We flew out of Pearson terminal 1 on Friday evening. It
struck me even more than usual how Pearson fails to achieve the romantic
promise of airports: it tries at once to awe you with its scale and to seduce
and entertain you by drawing you into yourself – almost every available place
to sit in the central area is equipped with a busy ipad-sized screen – but of
course the screen means you to order food or beer from it, and then to play a
game, or to do the online stuff you always do, and it’s all about a hollow filling
of the experience of being here, unrelated
to and uninterested in the there that
you’re going to. But at least Pearson is almost always efficient now: we left
on time and then flew for six and a half hours or so (sleeping fitfully) to
Porto. The plane itself had no screens except in business class (Air Canada now
has an app allowing you to download its movies and shows onto your own devices),
which was otherwise the least impressive business class I’ve seen on an
international flight for a long time, so I believe it tells us that only
tourists fly between Toronto and Porto, and there’s no big corporate money to
be squeezed out of the route. Especially as a fair number of the tourists
appeared quite elderly.
Our hotel sent an email last week to ask if we wanted an
airport pick-up – we said sure, but then it never showed up. No matter, as the
taxi was a little cheaper than the price they quoted. The cab driver told us
some selected highlights of his life (he started out installing air
conditioning; now he works in a place that makes local packaging for iPhones
and tablets and suchlike, and drives a cab once in a while for variety).
Initial rides from the airport are all underwhelming in the same generically
industrialized way, but Porto sheds that a little quicker than many do, and we
were rapidly in what people would say is the good bit, that is the postcard
section. It was a busy, pristine Saturday afternoon. The hotel presented us
with a nice welcome letter, made out to “Mr. Barclay and Mrs. Hughes” (later,
they sent up custard tarts and port to the same addressees – I pointed out the
error, but they allowed us to keep them regardless, so that was nice of them).
We couldn’t immediately get access to our room, so we
wandered round for a while, which is always the best way to start a trip. Our
hotel, the Pestana Vintage Porto, is the yellow building in the middle of many
iconic waterfront shots – we’re on the second floor overlooking the Douro river.
We walked along the Cais da Ribeira – just teeming with people happy to
contribute to the teeming, or to sit and watch it. Early on we stopped at a
street vendor and remarked on the cool-looking cork-based bags and watch straps
and the like – then we saw the same stuff on sale in ten other places within
half an hour, and at regular intervals for the rest of the trip (isn’t that
always the way). We crossed the Dom Luis bridge by the lower of its two decks and
walked along the other side of the Douro, eventually leaving the masses behind
and climbing into a quiet neighborhood area, where everything is hidden behind
shutters and heavy metal gates, as if anticipating a pending uprising. We
hardly passed anyone at all except an old woman and a dog.
We circled back down and luckily found an indoor market
which included a very good vegetarian buffet place (it was always clear that the
search for vegetarian food that isn’t pasta or pizza would be an ongoing theme
of the trip). Then we returned to our hotel, gained access to the room, and
rapidly fell asleep for a few hours. Later on, after the usual set-up
activities (which are pretty much all electronic – we never actually “unpack”
in any formal sense) - we went out again. The light was fading by then, and the
temperature had dropped off quite sharply, but the Riberia was no less lively.
We walked in the other direction, quite soon leaving the activity behind – the
buildings soon become less carefully maintained, often obscured by clothes and
sheets hanging out to dry (one could make a nice exhibit from photographing
this alone). Ally had seen a reference somewhere to Porto as a city of “fading
grandeur,” but if applied to this inner section, the “fading” isn’t quite right
– it’s more like crumbling. Everywhere you look, there’s a façade of what was
plainly a once-imposing building, now with nothing behind it except rubble.
Even at the very heart of the city, there’s a lot of (perhaps) prime real
estate lying derelict – often, a well-maintained property sits adjacent to one
in total disrepair, often decorated in spreading blue foliage (morning glory, I
think) (the Internet suggests that failed rent control policies of the past may
explain some of this). It’s as if Dorian Gray carried his decaying portrait
around with him. During the trip we also saw a few more recent construction
projects that seemed to have been abandoned – perhaps remnants of the last
financial crisis?
We returned to the centre and wandered the streets – the
muted lighting (by North American standards at least) giving everything a
rather furtive feeling. Restaurant followed restaurant, but the menus seldom
had the difficult likes of us in mind. However, I’d spotted a vegetarian place
on the way in from the airport and we ended up there – as it happens, it
belonged to the same family, Daterra, as the place we had lunch (so the
challenge at this point was revised to search for vegetarian food in any place
that isn’t called Daterra). After that we had more wine in the hotel bar, with
a live DJ who by the end had basically no audience except us. I went up and
complimented her on one choice she’d made, but she seemed only to know it in
its sampled form and not to recognize my reference to the original; I tried to
tip her, but she wouldn’t accept it.
We slept for something like nine hours, long enough to miss
the window for the hotel breakfast. We crossed the bridge again, this time by
the upper deck. It embodied one of those emblematic tourist mysteries we always
encounter – you hardly see anyone walking to or from the location, and yet the place
itself is crammed with people (it’s not really a mystery – it’s mostly thanks
to tour buses). We had a snack at the same market (not at Daterra’s though, so
that’s something) and then we walked along the Douro for a couple of hours,
through the Vila Nova de Gaia area. Eventually this brought us to a series of
17 beaches, although we didn’t make it to the last of them. I expect there are
times when the beaches are crammed – certainly the volume of beachfront
restaurants seems prepared for that – but today it was foggy and surprisingly
chilly and they were largely deserted. We stopped for ice cream. I swear that
every TV screen we’d seen to this point, in whatever establishment, whatever
the time of day, was showing a soccer game (this held mostly true to the end of
the trip).
As our route from the hotel had certainly been a “scenic” and
inefficient one, we decided to try finding a more direct one back. This took us
through what I take to be normal middle-class neighborhoods, which is always a
useful reality check on the fakery of the tourist areas (and by the way, it
seems the middle-class people all own driers). We hardly saw anyone outside,
until at around five the streets started filling up as if responding to a bell.
A while later, we saw and heard fireworks, so maybe they were gathering for
that. Fireworks don’t work too well in bright sunlight though, to be honest. After
getting about a third of the way back just on instinct, the streets became too
complicated and we called on Google Maps for help, and ultimately we just used
Uber for the last stretch (so there you go, saved by technology). There was a
procession taking place on the Ribeira – a very solemn-looking affair which
seemed to constitute some kind of religious commemoration, although for all I
know it could have been the Freemasons. Anyway, it attracted a lot of
attention.
We returned to our hotel for a while. As always, we checked
in on Ozu on the webcam – even at this early point, his strategy seemed to be
to occupy the same blue canvas bed in the corner of the room being allowed to
come home, poor dog. It already appeared likely to us that this wouldn’t be an
immersively stimulating trip in the way of traveling to Africa or to Asia, that
the engagement and the pleasures would be more scenic and fleeting. That’s
largely what we expected though: we just wanted to see Portugal (it’s been in
the annual vacation conversation for years, but it’s always come in second or
third, the Glenn Close of destinations).
I was trying to think of a Portuguese song but I kept coming
back to Hugh Masakela singing “Vasco da Gama was no friend of mine,” which didn’t
seem like the right note of celebration. Anyway, we ate at a restaurant close
to the hotel, actually attached to (and in the basement of) another
cool-looking hotel, just because they had two types of risotto. The food wasn’t
so memorable but it was an interesting space. We ended the day with some drinks
outside the hotel, and it’s certainly among the more beautiful places we’ve
ever sat in – to the left a view of the old town with a church and its cobbled
narrow streets, and straight ahead the bridge, and to the right the river and
the stores on the other side, and the varied happy people wandering around, all
in one (slightly drunk and sleepy) turn of the head! By the time we finished,
things were rapidly dying down and it seemed unlikely there would be much
happening in the early hours, but of course you never know…
At home when we sit on our balcony and read out the
super-lit signs, they all belong to banks and accounting firms and suchlike.
Our view across the Porto river held almost as many brand names, but they all
belonged to port wineries and retailers: Sanderman’s, Cockburn’s, Burros, many
others. Port is everywhere in Porto – sometimes it seems rather crass, like the
idea of a really lame branding consultant. There are endless opportunities to
sample or observe the process, but we never ended up trying it (we did buy some
at the duty-free on the way home, but it may sit unopened for many months).
On Monday morning we had breakfast in the hotel for the
first time (there would only be one more, on our last day in Lisbon). No doubt
it was a fine buffet, but I don’t much like hotel breakfasts – it always feels
like observing a mass of lurching desperation. We made the extra effort though because
we were being picked up at 9 am for our visit to the Douro valley. There are
many ways to do this from Porto – we thought a private tour most likely to
maximize the value (or put another way, to minimize annoyances). This was
likely correct – our guide Miguel (at least we think it was Miguel) was
exceptionally articulate and apparently limitlessly informed about every aspect
of the subject matter: history, geography, culture, botany, etc. etc. – if I’d
transcribed it all I’d be halfway to a guide book (I believe I also impressed
him with my knowledge of Portuguese cinema, which although appallingly shallow
is probably still better than any other random visitor is likely to
demonstrate). Apparently most of those who take the private tour spend at least
some time in one of the wineries, but we left that out in favour of maximizing
our exposure to the landscapes. The hills and the banks of the valley rise in
layers, created by the laying of the vines or the other crops, by the density
of the growth, often looking like complete stories laid out in some lush
private language. Among them, we stopped in several immaculate towns, sometimes
reminiscent of immaculate tropical outposts like Bermuda, at other times
providing imposing direct links to the 18th century, or the 15th,
or the 12th.
We spent an hour on a boat tour, and stopped in the towns of
Amarante, Pinhao and Lamego, getting dropped off in each location for a walk,
and in the second instance for lunch. Along the way we saw such sights as a
park named after B B King (apparently a frequent visitor to the region),
bakeries selling penis-shaped bread (part of the fertility myths of Amarante)
and the house where Magellan was born. The wine and port brand names are
everywhere, often bearing down on the boat as you travel through an otherwise
unspoiled stretch of water. In contrast, our journey back was along a
super-fast highway: we were out for just under nine hours in all. As we did the
previous day, we stopped in at a nearby bakery near the hotel – it’s good
stuff, but it takes forever to get served, because loudness seems to win out
over any notion of who was there first.
We mentioned to Miguel that on our walk to Gaia the day
before, we’d seen what appeared to be abandoned domestic dogs living in a
designated nature reserve. He said that some old-time Portuguese will simply
drop off their dogs for the day in a field or suchlike and then pick them up at
night. Needless to say, this wouldn’t work for Ozu (who as I wrote this bit was
curled up on that same platform I mentioned). But the trip so far had been
punctuated by dogs and cats happily wandering around without an owner in sight.
Anyway, at this point we were living fully inside the alternative reality of
vacation time – already feeling well acquainted with certain parts of Porto,
and with enough memories and new impressions that it felt we must have been
away for ages. But as we left for dinner on Monday evening, we hadn’t yet even
missed a full day of work (given the time change). We ate in the Cantinho
Avillez, which we’d reserved after noticing a better than average vegetarian
selection on the menu (i.e. three starters and three appetizers). It’s a busy,
happy place with a young staff: I had a view of the kitchen and got to watch
one woman assemble the scallop and avocado appetizer thirty or forty times.
After that we sat by the water for a drink; one of the servers – another happy
guy – told us of his plans to move to Calgary next year (and assured us that
he’s ready for the cold, because he once lived in Boston).
We got going much later on Tuesday, too late for the hotel
breakfast, if we’d had an interest in returning to it. So far most of our
exploring in Porto had been around the river, so we went in the opposite
direction, spending the day wandering around the streets, moving very generally
westwards, but with no great plan or hurry. It was a very laidback kind of
summer experience, often of the kind where you could forget where you are, as
the wide boulevards and marble facades and pretty cobble-stoned side streets
evoke any number of European cities (well, maybe Europeanness itself). Among
other things, we went into a train station famous for its blue and white tiled
panoramas in the entrance hall (the blue and white tiles are everywhere in
Porto, both inside and outside, often evoking old English china, which I
believe is something to do with the relative ease of preserving that colour
scheme in the kiln compared to others); we searched for an old historical
market (which unfortunately is currently occupying antiseptic alternative
premises while the original site is being repaired); we had cheese omelettes
for lunch; we happened on an open air book fair (not very well attended
unfortunately); we walked to the “Crystal Palace” (also closed for repair) and
to the immaculately descending tiered gardens below, which eventually started to
seem like a trap as we tried one path after another to get down to the river,
finally giving up and climbing back to the start; finally we made it down to
the Douro by another route and walked back to the hotel. It was another good
day, certainly filling out our sense of the city, particularly in emphasizing
the extreme unrepresentative nature of the main riverside sections (not that
this hadn’t always been self-evident).
We passed any number of small bakeries, all pretty much with
similar displays of custard tarts and semi-chocolate covered cookies and
croissants and so forth, but all hard to pass by nevertheless; we saw the high
end retailers you always see, but somehow missed seeing much in the way of
electronics or cellphones, and hardly saw any of the American chains in Porto
except a couple of Starbucks and a Pizza hut. However, we did see Jesus
everywhere we went – for sale in countless poses and representations (riding a
bike, in the one that most caught my eye) , or else just up on the wall inside otherwise
secularly-oriented stores. Porto has a university which apparently imposes a
dress code on its students, so that on Monday and Tuesday we passed all these
young people dressed in severe black suits and (not very temperature-friendly)
woolen capes: you might think you were moving among a city of austere
magicians. And on that topic, we wandered into the front section of a bookstore
which apparently inspired J K Rowling in writing Harry Potter – this now
requires that you line up to purchase a voucher before entering the shrine
itself. We didn’t do that, but plenty did!
As you see here, we passed a sign commenting obliquely on
the mixed blessing of tourism. I don’t know what kind of consensus exists in
Porto, but the economic inflow to the city must be so huge that I assume any
concerns about erosion of infrastructure, destruction of local culture and so
on will remain largely theoretical for the foreseeable future (on the other
hand, we were here in mid-September and the tourist volumes seemed very high –
perhaps in July or August they would be outright oppressive). Our guide on the
previous day told us there’s high demand for vacation properties in Porto, and
indeed we passed several real estate agents in which the window narratives were
entirely in English, suggesting this is their main market (prices seem
competitive but by no means bargain basement).
We returned to the room for a while – Ally was fighting off
a bit of a cold by now. We found a different restaurant which sort of worked,
but it fell into a frequent trip of vegetarian food, that no matter how it may
be described on the menu, it often ends up as the same starchy, cheese-laden
eating experience. We wound up earlier than usual because of Ally’s cold, and
so mostly sacrificed our last night in Porto, but never mind. She was somewhat
better the next day and therefore we
didn’t need to call off the rest of the trip (I’m joking – this was never under
consideration). We checked out, reflecting for the last time on the loveliness
of the hotel – the concrete floor of the lobby perfectly matches the street
outside, and as the entrance is all clear glass, you can sometimes hardly tell
the difference between being inside and outside. Outside, some of the
black-caped students had assembled a large bunch of (presumably) freshmen in
rows facing the river; it was impossible not to think they’d shortly issue a
command for all the minions to rush forward and jump in like lemmings, and
perhaps with no better a survival rate.
Apparently there was to be a taxi strike in Porto that day
but we’d already booked our ride to the airport (it’s often said that Portugal
is a cheap place to visit, but our bill from the Pestana proves that there are
also dramatically non-cheap ways to do it). As usual with us, the whole process
was smooth and uneventful. We took a one hour flight to Lisbon, in which the
most notable event was that we slept through the distribution of the
complimentary custard tarts, and then immediately joined the line for the
connecting flight to Madeira (at the very next gate). This was an hour and a
half, a bit behind schedule but nothing worth writing about (and yet, here I
am…). On the trip so far I’d solely been reading New Yorker back issues; Ally was reading Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America. I started
watching a movie on my laptop but didn’t finish it. Even some fairly hardcore
movie fans would not likely be aware that Italian art movie goddess Monica
Vitti spent a day or two in the sixties filming in industrial Sheffield (Girl with a Pistol)…
Contrary to my earlier comment about arriving from airports,
the route to Funchal is entirely along the coast, and all breathtaking. At
every stage, white-walled, red-roofed houses rise away – it looks like every
home in Funchal must have a view, and also like they were all freshly painted
last week. Also, in our limited experience, the main highways also all look
new, as do all the cars on them, which is just as well given the demands made
on their accelerator and braking capacities. Many of the Funchal hotels appear
to be resort-type, and located somewhat away from the centre, but we wanted to
be close to things – the one we chose, the Vine, isn’t the most prepossessing
from the outside (the entrance is inside a shopping mall) but it’s very modern (maybe
a bit too much so, in that we had all kinds of trouble figuring out how to work
the lights) and comfortable (although a bit plagued by hard-to-place banging
sounds) and we did have a view of the ocean.
We walked about twenty minutes along the water to the “old
city” district, now mostly occupied by restaurants with mostly
indistinguishable menus (although contrary to our expectations, the search for
modest vegetarian variety turned out to be a little easier than in Porto).
Street art is everywhere in that district – on the doors, on the windows,
certainly enlivening an area that might otherwise appear a bit dilapidated. We
circled down to the waterfront and walked along, taking in a departing cruise
ship (that’s an experience we’ll certainly never have, being on board one of
those numbing creations) and the Cristiano Ronaldo museum (he’s from Funchal
and we’d been told his image is everywhere, but based on our experience this is
an overstated myth) and the usual mix of happy activity. It certainly felt more
island-like here – more humid, more concentrated, more distanced from the rest
of the world, but maybe that’s largely the palm trees.
We returned to the hotel for a while, and it got dark
outside. We never once turned on the TV during our trip; however, I did
remember after a few days that I had Spotify on my laptop, and started to use
that with almost the same relentlessness I do at home. It seemed later that the
activity in tourist-central Funchal dies off much faster than in Porto – foot
traffic was sparse and long lines of taxis hardly moved. We wandered through some
elegant-looking streets before settling for a spot on the waterfront where we
shared a pizza and a dish of stuffed peppers (which, in another manifestation
of the trap, ended up tasting almost exactly the same as the topping on the
pizza). A singer performed lame cover versions of songs like Hey Jude and Mamma
Mia – the atmosphere much improved once she stopped. We walked back to the
hotel. On the top floor of the Vine there’s an open air swimming
pool and a bar with a sweeping view of the surrounding hills – after dark all
decorated in strings of lights. There was no one else there. We stayed until
midnight, when it shut down (we briefly returned the following afternoon – at
that time there were maybe ten people in all, distributed as far from each
other as the space allowed).
The following morning we walked to the
cable car station, and up to the suburb of Monte. According to Wikipedia “the length of the cable car line is 3,718 m and the
height difference 560 m; the journey takes approx. 15 minutes.” It felt like
less. As we all know, people love cable cars, and it was pretty busy at the
top. There’s an impressive church up there – built in the 19th
century to replace a previous one – and several formal gardens, numerous eating
places and several trails. There are numerous ways back down, including (for
some of the way) by toboggan – two or three riders to each toboggan, each with
two white-suited operators (the elevation is quite steep so their main task
must be to prevent the vehicle from acquiring runaway momentum). According to
the signs, CNN once called this one of the world’s seven most striking
commutes, although I doubt anyone uses it for that specific purpose (given the
line-ups, you couldn’t often count on getting to work on time). We decided to
walk back, without knowing how easily that would be – as it happens, there’s a
road from the top that goes pretty much straight down (you’d never find it from
the bottom though, if you didn’t know where to look). We wandered around a bit
more, entering the market building and exploring some surrounding streets, and
then returned to the hotel for a break.
Later we walked into the resort district.
Not unlike Toronto, but in a very different way, much of the waterfront is
generally inaccessible because it’s been parceled off to various hotels. But
there’s still a very scenic path through all this, and it’s rather remarkable
how one huge location follows another. We stubbornly walked until there were no
more resorts, and then for some distance beyond, taking a taxi back. We’d never
seen anywhere with so many long lines of taxis – and all immaculate (mostly
Mercedes). By the time we were finished, between our morning north-to-south
walk and our later long trek to the west, we’d largely conquered the tourist
map of Funchal. In the evening we walked just a few blocks, to a place called
the Ritz. The name conjures hotels, but actually it’s just a restaurant (before
that, according to the waiter, it was a car showroom) with a large open air
area along one of the more elegant Funchal boulevards. We ordered a vegetarian
curry and a salad and for once the pairing worked perfectly, without any of the
excess starchiness that had been plaguing us. We stayed until no one else was
staying, and gave some money to an old man and his dog who at some point showed
up and hung around in the hope of earning a few Euros.
They say it's Paris that's made for lovers, but at
night Funchal too is almost entirely a town of couples, of all ages, of all sizes.
It’s not a place to come if the lack of a tan makes you self-conscious though. The
Vine Hotel has some pretentious narrative about how the whole place is inspired
by the wine-growing cycle and how each floor represents a season. I assume our
floor must have been “winter” given its empty, unproductive feeling, but I may
be wrong. The place felt massively under-occupied and figuratively cold, but
it’s comfortable enough and a convenient location so it didn’t matter. On
Friday morning, a mini-bus picked us up at around 8.35 – after stopping at a
few hotels to pick up others, we were on our way to Rabacal, about an hour
away. Our guide Sara switched effortlessly between languages – for the purposes
of today’s group, between English, German and Spanish (she also speaks French
and Italian). Rabacal is one of the many walking areas built around levadas –
irrigation channels dating in some cases back to the 16th century.
There are some 1,300km of walking trails, and many tour companies built around
them – as we drove around in the morning, the roads seemed dense with similar
vehicles, scooping up tourists for the day.
Rabacal is one of the more popular
locations – because portions of the trail involve doubling back, there were
often long waits and/or tight squeezes. The walk takes you first to the
imposing Rabacal waterfall, and then to “25 fontes” where there are 25
waterfalls (indeed I counted exactly that number, although many of them are
very thin) distributed around a high rocky semi-circle. This latter site was
especially busy when we got there, with people clambering over the rocks to get
as close as possible to the water and the photo opportunities. In some of the
photos, the crowd seems obsessed by religious mania, as though surging forward
for a cure. We ate our lunch near there and then started the journey back (a
bit less crammed than we’d anticipated - most people come in the morning it
seems) – the last 800km or so was through a very dark tunnel, from which we
emerged into a chilly mist, as if we’d passed from one world into another (Ally
thought a bat brushed past her in the cave, but we were told that couldn’t be
the case).
The walk was rated “easy/moderate” in the
company’s brochure and took around five hours I think. Some sections are steep,
but it’s essentially easy – the main challenge is in the concentration required
by the narrowness and occasional slipperiness. We also stopped in a
café/grocery on the way there and back so overall it was about an eight-hour
outing. After that, naturally, we needed a break. We didn’t interact that much
with the other people, several of whom seemed to be using their phones with the
same intensity that they presumably bring to the task in their living rooms.
But I think everyone had a good time. You wouldn’t come to Madeira for the
bird- and animal-watching though – there’s very little of the former and
virtually none of the latter. Even the lizards are really dull-looking. At
least you’re never far away from seeing a dog having fun (I couldn’t say the
same for Ozu, who as I wrote this section was looking put-upon and just tired
of the whole thing).
Ally had noticed a tapas place in the
resort district, so we walked back there for the evening. They had plenty of
vegetarian options (not a given – we’ve seen plenty of tapas menus that had few
or none) and a lively atmosphere, although with all the screens across the
street showing sports (mostly soccer but with a smattering of golf), the preponderance
of English language signs and the like, it would be easy to forget your
location. I overheard a woman at another table, obviously underwhelmed by their
desert choice, look over at ours and say to her husband: “They have ice cream.” We got a cab back. It was perpetually strange
to enter the hotel from the elevator in the shopping mall, and from there to go
directly up to the room without ever needing to enter reception. We never saw
anyone on our floor either, so we started to wonder after a while whether we
were in a real hotel at all. I suppose it’s the best explanation though. For
example, people did come by and clean occasionally, albeit not
super-thoroughly.
On Saturday we got picked up by another
mini bus in the same spot at much the same time. Our guide was called something
like Hobina (we didn’t catch it exactly) and there were five others in the
group – this time all using English as a common (not first) language, overall
an older and more reserved bunch. We walked the “Camino Real da Encumeada” – an
old paved Royal Path which goes through some of the island’s higher elevations,
with amazing views in all directions. The walk is some 13km and rated as “hard”
in the company’s brochure, but if you’re the kind of person who would want to
do a 13km walk in the first place, then it’s not so tough. We were descending
more often than we were ascending (I think she said the walk starts at an
elevation of about 1400km and ends up at around 950km) and as the path was far
less busy than Rabacal (during five hours we met maybe twenty people coming the
other way, and were overtaken by only a few people, and one dog) our progress
was pretty smooth (although we only noted later how our legs got scratched
around by gorse and other protruding plant hazards). We ate lunch at a spot I
imagine the old Royals might have chosen. Another fine day, and as with every
drive in Madeira it seems, with hardly a plain-looking stretch on the drive
there or back (excluding the frequent tunnels). On the way out we stopped in a
dark little store/café that was populated solely by women, largely looking like
refugees from 1920’s Sicily. A little dog wandered in alone and sniffed around
before being chased out. Perhaps in the darkest heart of Portugal, where the
tourists never go, it’s all like that.
On Friday we didn’t think to tip the
guide and didn’t notice anyone else doing so. On Saturday though we did notice
the guide being tipped by the first or second person to get off the bus – it
appears everyone else noticed too, so she got tipped by us and by all the
others. Such arbitrariness aside, Portugal never seemed like a big tipping
nation – it’s not pushed as an option when restaurants process the credit card,
and as I mentioned earlier, the hotel DJ in Porto actually rejected one. On the
whole, we likely spent less than we do on the average vacation – food and wine
bills are pretty cheap. However, as I indicated, we did not choose very
economical hotels (particularly in Porto and Lisbon). Despite the relative low
spending, we went through cash more quickly because electronic payment often
isn’t available in smaller places. I recall that in Helsinki a few years ago we
only encountered a single place where cash was required (a small ice cream
vendor), so Portugal is far behind that (mind you, so is Germany).
On our last night in Madeira we spent
over half an hour trying to find a restaurant Ally had been reading about
online – we eventually concluded it must have closed. Still, not a bad way of
exploring some new streets. We ended up at one of the many tourist-facing
places, Café Funchal, where we again made out pretty well by splitting a
risotto (the fourth or fifth risotto on the trip to this point) and a salad. We
made one last visit to the hotel roof bar – it had a smattering of people when
we arrived, but when we left, just a bit after midnight, it was down to just
one British guy and his beer. Well, and his really ugly shirt. The next day we
had time to walk for an hour or so before heading to the airport, so we got to
see Funchal in sleepy Sunday morning mode – streets that would later be crammed
with tables just sitting empty. On the drive to the airport we could see a
couple of pages of a little notebook in which the driver lists all his fares –
all 5, 7, 8 Euro rides. The airport ride is 40 Euros. They must love those, but
there probably aren’t enough of them to go round.
We had the slowest check-in we’ve gone
through in a while – no electronic check-in – but after that everything was
smooth (we bought a sandwich in a concession place called Cockpit – and I’d
just started rereading Jerzy Kosinski’s Cockpit – and the plane in which we
were about to fly had a cockpit – what are the odds?!). The airport has a
little outdoor area from which you can watch planes taking off. There’s only
one runway, and it was extended at some point after a plane didn’t have enough of
it to take off and ended up in the water. We watched a British Airways flight
which was never in danger of such a mishap; neither, later on, were we. Lisbon
certainly has a bigger and busier airport than we expected. We couldn’t get a
taxi because of a strike over Uber – the strike started while we were in Porto
but we didn’t realize it was still going on (Madeira wasn’t affected because
Uber doesn’t operate there). It’s a little annoying that the hotel hadn’t
warned us. Anyway, we found our way by metro easily enough, although it’s never
very desirable to be on public transit with all your stuff (usually for
instance we only have one credit card with us, leaving the others in the safe).
Anyway, those logistics were forgotten
soon enough. Our final stopping point was the Hotel do Chiado, right in the
heart of Lisbon, “in the historical building of ‘Armazens do Chiado’ as result
of a project of reconstruction elaborated by Alvaro Siza Vieira, the famous
Portuguese architect winner of the Pritzker Prize in 1992.” There are only
sixteen rooms – ours had a French balcony overlooking the street below, with a
view of the Castle of St George. The hotel also has a roof top bar which was
pretty crowded when we checked it out – the hotel in general seemed instantly
busier than the Vine ever did, although with only sixteen rooms, this
presumably can’t really have been true. Anyway, it’s very pleasant, and we had
custard tarts and cherry liqueur waiting for us in our room (and unlike in
Porto, there was no indication they might actually be intended for someone
else).
It was hotter here than in the previous
locations by a few degrees – we immediately registered this, along with a
greater concentration of visitors (of the kind that again sometimes leads to
frustrated locals, which I believe has occasionally been an issue in Lisbon)
and a slightly rougher big-city edge. We walked directly south to the
waterfront, which is wider and calmer than Porto’s – a large section was
occupied by the razzamatazz surrounding a six a side soccer tournament (within
a few hours of arrival, we’d seen players from England, Wales, Russia, Bulgaria
– apparently it’s stipulated that they wear their identifying shirts at all
times), obscuring historical monuments in a way the architects surely never
foresaw. We walked up to the historical district of the Alfama – a warren of
narrow, winding streets (lots of those on this trip!), dense with fado
restaurants – and to several look-out points crammed with people looking out.
We found our way back to the hotel pretty easily – the surrounding streets are
full of restaurants, and we noted at least a few plausible choices in passing.
We walked back to one of those places,
which turned out to be so-so in terms of the food and the ambiance, but never
mind. We ended the night on the roof top bar, which died off fast - when it
closed at midnight it was (once again) just us and one other guy. Although it’s
only seven floors up, it shields you almost entirely from any sense of what
might be happening below, for better or for worse, I’m not sure.
This trip certainly illustrates the
success of our division of labour – typically, after we decide on a
destination, I book the flights and the hotels, and then hardly think about it
again until we’re there. Ally usually takes the lead in suggesting day-to-day
activities. It worked almost perfectly throughout this trip, and I only add in
the “almost” to accommodate some glitches on our first full day in Lisbon. The
first stage went as planned – we walked down to the waterfront (calling into
the Bertrand bookstore, which has a Guinness book certificate as the oldest
operating bookstore, since 1732) and headed west, eventually passing the port
of Lisbon (from which I recall Bruno Ganz emerging at the start of the film In the White City). It’s not the most
eye-catching walk – much of it is rather derelict and graffiti-laden, although
the occasional block looks like home to a new media company or suchlike, or
else lights up with some imposing art creation. We were heading for the LX
Factory, an old industrial neighborhood now populated with cafes, designers,
retailers and general funkiness – in Toronto terms it’s somewhat like the
Distillery District, but not as stuffy. Like much of the surrounding
neighborhood, it’s overshadowed by a massive and loud overpass which might as
well have been specifically conceived as a symbol of capitalistic disregard for
neighborhood integrity (and we continued to encounter denunciations of tourism
and of Airbnb in particular at a fairly steady pace).
We had lunch there in an Argentinean
themed place and wandered around. After that, Ally’s idea was to wander up to
an 18th century aqueduct from which one can apparently enjoy great
views of the city. In crow-flying terms it seemed pretty easy – just to head
north – but we tried several routes and gave up on all of them. Eventually we
committed to one route and walked up on the side of a busy highway for quite a
while before quitting on that too (the question may arise of why we didn’t
consult Google Maps but I think we were both too hot and tired to think of it).
We retraced our steps for a while and then trudged back to the hotel through a
new combination of streets. We were pretty wiped out by the end of it (if the
iPhone can be trusted, we walked further that day than we did on our 13km
Madeira hike, and in more oppressive heat) and much of the walk was through at
best undistinguished (if not downright unsafe) areas, although we returned to
gentility at the end. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, but it’s probably fair to
conclude that if we wanted to see the aqueduct (which we never ended up doing)
there would have been better ways of going about it.
If we were ever going to get a tan, today
would have been the day (we didn’t). But it’s nice that Portugal provides sporadic
evidence that not everyone conforms to the cliché – for instance, the porter at
our hotel looks like Jesse Eisenberg (and just as white). The guide in the room
says: “You are not allowed to bring your pet to the hotel, but we can advise
comfortable places where your pet can stay. Please contact reception.” This
evokes an unlikely scenario of someone who, having somehow smuggled their
little dog into the country and through the lobby into the room, reads this
prohibition and realizes it’s all over for them (by the way, by this point in
the trip Ozu had been moved from the big dog room, probably due to being
overwhelmed, and was living among the little dogs) We had dinner in a nearby
place called Fabulas, which we’d noticed earlier for its vegetarian options. It
shares a large terrace with three or four other restaurants: the atmosphere was
very lively and happy, and it was one of the best meals of our trip.
It seems we’ve dropped one of our
traditions – of always going to see one movie during each foreign trip when
possible. Actually we hardly saw any movie posters on this trip, let alone the
theaters themselves – they must all have been chased out to the suburbs, or
else into total extinction. We did on Tuesday, our penultimate full day, come
across a place showing Spike Lee’s Blackkklansman,
which might have been a possibility, but only at 9.15 pm, which was too late.
Anyway, back in the hotel, I did start watching the somewhat obscure 70’s
French film Le secret. Ally continued
to read Philip Roth. We spent the day wandering around various portions of
downtown Lisbon, from its grand squares (one of them occupied largely by taxi
drivers, who continued to be on strike, although it didn’t seem that 100% of
drivers are participating) to its narrow streets, from tourist throngs to
almost unoccupied parks. We walked through the “Bairro Alto” area, which only
comes alive at night, climbing up in the direction of the Castelo de Sao Jorge
and then beyond that to the Graca district, which provides some long views over
downtown. We had lunch at a vegetarian restaurant near there (it was very nice
to eat quinoa and tofu again), then wandered around a bit more before
returning. In all we were out for around five hours, so it was a somewhat
lighter day, reflecting our end-of-trip-flagging state.
Lisbon may be starved for taxis (perhaps
that’s why we seemed to have seen more people dragging their luggage around)
but it has plenty of little tourist vehicles – some of them three-wheelers (a
correspondent loftily informed me these are called tuk-tuks and originate from India), others looking like they might
be designed for sand dunes more than cobbled streets. Between the inherent
slipperiness and the elevations, I kept thinking how someone might slip into
the street and perish under one of these odd contraptions. There are also
yellow trams, clearly a big attraction to tourists – I doubt they are a big
contributor to the efficiency of Lisbon transit as a whole. As usual, we spent
very little time in stores during the trip, but Ally did buy a Lisbon-themed
iPhone case, so that will be a frequent reminder. Oh, and some bookmarks from
the oldest operating bookstore. I was somewhat taken by a Massimo Dutti coat in
the window of a nearby store, but not enough to go shopping for it here. We
overheard a (I think) Australian tourist lamenting that he should have bought a
pair of pants he’d seen and liked in Venice. Honestly, in his case, I don’t
think it’s going to affect anything.
I’d made a dinner reservation for Tuesday
at a place called Organi Chiado – funny to have done that in Canada having no
idea of the restaurant’s location, and then to have it be right across the
street from our hotel. The menu is mainly vegetarian – Ally had a chickpea
curry and I had tofu again (yep, twice in one day!) so that was very much like
being at home (a bit too filling though). Afterwards we wandered back to the Bairro
Alto, much busier by then (although inevitably with a calculated tourist-facing
vibe to much of it), and eventually went into a tiny hole-in-the-wall type
place with only a few tables and just a handful of other customers over the
couple of hours we spent there, and yet with a rather wonderful atmosphere
(maybe it was the weird auto-tuned cover of Close to You). The woman said it’s
the family business, owned by her mother. After that, we were most definitely
done for the day, and for a fair chunk of the next morning.
On our last day we again walked west
along the waterfront. Actually we did not realize first time round that the
waterfront trail picks up again on the other side of the port – that stretch of
it feels much more resort-like with its slow pace and frequent cafes. The trail
is sometimes quite close to the water – if and when the oceans rise, it’s
evident some sections of Lisbon will be challenged. Our initial plan was to
walk to MAAT – the museum of art, architecture and technology – but we overshot
it by unnecessarily walking north and away from the water. So we continued into
the district of Belem, another tourist magnet for its 16th century
lighthouse tower, its more modern “monument to the discoveries” and its
imposing church and monastery, all of this offset by large, graceful parks and
walkways. We had lunch there (a last piece of evidence of the challenges of
vegetarianism here - we both took a buffet helping of what appeared to be a
chickpea salad, but it turned out to contain tuna). Then we walked to the MAAT,
which comprises a former power plant and a newer building in a modestly
Gehry-like style, including a large curving roof you can walk on. The
exhibitions featured a heavy emphasis on ecological and environmental issues
and their portrayal in art and culture – it was all quite diverting and
stimulating. We walked back, stopping for a snack on the way. In all, close to
another 17km trek, in often blazing heat, but a fine way to fill our last day.
As far as can be ascertained online,
Portugal isn’t among the top ten tourist destinations in Europe – in fact, it’s
far behind Poland for one. Maybe that’s just a function of the Polish diaspora,
I don’t know, but we both detected that our colleagues and acquaintances were
more excited about the idea of Portugal than about most of our previous destinations.
It certainly doesn’t feel, as of this September 26th writing, that
the tourist season will be running out of steam anytime soon. It’s a wonderful,
easy, sensuous place to be, insofar as you can ever draw such conclusions from
twelve days of highly unrepresentative experience (that is, not very far at
all). Anyway, our last night was one of the most entertaining. We wandered
around some of the main tourist dining areas, somewhat amazed at the barrage of
menu touts trying to get our attention (sometimes in most offputtingly
aggressive manner…should that ever work?) and at the sheer density of people
and tables in some locations. In the end we went back to Fabulas, because its
spacious, serene terrace seemed even better by comparison, and we’d already
noted they had enough vegetarian options to order a completely different meal compared
to our first visit (wow!) The guy bringing the wine and water dropped the tray,
sending broken glass everywhere (at least the wine bottle survived intact) –
they never did manage to clear that up entirely. Later we were eavesdropping on
the four Texan women at a nearby table, and their interactions with the wry
young waiter, Tomas. After they left, we made a mildly disrespectful remark to
him about Texas, and he really opened up in response, neglecting his other
duties to chat to us on such matters as his romantic status (just out of a
five-year relationship), other dating stories (a tale of picking up a woman on
the late night bus), cultural differences of customers (at least Americans tip
well; the Portuguese aren’t as pleasant to deal with as they seem) and
Portuguese literature and cinema, on which he seems like an aspiring
intellectual of the kind you seldom encounter outside French movies. We gave
him a 20% tip and he was careful to note he’d keep half of it for himself and
put the other half into the pool with his colleagues. And that was that. We
returned to the hotel bar for one last beer, leaving at midnight when it
closed.
During that day I had two odd instances
of heartburn or something like it, and my left sandal was starting to dig into
my heel for the first time on the trip, and then I woke up on Thursday with
something of a cold, so it was very plainly time to go home. Not that we didn’t
know that already. We had breakfast in the Lisbon hotel for the first time,
noting that we’d never seen room 609 (we were in 610) without its “Do not
Disturb” sign on the door. Maybe it was occupied by a honeymoon couple. We got
a cab to the airport (not sure if the strike was officially over – if not, the
volume of rebels seemed to be increasing). Two large cruise ships were docked
for the day, with at least seven or eight double-decker buses and assorted
other vehicles waiting to whisk their inhabitants around the city. Yet another
glorious day – we didn’t see a drop of rain throughout the trip, and only a few
situational instances of mist or relative chilliness. Lisbon airport was
surprisingly busy, but we’d left sufficient time for it all. Our flight took
off on time. Ally watched some downloaded episodes of Better Call Saul. I reviewed this journal, finished the most recent
New Yorker, continued with Le secret, started another even more
obscure movie. The flight touched down before 4 pm and we were home by 5.30 pm.
It was hard not to compare the grey, overcast, concrete-enclosed journey
downtown to our memories of Funchal and wonder if we’d made a wrong decision in
life. But then Ozu came home, and there was no doubt we were exactly where we should
be!