What to listen to while reading this: Saudade, Saudade by MARO
Shalom, hallo, and olá curious readers,
Weekend getaways are the greatest joy to being in Europe, in my opinion. There are so many places that you can visit without having to take (a lot of) time off and without having to break the bank. As I have said before, the days of ultra-cheap travel are long gone, but if you know where and how to look there is often a good deal to be found.
I am a huge fan of mega cities, but must confess that you will, indeed, often return more exhausted than you were before your weekend visit. Fortunately there are also cities that feel and look like they were made to be visited in a single weekend. They are not limitless, but offer enough sights to explore. They are laid back, but not boring. And they allow you to experience a city without getting overwhelmed. Enter Oporto.
Finding beauty in the rain
For no particular reason, I had always imagined Oporto to be a rainy city. On my first afternoon there, my expectations are immediately met. The sky is gray and from inside the café where I tried my first Francesinha (read more about that in last week’s newsletter) I watch the city go by through the raindrops on the windows. It is late Friday afternoon and the city starts to get quiet. Not something that you would expect for a Friday, but it is as if the city’s people have collectively decided that they would rather curl up under a blanket on the couch.
The rain does not bother me the slightest. One of the things that I love about Portugal is the way its streets look. They are an interesting mix of bright colors against a grim background. There are imperfections; in the way the buildings look, in the way dark green moss grows on the wooden window frames, in the way the yellow buildings are hardly ever bright yellow but have smears of black, gray, and chalk on them. It offers the perfect setting for rain. The rain, in fact, makes the city even more soothing.
A small world
On Saturday, I start the day with a visit to a hairdresser. If I do not like the way my hair looks, there is no way I can enjoy whatever I am doing before I fix it. One of our friends, with whom we had had dinner and drinks the night before, recommended a Brazilian hairdresser to me who only charged €7 for a haircut. A cheap haircut often sets off my alarms, but I decided I wanted to try it out.
The average haircut (or shall I say trim?) at the shop takes no longer than 10 minutes. A pair of scissors is hard to find, hair clippers on the other hand are there in abundance. Card payment is not accepted and having an appointment never necessary. I tell the hairdresser that I want a fade and for the top to show my natural curls.
In the few minutes that it takes for him to trim my hair, I find out that the hairdresser is from the very island where I moved to when I first came to Brazil. ‘I am from a small state in the south, you probably do not know it,’ he tells me. ‘I probably do,’ I reply. ‘Santa Catarina. And I am from a small island called Florianópolis’, he says. ‘Of course I know it, I used to live there. And still live in the same state’, I reply laughing. He does not laugh. Either he does not care or is genuinely confused as to how a Dutch guy ended up in the place he is from. ‘It is why I speak Portuguese with a Brazilian accent’, I add. He nods and shakes his head as if he is in doubt. Maybe my accent is not as Brazilian after all. Hardly 10 minutes and €7 euros later I feel reborn and the hairdresser? He has almost finished cutting the next person’s hair.
Favorite pastime
Later in the afternoon, my sister takes me along to Bosco, a truly stunning restaurant. The renovated country house/palace-like building sits on the side of a hill that overlooks the Douro River. Toward the right you see the gardens of the Palacio Cristal. The red and white umbrellas on the outside terrace make it feel like you are stepping inside of a Slim Aarons photograph.
Bosco is the kind of place where I could spend hours on end. The building breathes culture while the restaurant feels modern, young, and high-end. I indulge in several Gin Tonics as I watch the city go by. Opposite of the river I see a police car drive by, the sound of its sirens just loud enough for us to hear. On the river itself there are few boats riding toward the sunset and in the gardens of the Palacio Cristal there is a young couple sitting on one of the old brick walls. I know immediately that if I were to live in Oporto, Busco would be my hide-out.
Until sunrise
One of the things that makes Oporto great is that it is a student city. It truly are the students who are the beating heart of this city. If I am to believe what the people who live here tell me, without the students Oporto would very easily become a city of grandpas and grandmas. It indeed seems that the demographic here is almost split in two: student or elderly.
A student city would be nowhere without nightlife. The nightlife is centered around the Galerias de Paris and Rua de Candido dos Reis, two streets in the city centre that are filled with clubs and bars. We visited two of them, MoreClub and Plano B, with my favorite being the latter. Plano B offers a variety of spaces each with a different musical focus. One thing I noticed about the nightlife in Oporto is that the people are generally friendly. Being in a cramped space can easily negatively influence people’s tolerance of each other, but when we were out it seemed like everyone was there just to have a good time. Another plus is that the clubs do not close early. We eventually got back home at 6.15a.m.
An easy Sunday
The following afternoon we enjoyed a wonderful brunch at the Floresta Café. The café serves a wonderful hummus bowl and offers a plethora of gluten-free options on the menu. If the weather allows you can sit outside, but inside it is just as fun. Afterward we walk over to the world-famous Livraria Lello that has become famous as the closest real-life version of the bookstore where Harry Potter bought his books before coming to Hogwarts. The bookstore is, indeed, beautiful, but I cannot find the patience to spend more than 20 minutes inside.
Livraria Lello.
By the time we continue our route, it has started raining again. We sit down on a bench while walking the Palacio Cristal Gardens where we have a beautiful view of the Ponte de Arrábida. In summer the sun sets exactly in the middle of the bridge’s arch.
We finish the afternoon at BASE, a bar with the same owner as Bosco. When the evening has set, we take an alternative route through tiny cobblestone streets down to Ribeira, the river shore, that is filled with terraces, street artists, and offers a stunning view of the Luís bridge. For dinner we sit down at a terrace opposite of the river where we eat wheat-free Pasteis de Bacalhau (codfish croquettes) that I top with a generous amount of hot sauce and olive oil. It is there that I realize that I cannot leave the Douro region without having drank my favorite wine: Vinho Verde (green wine). Vinho Verde may only carry this title when made in this very region. The perfect ending to an unforgettable weekend in Oporto, likely one of the best weekend destinations I could recommend you to visit.
It is not long now until I board yet another flight, one that I will of course take all of you along on.
Until then, stay curious.
L.