September 26, 2013
A Rest Day in Porto
This morning a really great thing happened, Bill Waters contacted us via our guest book to suggest a good way out of Porto. After yesterday’s problems we had been a bit concerned about this but it is now all solved. Thank you Bill we are very grateful. To anyone else facing the same problem look at our guest book (25th Sept) and you will see how to do it.
We really have had a very lazy day just soaking up the atmosphere of this lovely city. It is suprising how tiring walking around being a tourist is and how much money you spend. We visited the Majestic Café, a café founded in the 1920s which became very much the place to go and by judging from the number of people in it clutching Lonely Planet Guides it still is. It still retains the Art Décor atmosphere of the time and is really rather gorgeous, the coffee was good too though we were paying for the ambience. One of its claims to fame they say is that JK Rowlings wrote part of her first Harry Potter book here while drinking coffee. Continuing the Harry Potter theme the streets of Porto are alive today with young people who look as though they have escaped from Hogwarts. They are dressed in black with black capes and are all over the place. Talking to some they say that it is the beginning of the school year (University I presume from their age) and this a day for being all over the town, getting to know each other and to collect money for poor students that need support to help pay their fees.
We found our way down to the Louis 1 Bridge and across the other side to the famous Port Houses. There a big numbers of tourists whizzing around on open top buses, going for river cruises, touring in the old trams and of course eating.
The cathedral on the top of one hill is to my view very typical of Portuguese churches. It is very highly decorated with lots of intricate carving and all painted in gilt, a bit over the top for my taste. The cloisters have a lot of the blue and white hand painted tiles that are so typical. Here they show either religious themes or the pursuits of the rich. My favourite building in Porto however is the San Bento Railway Station which in its entrance has the most beautiful wall tiles which depict amongst other things rural scenes of harvesting, milling and quite a lot showing pairs of Bullocks working.
Soon we will go out for dinner, we will not go where we went last night, I had tripe which was largely beans in a pallid sauce and Ken Bacalau – very ordinary.
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