Wednesday, May 11, A Full Day in Porto

May 11, 2016: A Full Day in Porto

Awoke from the dead at 8:30 only three hours later than usual. Good. Downstairs for breakfast including good pastries, bad coffee, and Frenchmen in baggy jeans. Perhaps these blotchy, ill-fitting pants are French-made and thus a point of national pride, but please. Our taxi guy yesterday said Portugal is becoming more popular as a vacation destination for Europeans, partly because it's cheap. What it really needs, though, is a Levi’s outlet store.

City crawling day. Porto, like everywhere else, has the requisite number of museums, churches, historic sites etc. Goody. There are bus services that make the rounds of the tourist faves. Hop on, hop off. There is also what my mother used to call "Shank’s Mare," a low-tech way of getting places that involves feet, a city map that’s never to scale, and arguing. As a last resort, it is also permitted to ask locals who, like us, don’t have a clear idea where stuff is.

So we walk down to the "famous" Henrique Infante (Hank baby) bridge and across to the Real Companie Velho (Royal Company Old) winery in Gaia, the town across the river from Porto which has lower taxes. Thus, there are no Port wineries in Porto. Who knew? Our guide for the winery and tasting tour was a young woman from Poland named Joanna so vivacious and full of personality that we fully expect to see her on our doorstep when we get home. Her personal story could fill many, many pages, but I digress. Port wine grapes are still foot stomped. There is photographic proof of this and tourists at the processing winery are invited to join in. Fortunately for public health, the place we went to was only an aging warehouse.

Port wine is relatively high in alcohol compared to table wines. Why? They add "spirit alcohol" to the wine, thus goosing up the strength. It’s basically sweet red wine plus white lightning. Yum. As expected, the samples we tried varied from lightly, pleasantly sweet to diabetic-coma sweet. There’s also a range of whites which, as you’d expect, get darker with age; the reds get lighter. I’m not actually convinced that anyone needs wine with dessert or wine as dessert, but we’re here so what choice do we have?

Oh, and Joanna also took us on a tour of the owner’s private cellar, a stash of 20,000 bottles, some covered with up to 100 years of cobwebs. Nice. With old, old wines, she said, one cannot simply use a corkscrew to dislodge the cork. Nope. Instead a special device is used to "freeze" the neck of the bottle, then, a special pair of glorified pliers is heated red hot and applied to the neck above the "frozen" place with the result that the portion of the neck with the cork in it breaks off cleanly with no ancient dried-up cork falling into the wine. Hm. True? We have no idea. Opening a hundred year old bottle wasn’t included in the 7.5€ tour and tasting fee. Bummer. We also saw – through irons bars – a cask of 149 year old Port that will be opened and tasted next year. An early taste was not included in the fee, either. The fee did include four sample tastes and a lot of charming talk from Joanna. Well worth the price.

We lost our way from the winery back to the Moov, which resulted in a fair amount of meandering. As often happens in "Old Town," we ultimately discovered that points "A" and "B" aren’t as far apart as the map makes them seem and so were able to visit the Cathedral of Something or Other, the Lello book store and library (the one with the winding staircase) used in various Harry Potter movies (J.K. Rowling taught English in Porto), the Majestic Café (or "cafesh" as it is pronounced here) for lunch, and still have time to blame each other for how we got lost. (It was Dave’s fault.) At the cathedral, one climbs 200 narrow, winding stone steps up to a city view spot. Eh. Old Town Porto is okay with a bakery or cafesh in every block, but nothing worth looking at twice. Of course, it was raining off and on today and, since it’s Europe, the streets were lined with smokers. Yuck. Thank God none of them wore French jeans.

Joanna with the big personality

149 years and counting

With old private stash

Yes, cobwebs

Tile outside

Port colors

Enjoying

Winery founded 1756

View across the Duoro

On staircase in Livraria Lello

Stock photo of bookstore

Bookstore facade under construction

When not under construction

Biggest pasta shells ever

Farmer's Market

Cathedral

Cathedral view with tower

View from Clerigos Tower

Another view

Last view of the Moov

Posted with Blogsy