Holy Week Part IV: More you look, more to see

Where did we leave off? Oh, right, the beautiful ancient crumblingness of Porto. 

I feel like I should make a clarification first. Porto/Oporto? What is the name of this city? In Portuguese, it is simply "Porto." But, in Spanish, it is called "Oporto." In both languages porto means port (who'da thunk?) so maybe the Spaniards thought it was silly to have a town called "port" so they added "O" (which is the masculine definite article in Portuguese) to make it a little less... I dunno, generic sounding. And then in English, we go either way. But I'll call it Porto, just because.

Back to the story. I'm gonna try and finish this today, but we'll see.

After our long, sopping wet tour of the city, we grabbed lunch at a little cafe with some girls from Minnesota who were studying abroad in Toledo who were on vacation in Porto. Did you know that "frango" is portuguese for "chicken" and not "polho?" Sometimes cognates don't work. (polho doesn't mean anything)

After a brief stop at the hostel for dry pants we set off for another part of the city with our new hostel roommate David from London. The girl at the hostel desk recommended we see the Palacio de Cristal, so off we went.

Laura and our new friend David. What are you pointing at, David? Is it the spaceship? 

No, it's a peacock! Where did you come from, bird?

The Palacio de Cristal was not actually a spaceship (though I could have been convinced otherwise) but a sort of concert hall/convention center in the middle of this beautiful big park overlooking the river. 

To our surprise, David had never explored much of Porto before, even though he passed through every year on his way to visit family in Portugal for Easter. So we ended up wandering around for a bit before all going to dinner together. 

Walkin around. we'll come back to that church later.

We stayed in the hostel that evening, and had a grand old time drinking wine and playing cards with some Portuguese boys (I called them boys, but really they were all mid-twenties) who were in town for some sort of exposition(?). They taught us a couple Portuguese games--Desconfia (like Bullshit) and Ladrões e Policia (like Mafia). We had a blast and didn't get to bed until the wee hours of the morning.

The next morning we got off to a slow start, but we made a full day of it anyway. After walking David to the metro station we went back to that church we saw earlier. Actually, we had seen it before, on the tour and it has a kind of neat history to it.

The church (called the Torre dos Clérigos) was designed by an Italian architect, who agreed to do the project for free, but on the condition that he could be buried in the crypt. That was all fine and dandy, but the interesting thing was the problems they ran into during construction. It was supposed to be a normal church, cross-shaped with two big towers, but the ground was unstable, and they couldn't make it as big as the plans called for. So, rather than find a new site, the architect said screw it and decided to essentially stack the church up on itself, with one huge tower. As our guide said, "maybe he already bought the stones or something."

The tower doesn't look all that tall from the street, but the buildings surrounding it are deceptively tall as well. In climbing it you really get a feel for how tall it is. 

View from halfway up

At the place where a normal church tower would end, this church has a unique bell system, where daily, free concerts are given.

Ana Elias in the middle of the prelude from Bach's Suite no 1 for cello, arr Ana Elias. (I picked up a program, and my goodness this woman is accomplished)

It was almost unbearably loud inside the tower, but up top and outside you could really appreciate the music. 

View of the ocean

view looking down.

The next stop on our adventure was to take a trip across the river to Gaia, the town where all the Port wine is stored. 

Bridge to Gaia, designed by the same guy who did the Eiffel Tower.

What is Port wine? Port wine is a sweet "fortified wine" made from grapes grown in the Douro river valley, just up the river from Porto. What makes it "fortified" is the addition of aguardente which is grape liquor I guess. (and not the addition of vitamins like I would have thought.) For five euros, we got a little tour of one of the storage facilities and a little taste of the wine. All the companies have an offer like this, but we just went to one, Sandeman.

The dude on the barrel is "the don," the logo of the Sandeman company, not zorro. He is wearing a Spanish hat and a Portuguese cape, to represent the origins of the wine the company sells.

The guide was very knowledgeable and told us all about the different kinds of Port wine and how they are prepared and stored, but not being a wine connoisseur myself, it all went a little over my head. 

I actually wasn't a huge fan of the Port. It was too sweet and strong, like a taste overload, and those two little glasses put me in a state where it would be a bad thing if I tried to drive.

Okay, so I lied and I didn't finish today. The last little bit to come tomorrow.