single serving. It can be a little deceiving because the prices are so cheap. We had two beers, a big glass of wine and split a sandwich today and it was only 8E… and they don’t tip here! A couple of nights ago we were struggling up some hill somewhere and Joe says, “Is that a terrace restaurant?” I strained my eyes to see that there appeared to be an umbrella on a deck on the top floor of a high-rise hotel in front of us called Dom Henrique. We shrugged our shoulders and cut across the street to find out. A sign indicated that the restaurant was on the 17th floor. We got off the elevator to a gorgeous and empty restaurant. The bar was out on the edge with a glass wall showing a spectacular view. We stayed and had a hamburger and smoked salmon sandwich. After two hours of talking to the other ten guests we paid our 25E tab and headed home. We went again last night after we told a couple from Seattle about it. By the time we led them to the hotel, we’d talked ourselves into having dinner with them. That’s really one of the best burgers I’ve ever had.

Here's a great tip for you people coming to Portugal. Download the app called Map of Portugal offline. It’s incredibly useful. It doesn’t use any data and doesn’t need wifi. If you turn on your location, it will show you where you are, which I don’t understand since you’re not using data or wifi. Before I left home I found each of our homes and touched the screen causing a pop-up to appear. I typed in the address and date of the stay and saved it. Then a little star appears on the map. Later if you need the address for a taxi or uber, you can just refer to the app. We got un-lost many times on this trip thanks to this handy little thing.

Wednesday night we went on a Harry Potter tour. We all met at the famous Sao Bento train station between platforms 3 and 4. Our guide showed up with a wand. You may ask why in the world I’d choose a Harry Potter tour? Well, I reasoned that someone so passionate about his tour would probably be fun. I was right. He enjoyed having Joe and I there to be the two in the group of seven who couldn’t answer all his random quiz question about Hogwarts and horcruxes. I like to think we created a balance. We went to the Majestic Café where Rawling reportedly wrote the beginning of the series. We talked all about the mythical creatures making up Porto’s history and stood in front of the famous library that inspired her for the Hogwarts stairs (which she claims is untrue), but didn’t go in because they charge a fee. A challenge was to find the smallest house in a nearby huge plaza. We all searched and failed. Vini finally caved in and pointed it out to us… it is in the middle of a big church. Not sure how that happened, but there you go.

Several bizarre things have happened here that we didn’t anticipate. For example, we had no idea we would be here for the university graduation. In Porto that a big deal, especially after a couple of years of no ceremonies. Our first indication that something big was happening was young adults walking around in all black with black capes (real capes made out of good material). The only thing that differentiated them was their top-hats. Each school had their own color. For example, sociology was blue. By the afternoon half the people on the streets were graduates shouting chants and songs in competition with each other. They had color-coded canes, which they pounded on the sidewalk in time with their noise. We really enjoyed their excitement. We went across the river on the bridge to have dinner. By the time we came back it was almost impossible to walk back to our home. A parade accompanied by a massive crowd of well-wishers completely shut down the city. We managed to find our way back up some narrow winding streets packed with cars stuck in the traffic jam. It was a memorable experience!

Today, we went back over the bridge to Vila Nova de Gaia. This is usually a tranquil classy area to get a charcuterie board. Not today! They were having a motocross race on the wharf. It was crazy. They had huge logs and giant tires, and weird obstacles. Their path was narrow and enclosed with cheap metal barricades and thousands of spectators lined up to get killed if anything went wrong. We lined up right alongside them. After they did the obstacle course, they had to go up the steep cobblestone streets and come back around for another try. Their last part was going up a steep ancient staircase between two five-hundred-year-old buildings. I couldn’t see them (because the nice policeman held me back), but I could hear them trying to get up the steps… and failing. You could hear the bike coming back down, and the cameramen would come scrambling back down to get out of the way. Just another day in Porto!