Porto, Portugal

Porto (Oporto in English) is the second largest city in Portugal. It's located in the north, and it's a very important port city. Porto is named for the famous port wine that is produced there. The city itself is not that big, though the metro area is nearly two million people. That being said, Porto is very important both culturally and economically, and there are many churches and beautiful old buildings in the center of the city to remind us of this.

Here's the Igreja do Carmo (Portuguese is cool)... (that means church, by the way) with its large azulejo adorned walls. Azulejo is the name given the style of using these blue and white porceline tiles. They're quite beautiful, and very shiny on sunny days. Porto was full of them, especially the churches.

Another street leading up one of Porto's many hills, also featuring several nice buildings with azulejos. They are really a unique feature, and most of them that I saw were wonderfully preserved.

Here I am standing in front of the main square in the city, Avenida dos Aliados (aliados are allies). I think it's referring to the relationship between Portugal and England, which historically has been quite close since the defeat of Napolean.

My experience in Porto wouldn't have been the same had it not been for Fernando and Maria, two lovely Portuguese people I met there. I stayed with Fernando at his apartment for the three nights I was there. I didn't know him before.

I contacted him (or better said he contacted me) through an internet travelers network called Couchsurfing. Basically it's a type of network that puts you in contact with other people so that you can stay at their places for free. Many places have sofas you can sleep on, but others have beds too. I stayed on Fernando's pull-out couch for three nights, and he took me around the city in his car to show me around. He gave me a map and we went out for meals together and he introduced me to some really cool people.

In the picture we're having dinner with his friend and fellow 'couchsurfer' Maria. She had just gotten back from a trip to see her family in central Portugal and she brought back some traditional food from their farm. I can't tell you exactly what everything was called, but it was all wonderful. Portuguese cuisine is quite different from Spanish, and it's very very good.

We had a dish of rice and meat, some special sweet bread, fresh goat's cheese, fresh salads and oil, a delicious cake with fig and tomato salsas, and also some wines and teas. It was quite amazing.

When I wasn't hanging out with Fernando and Maria, I was out touring the city. Here's a view of the center of town from one of the hilltops. The tower, called Igreja e Torre dos Clerigos (or Church and Tower of the Clerics), is the tallest in Porto.

In the oldest district or neighborhood of the city, called Ribeira, is the cathedral, or Se. Inside the cathedral is an incredible cloister complete with azulejos on all the walls.

There are several large bridges crossing the river Douro that lies next to Porto's historic center. Pictured is one of the funiculars that brings you up the steep hill and all that's left of an old castle wall.

On the other side of the river is Vila Nova de Gaia, another town that is basically part of Porto. It's very important because that is where all of the famous port wine cellars and caverns are located. The wine is actually shipped in via the river on little boats. The vineyards are all farther inland where the temperature is better to grow the grapes. It's too hot to store and ferment the wine though, and it would be far to expensive to construct proper wineries there, and so the wine is brought to Vila Nova de Gaia where there are many caverns and the climate is temperate, being right next to the ocean.

Fernando took me to a tour of one of the wineries, called Taylor's. Many of the wineries have English surnames because they were the ones who invested so much in the businesses. Port wine is very different from the wine I'm used to, since during the fermentation process they add brandy. Port wine is a dessert wine, and it's sweet sweet joy in a glass. There are many different types of port wine, including tawnies, rubies, reserves, and several other red and white wines.

The old Ribeira part of town is the densest part to my right toward the center of the city. It's buildings are protected by UNESCO, so it's a World Heritage Site. I guess that means that you can't change anything there without special permission, and that doing so would also be very very expensive. Therefore not too many people live there or have businesses there I've been told.

On the left you can see the little boats that are used to haul the port wine from the Douro Valley region east of Porto closer to the Spanish border. Interestingly enough, the Douro River runs through Spain as well, and there's a valley that provides a very comfortable location to grow exquisite Spanish wines.

The bridge of Luis I, from the top of which I took the last pictures.

We went out with friends one of the nights to watch a local football (soccer) match on television and we had a typical Portuguese treat for dinner. It's called the francesinha, which is Portuguese for 'Frenchy'. It's a style of sandwich, accompanied by french fries, that's got a couple different types of meat (sausage, steak, ham...) and then it's covered in cheese and a spicy sauce. Altogether filling and fabulous with a good beer or two.

Later I went out with a few of the friends we met at the dinner. It was a 'couchsurfers' dinner, which meant that those involved with the internet group went and invited any guest that they had at the time. Fernando invited me, and other Portuguese people invited their guests as well. The guy to my left is Dutch living and working in Porto, the blonde girl was from Boston and really got a kick out of the Kevin Garnett Celtics shirt I was wearing, the guy behind is Portuguese, from Germany maybe?, another Portuguese girl, and two Chinese girls were our group.

We were at a fun little jazz bar-cafe listening to live music and drinking port wine. Not bad at 2 Euros a glass (Portugal is among the cheaper countries to visit in Europe; so my Euros went a lot further there than they usually do in Spain).

The next afternoon I took a walk over to one of Porto's modern architectural marvels, the Casa da Musica, or literally House of Music. It's funky shape on the outside is reflected by many different colored geometric rooms inside. It's also a world class concert hall. A famous Dutch architect by the name of Rem Koolhaas designed it; and it was more or less finished in 2005. Koolhaas has done many famous projects throughout the world, including the Seattle Central Library.

A cool little stairway inside the Casa da Musica.

Special care was taken to ensure that the sound that emminated from the orquestras and bands playing the main concert hall was perfectly, or near perfectly, audible to every member of the seated audience. It's said to be one of the best constructed concert halls on the planet, actually, which every person in the audience, from the front row to the back, hearing the exact same sound (at least to the human ear it seems so).

The photo shows a view of the main concert hall through special waved glass, capable of reflecting sound waves and keeping out noise from outside. The glass is transparent, of course, and there are giant windows of this variety behind the stage and also behind the audience that kind be covered or left open depending on the time and arrangement of the concert. Pretty cool.

I was greeted when I arrived in Fernando's apartment by a his chess set, adorned with both the Portuguese and United States flags. He does this for everyone who comes to stay with him. On the third night he added the flag of Thailand because a Thai girl studying in Holland came to stay with us.

Fernando, in fact, is what I would call a couchsurfer all-star. He's retired, and he's basically hosting people in his apartment and showing them around the city fulltime. In about a year-and-a-half since he's joined the internet program, he's hosted over 160 people from over 60 countries all over the world. It's extremely ambitious, but I also learned that he's been working with people all his life, and so this is something he's very good at.

Though this is something obviously wouldn't suit just anyone, having to put up with tourists in your house all the time, but I find it fascinating that he's learning all about the world and people from different places without leaving his own city.

On the last night, Fernando, Maria, the Thai girl Ayedriana, and I went to a restaurant near the ocean harbour for some fresh caught fish. These are grilled sardines, and they were particularly splendid.

Potatoes, salad, and onions accompanied this cuttlefish, garlic roasted to perfection.

The evening concluded with some card games back at Fernando's place. We played a variety of gin (no, it wasn't rummy).

I'll tell you something that I've learned about traveling: the best memories you'll have of any place you ever visit will be the people, not the monuments. As a tourist, I'd say the best thing you could do would be to meet some local people. This is maybe easier said that done, but I think that internet programs like Couchsurfing make traveling cheaper, more affordable, and even more enjoyable.

Sintra and Cascais

Sintra is a fairytale village near the western coast of Portugal, not far from Lisbon. It used to be the home of Portuguese royalty, and a lot of money came there from Portugal's glory days of exploration and colonization. There's an ancient Moorish castle that sits on top of a mini mountain and also a famous palace. The town itself has been remarkably restored and many of its wonderful palaces and homes are more colorful now than ever before.

Here's a view of the Moorish castle hovering over Sintra.

Walking up the mountain to the castle, it was surprising to see how green and tropical-like the forest was. They weren't sure exactly how old the original castle was, because before the Moors were expelled from that area of Portugal they abandoned the castle because it had lost strategic importance. Thus the Portuguese took it over once again and rebuilt it.


Here's me with Sintra below. The biggest central building is the Palace of Sintra.

And here is the more impressive Pena National Palace, an increible structure of many colorful towers.

One of the guardians of the palace.

It was windy, and I had yet to get a haircut.

Several Portuguese royal families lived part time in the Pena National Palace. It was the project of one of them, in the mid-19th century. Some 400 years earlier, actually, the original site belonged to that of an ancient monastery and chapel (over which the newer palace was constructed).

After I visited Sintra, I took a bus to the nearby coastal town of Cascais, one of the most westernmost cities in all of Europe. I went outside of town to get a better view of the Atlantic Ocean so that I could watch the sunset, but unfortunately it was a cloudy day. It still made for some nice lighting, however, and the surrounding nature was quite beautiful.

A little lighthouse on the edge of town.

The port of Cascais, with many colorful little fishing boats.

There were several nice beaches in Cascais also, which practically touched the ocean (the Tegus River flows into the ocean just past the city).

Return to Lisboa...

I went to Lisbon last year but was only there for about two days, and so for my Easter vacation this year I decided to go back to Portugal. I went back to Lisbon specifically so that I could explore some of the cities nearby the capital city that I had heard were really beautiful.

This is a picture of downtown Lisbon. These trams are all over and are really helpful when you want to climb the cities many hills.

Here's a view of Lisbon's hilltop castle, Castelo di San Jorge.

So many of the houses and buildings in Lisbon have this colorful tiled style. It looks especially nice when there's bright sunny weather.

I ran into one problem while I was walking around the most famous old neighborhood of Lisbon, the Alfama. I was mostly taking pictures of buildings and streets and whatnot, but I snapped a couple pictures of some of the Portuguese people talking on the street. I wasn't discrete enough, and one of the men saw me and took offense. He wanted me to show him the photograph I had taken. Of course I didn't show him, me being alone and all. His friends told me to beat it; I dunno whether they were mad too or whether they just wanted to give me some advice. Anyways, I was careful not to blatently take people pictures after that.

A picture of the place from which I took the other picture of the castle... this picture is taken from that castle.

These people didn't see me; so it was alright that I took their picture. Behind them is one of the long bridges that cross the Tejo River.

Here's a typical pastry from Portugal (and specifically from a town near Lisbon). It's a pastry of "Belem", and I went to the town of the same name to taste this cream filled delicacy.

Among the most famous art forms in Portugal is the tiled design of the 'azulejos'. These blue and white ceramic murals are planted throughout the country in churches, museums, and other places where it's obvious that the people had/have money.

A view overtop the center of Lisbon from another gardened hill.


It was a typical spring in Lisbon: sunny some hours, rainy the next few, sunny again, cloudy...

Lisboa, Portugal

View of the Lisbon coast from on top the Discoveries monument. They had a nice 'Golden-Gate' like bridge, and lots of sail boats all over. The boardwalk you see was also packed with bikers, walkers, fishermen, and people of all types. As you can see, we had great luck with weather. It was early February when we went there, and we experienced near 70 degree temperatures during the two days we were there.


This is the monastery of San Jeronimo with the city in the background and a nice park in the foreground.

Monument of the Discoveries. For all of the famous discoverers who came from Portugal... I remember Vasco de Gama... what a guy. We actually went on top of this monument too to get some cool shots of the surrounding city and coastline.

This is the Tower of Belem. Really old. It's complete with a dungeon and an array of ancient canons that used to shoot the living daylights out of anything that entered Portuguese harbors.

We decided a while ago that we wanted to visit Lisbon, Portugal, because it's close, and because we figured that if we're going to take a trip around Europe that Portugal is kind of out of the way. So, we figured out a quick trip to go there and visit for a three-day weekend. We flew there from Madrid, which didn't take long (a little over an hour, actually, and we got that hour back flying across a time zone).

Lisbon is a very beautiful city that has its own definite style and flavor apart from Spain. Some of the colors of the city and the look were similar (for example: the stone tiled walkways, the red tile roofs, the apartments upon apartments, the grand plazas, the outdoor cafes, etc.), however, many things were very different. The language, for one, which on paper looks a lot like Spanish, is virtually unrecognizable for a moderate level Spanish speaker like myself. It sounds like a mix of Chinese and Spanish. Abby and I got by on a mix of English and Spanish. It was quite amusing actually, because I think that many people were confused as to just who the heck we were and where we were from.

Lisbon is a very international city. We saw people from all over while we were there, including a number of different couples from the States. We had been told before going there that Portugal was a little behind the rest of Europe as far as restoring all of their old buildings... and after going there, I guess I would agree. Everything seemed to need at least a fresh coat of paint. We didn´t see as much construction or restoration there as anywhere else we´ve gone. Maybe this is because they´re not getting around to it at this moment. I don´t know.

The style of their buildings and apartments is simpler than the Spanish style. Many Spanish buildings have a romantic twist to them, whereas the Portuguese were more basic... more flat.

The castle is on the hill (Castillo de San Jorge, I think). Anyways, we saw it from the top of this famous elevator (Ascendor de Santa Maria). There was a nice little cafe and live music at the top of this elevator in the middle of the old part of Lisbon. The view was definitely worth the ride up.


Here I am standing in one of the main plazas in the south of the city, near the harbor. In the background are a couple of other famous monuments in Lisbon--dude on a horse and the Arch.

Our timing was impeccable, and we caught a nice sunset going down under the bridge on our first night.

This is the elevator of Santa Maria that I was telling you we went to the top of before. I think that it's around 100 years old... which is pretty incredible.


This is the tower of Vasco de Gama. This is located in the new part of the city, next to malls and restaurants and modern hotels. There's also a really long bridge there by the same name (Vasco de Gama) that I swear must be at least a few miles long. We were there during night, so it was difficult to see it in its entirety.