Porto; Coimbra; Guimarães

After the Camino it's time to go to Porto, a pre-arranged trip with two of my closest friends from home, and which I quietly spent the last third of the Camino racing towards and worrying I hadn't left enough time.

First a flying stop in Vigo (I climb a steep hill to the ruined Napoleonic fort overlooking the city; I take some pictures; I leave with an impression of a pleasantly grubby city, not overburdened with tourists or pretensions - I'd come back). Then onto a rattling international train which looks like it was built in the 70s and has a single blocked toilet. It is a rusty orange colour (train not toilet) and I don't bring enough water for the trip as it somehow passed me by that despite travelling exactly due south, I was also crossing a timezone and it would take an extra hour. We go over several level crossings but in rural Galicia and then Portugal it appears they don't have any better system for making sure nobody is on the rails than for the train to blast the horn for the preceding kilometre. It takes me a minute to figure out that there isn't someone actually on the tracks, or that the driver isn't doing it for fun, or perhaps the train itself is bellowing its defiance at the tumbledown barns and vineyards. 

The line follows the coast for a while as the sun sets, gradually turning the same colour as the train. I lie to myself that I can see a different texture to the countryside once we cross the River Minho - that some inherent Portuguese quality is expressed in the precise angle of barn collapse or timbre of barking dog. Do those hills look different? In truth Galicia is very close to Portugal in many ways, and Galego resembles Portuguese, so many Galician place names have the whiff of Francesinha about them.

Let me skip ahead: the Francesinha is associated with the city of Porto and the surrounding regions. It is a white bread sandwich (and certainly not good white bread - a sliced white economy loaf is preferred) which is filled with a grilled steak, sliced ham and garlic sausages. Over the top are placed some sheets of stringy cheese. Over the top of that is ladled a rich beer-based gravy which you assume is made from the drippings of the several other meat items, plus tomato. Then this big wet sandwich is put under the grill. 

Purists would say that the definition of a sandwich is that it can be eaten by hand. A Francesinha might legally qualify as a stew. Its flavour can be most accurately described as Brown. Every country has their version of the Francesinha - Britain has about six - so far be it for me to cast aspersions. But the Francesinha is emblematic of Portuguese food: it's all fucking brown. They love meat, they love potatoes. It is what food guides call “rustic”. On the coast there is excellent seafood but you can still expect to have it fairly simple, grilled and seasoned. No namby pamby additions like dressing. I don't think I ate a single herb in Portugal which I didn't buy myself. 

My appreciation for British food has grown substantially since leaving. Strange but true. Not because I miss chip butties, meat pies and battered sausage. That's our Francesinha. But what we have in our armoury which most of Portugal I passed through and frankly a whole lot of Spain lacks is the curry. You can be deposited in the most miserable midland town you could hope to find and you'll still likely have access to good quality Indian (or Bangladeshi) food that might be better than anything I ate anywhere in the nation of Portugal. I'm sure Porto has exceptional restaurants and I'm sure there are things I missed but as far as the median, low-effort weeknight meal goes, count your blessings. 

The apartment, shared with my friends Jess and Jess, is a little on the Live Laugh Love side but such is the nature of holiday lets. And frankly if you’re in any non-Anglophone country and you see some English graffiti, or art, or t-shirt, there’s a 90% chance it’ll be something tacky, either of the “Be Yourself” variety or Pickle Rick. I see one t-shirt which reads, “STOP OVERTHINKING ABOUT PAST”. Good advice. 

I’m sure the inverse applies and British people are always cutting about with eyerolling Spanish slogans they don’t understand. One of the many horrors of globalisation. While watching youtube in Spain and Portugal I’ve been very upset to find out that all adverts are basically the same now, with the exception of America which has the uncanny combination of high end production values and every other ad being for something called Fluxitstrolol or Moxyphenimade. Ask your doctor about Gluprosol today.

Iberians don’t sleep. This seems to be axiomatic. Every night the streets are heaving with people who must surely - surely! - have jobs which start in the morning. Everyone is drinking all the time but nobody appears to be drunk. Bars cheerfully dispense bottles of wine and beer for people to take out and drink on the curb for when they close. Later in Barcelona I mention this to my friend Paul, wondering what the secret is, and it turns out there isn’t one: there is a national sleep deprivation crisis. None of them seem to be suffering for it. They’re all beautiful. 

That might be partly a consequence of our good luck in finding an apartment though, chosen after a brief skim of Google Maps to see if it looked broadly central. It turns out we’re in Cedofeita, a bohemian area that hasn’t quite been gentrified out of existence yet - there are still old-fashioned bars with dirty white tiles and strip lighting spilling out into the street, selling honey liquor from unmarked plastic bottles, tired-looking old men hunched into stools and watching the television on mute, tired-looking bar snacks sweating behind glass. Then a few doors down there’s a place with a chalkboard drinks menu and a toilet covered in stickers for tattoo pop-ups or somewhere selling a “dirty burger”. For this reason there are throngs of friendly Portuguese people in their early 20s, as well as the usual seasoning of Americans, who are apparently a real problem in Portugal, as they flock over to take advantage of the strong dollar. I travel abroad with an insecurity about being hated for being British, but let me tell you, we’ve got nothing on the Yanks. 

Porto is beautiful, the people are warm and friendly, blah blah blah. With a little more time it might be possible to excavate the unique character of the city but a wave of post-Camino exhaustion hits me and for a time I am satisfied just to wander around gaping at things, riding the funicular or an antique tram, eating oysters and drinking port. I’m also in good company, so it feels considerably more antisocial to stop and write something down. None of this is particularly conducive to keeping a detailed travelogue but I’m not going to let this thing become a millstone around my neck (I did at least resist the urge to just write “I went to Porto” and then post it). This is also why this entry is mostly about sandwiches. 

Here are a handful of observations that I remember to type into a note:

• They love Somersby cider in Portugal. Quite how that one brand has such a foothold I have no idea. Surely there’s some good local cider they could drink instead.

• A man in the queue for the toilet points at an empty barrel I’m sitting on. “What is inside this?” he asks me. “Nothing,” I reply. I prod him gently on the chest. “What is inside you?” I ask. “Love,” he says. This sounds made up but it’s not, which arguably even more embarrassing. I just knew he’d like it. 

• Portuguese can be filed with Hungarian in the list of languages which it is apparently impossible to pronounce correctly for the locals, even when you’re certain you’re repeating it back phoneme for phoneme (but they’re so friendly and speak such great English that it’s no more than an amusement anyway). “No, no. You’re saying Pedro. But it should be Pedro.”

• Speaking of Pedro: he speaks English with a Brummie accent because he went to university in Birmingham. He lived in two other places in the UK: Stoke-on-Trent and Newport. Apparently when he finally moved back to Portugal all his friends remarked that he was a coarse, pale, shell of a man. He has no fond memories of our dreadful country, and who can blame him. Finally, he might have thought, I have left Birmingham and Stoke behind. The cool, cleansing waters of Newport will cure me of my lassitude. Poor fucker. 

• Another Portuguese man, Bruno, speaks less good English. He is getting over a breakup and we ask if he wants us to help him find a new man. He waves his hand dismissively. “No, no - I have many gays,” he declares. 

• We see a second STOP OVERTHINKING ABOUT PAST t-shirt. Perhaps there was a sale on. I don’t like to be told what to do by a t-shirt so I overthink about the past twice as hard. 

• I really love the Portuguese accent, with its strange Slavic undertones. You need a second nose to speak it properly but that’s okay. 

After Porto I spend a day in Coimbra, which is well worth the diversion - much of it perched high on a hill over a bend in the river, riddled with steep medieval roads, musicians in black, bat-like capes flitting around with fiddles and accordions, playing a particularly mournful version of fada, Portugal’s national folk music. The University of Coimbra sits on the highest point, the oldest continuously operating university in Portugal (it was founded in the 13th century, albeit in Lisbon), and I gather most of the bands are made up of students in traditional dress. 

I spend what feels like the perfect European evening drinking beer on a rattling trestle table on a narrow medieval street. The underlit cathedral is still warm from soaking in the sun. There is a contented hum and chatter. I fall into conversation with several strangers, and soon I am unwittingly part of a group. There are friendly locals everywhere in the world, but it’s true what they say. The Portuguese are special. The landlady explains that this street is one of the oldest in the city, and that the buildings are constructed over mausoleums*. Somewhere underfoot there are centuries of crumbling bones. 

The street is so narrow, in fact, that the addition of the tables and chairs (I am one of the first people to use them, baptising the esplanada) makes things a little scary for passing cars, and for the toes of anyone sat on the roadside. There really truly isn’t much room. One car stalls, one scrapes a wing mirror, one sits for about five minutes plucking up the courage and then changes his mind and reverses back down the hill. “That’s definitely a rental,” one man says knowingly. “He will not risk it.” 

The next day I travel to Guimarães for the final part of my Portugal trip. I chose it because, honestly, I found an apartment that was cheap and I desperately needed to relax and catch up on some work. Very little of note happens, and I don’t even spend as much time marinating in one of the several beautiful squares speckled through the city. I do find and walk up a big hill to the magnificent Sanctuário de Penha, a shrine with sweeping views of the plains below. 

I go to Braga for a day trip. It’s also good. I can’t stop calling places good. I need to go somewhere shit so I can cleanse my palate of all this relentless, toxic positivity. Please send me recommendations for somewhere horrible. I’ll even consider Newport. 

A pigeon with one leg picks brazenly across the floor tiles of a bar in Braga. Bolinho de bacalhau arrive in bulging bags for life. That’s right, they are brown and potato-based. I don’t order any more. A group of men in identical grey polo shirts and work trousers come in and order a round of Sagres which they drink in one go at the bar, and then another round to take outside. I am wedged onto a single table right by the entrance to the bar and the toilet, so I constantly have to pull my legs into myself to make space, contracting myself into an area in which I do not fit. One man treads on my toes. I regret my new sandals. I had to flee inside as the shady seat I found turned out to only be shady from about the mid shin and upwards. My little piggies were cooking. 

It sometimes happens that I'm having an okay time, and perhaps a good time has been lying dormant in me, but I'll idly put my headphones in and put a loud song on and then it's like something ignites in me. I want to have nine more pints and steal something. Today it happened as I alighted on a bus from Braga to Guimarães and it was a Rob Zombie song. Who knows if this sudden will to party will survive a hot bus journey without any beer. With the wisdom of years we have to assume not.

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It did not.

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I wish I had more to say about Portugal, but I didn’t want writing this to become a chore so whenever I couldn’t be bothered to write something down, I didn’t**. All those memories, lost like tears in the rain. Listen: I had a nice time. Frankly the rest of it is none of your business. 

*I think the correct plural should be ‘mausolea’ but I've bottled it.

**No more posts for a while probably, I am a little exhausted and I am focusing on writing longer things which someone might pay me for. But I've also been to Barcelona, Pamplona, Zaragoza, Bilbao and Oviedo. So there you go.