Porto

I fell in love with Porto a couple of years ago and could not wait to return.  

I’m going to be traveling alone until i meet up with my friends and my boyfriends in Malta, so here I am, at another hostel, hoping for the best.  I really am too old for this shit, but for about €22 euros a night, I really can’t justify doing something else.

I arrive at my hostel and thank god, it’s great.  The room is spotless and the bed is firm and comfortable and has lots of storage for everyone’s shit and doesn’t smell like backpackers.  This is a hostel win.

I don’t know if THIS is a win, but I am greeted by a girl who says “hello, my name is *something I can’t pronounce* and I am from Greece.”

She is also stark naked.

She kept ALL of her clothes off  during our entire conversation, and although I had this was a little strange, I would probably walk around naked all of the time too if I had the figure she had.  “Maintain eye contact,” I tell myself.

The first day I manage to get in a pastel de nata (egg custard tart) and a coffee but little else.  The second day I decide to do the typical port tasting and walk around Porto, get it out of the way even though I’ve done it before.

A typical day for me, when traveling, is to walk around, and I mean WALK, usually getting lost a million times during the day, get completely dehydrated and sunburned, which greatly lessens my desire for food.  It’s only until I’m dizzy that I decide it’s time to eat.  None of this is healthy behavior.  In a country where the water is 2€ and is served in teeny little bottles, but amazing wine costs only a. Bit more and is served in 1/4 liters, well, you do the math.  None of this is healthy behavior.

But I love the walking.  I don’t exercise as much as I should at home, and summer started very late at home, so I am always very excited to get back into summer shape by walking as much as I can.  I decide to walk to a fishing village called afurada.  Stopping to take pictures, it’s a 2-hour walk from my hostel.  

I walk over one of the many beautiful bridges that connect Porto proper to vila nova de Gaia, where all the port wineries are.  I like port, but I figure 11 am is a little too early.  The view from one billy side of the Douro river to the other is magnificent.  I watch with others as a young man in a scuba suit dives off the bridge.  i presume he lived.  

I walk all the way to the village for some sardines, the seasonal specialty of Portugal.  When they’re in season, They’re grilled and juicy and enormous.

I walked the entire part of the neighborhood that fronted the river, and only 3 places seemed open.  Two of them, i couldn’t tell if they were restaurants or someone’s house.  I guess that’s a good thing, but the two tiny places were packed and the third was packed and was expensive and poorly rated.  I am now at “dizzy” and go to take the ferry across the river.

An older British couple informs me the ferry is closed.  It seems that this part of town had their big festival for the last week, and now everyone and everything was on vacation. Thank god for Uber.  I Uber to a restaurant on my side of the river.

The restaurant I researched had only one thing left on the menu.  I go next door, the place has only two things left on the menu.  It seems in these little places,  places open were restaurants or someone’s house.  I guess in these little local places, they get their fish in the morning, whatever it is, and they serve it until they sell out.  I had my heart set on sardines, but at this point they could have grilled me a giant piece of horse shit, and I would have eaten it.  I order the soup (soup is a big deal in Portugal, even in summer) and the dorado, even though I’m sure that that’s what the couple next to me, picking out tons of small spines, are eating.  Who the fuck cares at this point.

The sweet waiter turns to English and Spanish as soon as he hears my shit Portuguese.  No one thinks I’m Portuguese, but I’m trying, so they think I’m a Spaniard.  I guess that’s something.

Service is swift as hell and the “small” wine I order is, as usual, 1/4 liter.  This time it’s vinho verde, which is low-alcohol.  I pride myself on what I say is a good choice.

The fish was indeed spiny but good, not too big.  The whole meal, including wine, was less than 8 euro, which is just stupid.

And I’m a bit drunk, also stupid.  

So I take the bus (thanks google maps) back to the bridge and walk back over it to do a port tasting,  I have more energy than before, and the sun is finally out.  It’s a gorgeous day.  I walk another what feels like a million miles to the best rated winery up on the hill.  Views amazing, but tasting is by appointment only.

At this point I am wondering why it seems that all the way is uphill.  I am beyond exhausted.  What better way to deal with this?  More drinking.

I don’t worry about getting lost too much any more, except when google maps doesn’t recognize elevation like it had done in bulgaria.  Countless hours of walking simply because I didn’t look up.  Google takes me down some empty road for about 5 minutes. You know how you can tell google whether you want to walk, take public transport, or drive?  I think google needs a “less rape-y” route option because although no one bothered me, I might have preferred a less empty path.  I wonder what that icon would look like.

I get to the winery, I get the tour mostly to pass some time.  The proprietor tells me he will be giving a private tour to a French sommelier concurrently.  The lady tour guide i have is super animated, and she’s talking to about 20 English speakers who seem to have no interest in asking questions or interacting.  She seems annoyed by this.  The gentlemen proprietor starts talking to me in English intermittently, telling me he’ll answer my questions when he’s done with the French guy.  

End of the tour, the guy comes back and asks me my question.  I said I didn’t understand why one cask was a cylinder, one was a truncated cone, and the other was that other name?  He said it was a truncated come.  I said it wasn’t.  He disappeared.

I didn’t expect the guy to come back,  either did I really want him to, but he says he has answers and he’d be happy to show me.  He also says he’s thrilled to get rid of the sommelier.  I said “because sommeliers are assholes?”  He says “I am a sommelier!” 

He seemed to really like that insult because yadda, yadda, he introduces himself and comes pretty fucking close to kissing me on the lips.  In the back of a cave.  So after a brief and unconvincing physics lesson, I got the fuck out of there.

The first time I was in Portugal a waiter tried to kiss me and show me that Portuguese men were uncircumcised.  I’m leveling up now... proprietor... and no mention of foreskin.

I discover there’s a direct bus from the wineries to my hostel, and I’m greeted very warmly formerly naked Greek girl and her friends.  They find out I’m from New York and treat me like a celebrity.  They want to know everything, and have a whole list of questions.  One says “how do you like traveling alone?”  I said, I like to be by myself, and then I like to be with other people.  I have the best of both worlds.  They’re absolutely adorable.  Good hostel mates... I hope I’m this lucky for the rest of the week.

Dinner is a local restaurant.  I don’t even  fool guy this guy with my “olá”. .  He talks to me in English right away.  I get some baccalau fritters, a huge plate of small perfectly fried sardines, soupy tomato rice, and another 1/4 liter of wine.  

A perfect, perfect day.