Morning Glories and Tawny Port
Morning Glories and Tawny Port
Porto, a place known best for its wine. Actually the lodges are in Vila Nova da Gaia due to a long ago dispute between the King and the Bishop of Porto over taxes, but that is a technicality. Porto was reconfirmed as one of my favorite places by a visit in October 2000 when I noticed great progress all over Spain and Portugal without seeming damage to the historic atmosphere.
When I think of Porto (or as the English call it Oporto) I think of the smell of that wine, developed by the English in Portugal, while it lies in the great oak casks. Even my wife, who is not a lover of wine and had dismissed my desire to get into one of those places again, immediately smiled and relished the smell on her first visit. She had let me know this little excursion was only due to my appetites for such things along with a greed for the free samples and she'd really rather be touring elsewhere in the city.
Oddly, she seemed to be taken not only by the smell, but the story of the wine itself during our Portuguese language tour of Cálem's solar, or lodge. Perhaps some of my wife's interest was due to the fact her family originated in the upper Douro before going to Brasil generations ago and that is where the story of Port starts. It is an interesting story and the atmosphere in which it is told is striking. In the end we agreed on the place being worth visiting and also among the samples. Of the types, white, ruby and tawny we liked the tawny best.
It is not the smell of the wine in a bottle or decanter. It is a mix all sorts of things and age. I remember looking at a small (only about eight feet high) cask in another lodge long ago and noting the contents were well over a hundred years old. There is no alcohol, only aromatics and flavor, left inside. It is used to flavor some of the finer products. The smell inside the lodges reflects this age, the wood, and the contents of the much younger casks.
My main drive to return to Porto involved these particular atmospherics and tastes, but it was also driven by memories of sort of a golden glow of this city cascading into the Douro's steep valley. I'd had an introduction during a hurried exit trip driven by our ship's arrival in port during some instability after young officers of the Armed Forces Movement overthrew the remains of the Salazar regime in the peaceful Revolution of the Carnations that was also introduced by music that is now a musical strain in Portugal. We had a day instead of a week to enjoy what has now been confirmed as one of the great pleasant places in my inventory.
What I remembered was that deep cut of the river, the great old Ponte de Dom Luis I, built by Eiffel's firm, and the old buildings sloping down to the river. In the late evening there was a golden glow, probably caused partly by pollution in 1974, but also the color of the buildings. It was not entirely caused by the result of free samples in at least three of the solars with one being quite generous with refilled glasses.
Porto 1974 looking down river from near Ponte de Dom Luis I
Source of the Perfume of Port
I also remembered an odd peace and quiet for Portugal's leading business center in the midst of a bit of
revolutionary sensitivity. It was laid back. People were friendly even though a bit of fresh graffiti included some communist symbols. The city was as mellow as a good tawny Port.
In 2000, with the city actually seeming to be a construction zone, that image is confirmed. Despite entire streets and squares being dug up in major sewer, water and communications upgrades the city is great for walking. It is much cleaner than before and obviously under intensive modernization while preserving and restoring the old. I'd remembered good food and drink from interesting views and found that again.
I took time on this visit to view the other features of the city. The old churches are spectacular with the gilded alters and there are odd little bits of history tucked about. The narrow, twisting, steep streets from the crest down to the Ribeira are interesting (and clean) walks with odd little shops and restaurants not catering to a tourist trade. One had nothing but cork, largely cork stoppers ranging from those needing my glasses to see clearly to some it took two hands to hold. They were sold from bins by the hundred count.
The upper roadway of Ponte de Dom Luis I is caught between umbrella and wall top in the photo to the right. A few yards to the left on exiting from this little eating place is the elevator from Ribeira to the upper city. The lift goes only about half way up and exits into a little pleasant little park overlooking the river. There is still quite a bit of climb left from the top of the lift.
I've long been interested in Wellington's Peninsula Campaign and was pleased to run across a bit of history immediately to the left of the arched exit from the court to the river front in the photo above. Portugal was key to British efforts to strike back into Spain and was invaded three times by the French. During the second French invasion Marshal Soult's French troops took Porto on 29 March of 1809. Portuguese troops and civilians were escaping Porto across a pontoon bridge to Vila Nova da Gaia on the Douro's south bank. The central part of the bridge failed for reasons not precisely known. Even with those in the center drowning the press of people from the streets of the Ribeira forced more into the gap. The plaque is a memorial to those hundreds who drowned and is still kept alive with flowers and candles.
All right, what is this business about morning glories? We'd walked over much of the old city, seen the great azulejos (tiles) and the old churches, seen the somewhat amusing British lion standing on the French eagle atop the column memorializing the Peninsula war, tasted the wine in its home, eaten traditional dishes (excluding the famous tripe) and generally had a mellow good time. We had spent time sitting in various spots in a park just across the bridge and then wandered down to a lower bench and watched the city for some time. We crossed the street and my wife had a chat with a girl riding her bike while I'd watched the cats on the roof of her house down below. We took a slow stroll across the upper level of Ponte de Dom Luis I with many stops to look at things back in Vila Nova da Gaia. As we came closer to the Porto side we noticed the vines covering the walls, slope and even roofs of houses below. On closer view they turned out to be morning glories. They are the green mass in the top photo. The flowers are hard to see except on the roof of the house at bottom.
Morning glories have taken over the old city walls and the vacant land on the steep slope. They wrap around the hill below the Sé (Cathedral) forming a drapery over what would otherwise probably be stark and barren. It is an attractive effect. I hope it is one appropriately appreciated in Porto. They were worth another stop for the view and something I remember as being one of those little differences that I enjoy so much in a place. Many of the famous tourist spots of the world are worth seeing and some are actually memorable, but for me the little odd things are usually what stick.
Porto's Morning Glories on Warm October Afternoon
Torre dos Clérgios (upper left), Sé (twin towers), morning glories and the Ribeira area (along river)
Azulejos
Go to Porto - Zonas Típicas - select Praça dos Leões to see the actual size of this wall.