Storyline: Portugal Take 2
In a year Porto has changed. The streets are steeper and the up-hills are longer. We stay with the same people. Loved their studio and the location. That grocery store around the corner is now perched on a steep hill far away. The eclair place, just some 500m away, is very far uphill too.
And then the Mercado do Bolhão. This one is just across from the town hall, a few streets away, yet so far now.
Although on arrival we did walk from Porto Campahna train station close to 3 km up and down hills, dragging our carry-ons, Alex is still coughing which interrupts my sleep, so we are both tired most of the time. Our time in Porto started in reverse order to last year. We arrived early at the train station and decided to have lunch across the road at the locally famous bifana place. This was after we secured our tickets to Lisbon for the day before our return flight home. In general, bifanas are pulled pork sandwiches. They seem to be the Portuguese pride and are eaten all over the country with variations. They love their sandwiches and breads here. Bifanas and Francesinha (a Porto specially) are sold everywhere. Last year we tried and were not keen on the heavy francesinha, (to me they are akin to Canadian poutine…heart attacks on a plate – A) so will not be trying them again.
This year we learned that Porto, straddling the Duoro River, is not only the town of port lodges, but the city where the first revolt against the monarchy started on January 31st 1891. On January 31 we were at our accommodation and noticed a celebration in front of the City Hall some 100m up the street. Not sure if we were scouting the streets at night last year or the celebration was at another location, but this is the first time we noticed it. We were not even sure what it was at first.
Earlier that day we walked up a narrow street and an old guy leaning from a window of an old house was singing, full deep voice. An hour later walking back on the same street the guy was still singing. So when a few hours later we heard women singing we thought these people here just love singing. But then two hours later we noticed the crowds, the military marches, the flags, the chanting… And so, I Googled 31st of January Porto. It showed as “Revolta de 31 de janeiro de 1891”. Hence the title of this post.
The revolt was the first attempt by the republicans to overthrow the monarchy and was carried out by the army. Many of the revolt participants, civilians and army, barricaded themselves in the City Hall. Unfortunately for them some were killed, many were tried and sent to exile in Africa. A second attempt that occurred in Lisbon on Jan 28 1908 also failed. The final coup on Oct 4, 1910 was successful and lead to the establishment of a Republic in Portugal. At that time the street in Porto where many of the coup supporters were shot in 1891, was renamed as the Rua de 31 de Janeiro.
It is a lot warmer this year. And we are not sure if this is because of the good weather or because of Covid, but everywhere now is crowded. Last year only a few restaurants on both sides of the river were working and even then, there were a few takers.
My estimate is that about 40% of the existing restaurants were open. We walked by many, up and down the main drag. Cafés, gelaterias, cervejarias, tascas and taberninhas (taverns), petisqueiras (snack bar), mariscarias (sea food restaurants), quejarias (cheese places), restaurants all closed. This year everything is open.
Even on a tiny steep street, where one can barely set a table and two chairs there were tiny restaurants. All full. Now many of the words above don’t have direct translation in English, but they are all food related, sometimes fast food like sandwiches (bifanas and francesinhas), pubs, taverns and more formal restaurants. And a lot more words related to sweets and café style places, like pastelaria (pastry shop), padaria (bakery), confeitaria, leitaria, chocolateria, and more.
On a sunny Saturday morning the city was buzzing. Walking up towards our local leitaria for éclairs and coffee we saw a few tables with young guys wearing strange hats and uniforms. Further up, next to the leitaria there was a big table with a dozen or so guys drinking beer (that’s before noon). They all had hats, similar to Alex’s Tilley hat, with green lining. We stopped and asked them if there was an event this weekend. Nope.
They were just a group of students from the University of Cardiff in Wales, who were also members of the cricket team. Out for a short holiday together, wearing their cricket uniforms. I (Alex) said that they don’t sound Welsh.
Nope. All English. Apparently, there are relatively few Welsh students at Cardiff U. Huh? Why not? There is a bit of a stereotype in the UK about Welsh folk. Not that, they say. It’s just that all the Welsh students want to get away so they enrol elsewhere… And so we walked to our frequently visited leitaria and ordered the usuals. The server then asked us who were these guys and if they were a cricket team. He must have seen us talking with them. Yes, nothing even in a big touristy place like Porto remains unnoticed by the locals.
We finally managed to visit the world’s most beautiful book store, according to the locals of course. And beautiful it was, I say. Livraria Lello. They must have sorted their line-ups because we managed to buy tickets online (one can’t go anywhere these days without a phone with data plan) just 10 min before the next entry. Last year at the same time (January) there were all kinds of lines all so incredibly long and we could not even book online in advance for the time we had available.
Now, Jan 2024, all they had was a bar code that allowed you to purchase your voucher for 8€, credited against a book if you purchase one. One line for the time you’ve selected. Time intervals are in 30 min increments.
The bookstore was founded in 1869 and although it changed hands a few times, eventually the brothers Lello hired an engineer who constructed the current bookstore. The Livraria Lello was inaugurated in 1906. Not sure when but eventually it became a famous tourist attraction. People were flocking to the store not to buy books, but to see the architecture. In 2015, with 9 employees, the bookstore was on the verge of bankruptcy. That’s when the management decided to charge 5€, deductible when one buys a book. This saved the store and in 2022 it had 60 employees and some 4,000 visitors a day, selling on average 1,200 books per day.
We were amazed by the volumes of world literature in the original language, translated into Portuguese, and often into English, too. Even Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita. It was however rather busy to explore all the books they had.
Have the feeling they had all the great literature in the world. We decided to focus on much less busy area, where they had a nice exhibit of their own Nobel Laureate José Saramango.
Susana, who was tending that section spent a lot of time with us, speaking about the writer and presenting 6 (Alex thinks 8) books in English from their exclusive collection. We were told that despite his world prominence he is considered quite controversial in Portugal. He was atheist. This alone could cause problems in a country that is so deeply religious.
His book The Gospel According to Jesus Christ was vetoed by the government as too offensive to Catholics. But he also was against politics (or politicians) according to our presenter. She presented all books she’d selected and we chose two to buy. Next day we went to buy one more. And so this year we are not bringing home port wine, but books.
In 1993, after the government vetoed the presentation of The Gospel According to Jesus Christ for the European Literary Prize he went to exile in Spain.
He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature with the prize motivation: “who with parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony continually enables us once again to apprehend an elusory reality” in 1998.
One day we walked to the concert hall up the hills. An interesting building that remined it us of Reykjavik’s Harpa Hall where we spend lots of time during the “Iceland Airwaves” music festival in November 2014. In the concert hall café we shared a 9.5€ Prato do Dia, that included soup, a big bowl of chicken stroganoff with rice, desert, coffee, and beer. I also ordered a glass of wine.
We then wandered downhill in the direction of home, stumbled upon a nice cafeteria with a beautiful back garden on a promenade. Had a jug of sangria and continued home. Notice that sangria is our main dish😊 (eh, drink) around which the rest is centered.
We also revisited the local place, Casa Costa. This is a cheap place frequented locals where one eats what the chef (the old lady of the house) has cooked for that day. This year we were served a stew with beans, some meat, breads, then the soup and then the fruit. Coffee and a bottle of red wine. The custard cream from last year’s lunch was missing. Again, communications were with gestures only, and staff was really nice and helpful. Some locals attending it though were not that polite. (One woman in particular would not move her baby’s stroller to make room for us to leave. As a reminder, the place is very small with perhaps 4 or 6 tables crammed close together, and the stroller was blocking the only way out.)
On a sunny Sunday, the promenade by Duoro River was not only bustling with tourists and locals, but with hundreds of bikers. Perhaps from all over the country. But many were there for no good. They were revving loudly up and down the street to disturb the peace of the area, repulse the restaurants’ customers, annoy the tourists (they were zooming loudly with high speed on the low level of the bridge and the Vila Nova de Gaia side of the road).
Eventually we sat at the quieter Oporto side in a small pizzeria, just behind the walls for, yes you guessed it, a jug of sangria and lunch. Earlier in the week we were disappointed by the restaurants on the Gaia shores of the river, but it was expected with all the tourists they have this year.
Again because of lack of sleep (Alex is still coughing, although a lot less) we did not take trains to Braga or Guimares. Just enjoyed the surrounding and some new areas. And we learned a lot more on this trip.
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