We’ve been staying in what I have been referring to as Swan house for two reasons….the cement pond (yes, I sing about Jed from Hillbillies when I call it this, what can I say) in the front garden contains two black swans and their two cygnets… but mostly because I can’t spell the name of the town we are in much less the name of the house. I think the town is Macieira de Maia. We drove through the eastern and northern outskirts of Porto to get here and chose it because of its closeness to Porto and to several other places we wanted to see in the more northern areas of Portugal.
Swan House is quite amazing. Old old old, as usual in this part of the world. But, unusually, it’s huge. At least 2000 square feet. I think two houses were made into one at some point. The garden contains a grapefruit tree, a lemon tree and at least a dozen birds of paradise plants and dozens of white calalilies. We had grapefruit from the tree for breakfast a couple of times, and used the lemons in meal prep! What a concept.
The cement pond is also home to, at first one female and three males mallards, but by the end of our stay those numbers had doubled. Countless pigeons and doves, sparrows, chickadees and blackbirds, as well as an occasional robin live here. No storks. It was a wonderful garden surrounding an amazing house. The house was way too big for two…two huge en suite bedrooms, plus another full bathroom, a living room room, at least 20 feet square, with a small tv room and a small office off the living room. And a dining room as big as the living room. The house was full of antique furniture. We had a lovely time in the lovely house.
But this is about Porto.
We had decided that we wanted to spend time in Porto from Swan house, but didn’t want to be bothered going in and out over several days, so arranged for a driver to take us in and had hotel reservations in a boutique hotel the Ribeira area, right in the old centre of Porto.
We told our host we would be away for two nights and her son asked if we were driving ourselves in. We said no, we have hired a car and driver.
“Oh you don’t need to do that. Driving in Porto is a piece of cake. I do it all the time with no problem,” said son.
We didn’t listen to him.
Thank goodness. We know our abilities. And we know that historic centre streets are tiny, narrow, steep and often one way. We have mistakenly driven into some of these old places, and don’t ever want to do it on purpose. Further, street and information signs are in Portuguese a language we have no facility with beyond hello, thank you please and beach. Oh yes and dourado (Ken’s favourite food, sea bream). And Vino, of course. All this meant that we knew what we were doing when we hired someone. And then there’s parking. Well, really, there is no parking. Hotels, especially in the centre of a big city don’t have parking lots or parkades. On top of that, turned out there was construction on our hotel’s street and one entire lane was and probably still is, under construction, and there were only two lanes to begin with, so the parking lane is now a driving lane. So we’d have been hooped.
Our driver picked us up at the appointed time (I feel posh and entitled saying this but, oh well….) and 40 minutes later we were being dropped off at our hotel. And every one of our senses told us that we had made the right decision about hiring him. Twists, turns, on and off freeways, down one way streets, avoiding pedestrian streets, 90 degree turns, sometimes sharper. And you know the old joke that goes “We don’t stop, but we do slow down so you can jump out”, well that was practically the case because of the construction in front of our chosen hotel. A cacophony of horns accompanied our car dismount. We were able to get out of the car and out of the way quickly as, thankfully, for this three day trip, we had reduced our luggage to one small bag, down from what two months of travel requires. We had briefly thought about just doing the on-board luggage thing for the whole trip, but caved.
Our hotel is amazing, and just as we were in Lisbon and Fig do Foz, we are on a steep hill. Gee what a surprise.
But it is a day of surprises. We are able to check in early, do so and leave the hotel heading to water. Of course. Down to the river’s edge, the Cais de Estiva. And as we walk the three blocks, we could hear singing. Loud, mostly masculine voices, singing.
“That sounds like football singing,” says me having only witnessed it on television. And sure enough, we approach the square on the river’s edge we see that it is thronged with people, hundreds and hundreds of people, all singing, and for the next three hours conversation of any sort was impossible. We walked up and down witnessing in person the phenomenon we only see on tv during international football games.
The waterfront is a distance of three or four blocks as we know them, and we are overwhelmed by the choice of what we can have for lunch.
Musicians/buskers are at at least four different stations along the dock and we chose our restaurant for lunch as much by the music as by the food. Our choice was by chance because the musician changed just as we sat. Our new musician started his set with Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah and our food was a cross between Portuguese and Japanese. It was lovely. A man sitting just behind Ken was either a fan or a friend or both of our musician and bought him a beer, then finishing his own, went and sat on a bench closer to him and listened.
We walked and walked up and down, still not hearing anything but the singing, and we discovered that people were wearing either Porto or Milan shirts and scarfs. Turns out there’s a match tonight.
We took a bridges boat tour and saw the amazing bridges of Porto, one of which was designed by the Eiffel Tower designer (oddly enough that’s Gustave Eiffel), a second nearly identical bridge, one or two bridges down was designed by someone who worked with him on the first one.
And when we got back to the docks the crowds were even larger and the singing even louder. The police presence was evident, but on the outskirts of the activity. And never called into action. Porto lost. We figured that out when we walked back to the hotel after dinner and the city was totally quiet.
Our hosts at the hotel said the train station was about 15 minutes away (all up hill) and the market another ten minutes after that, but these were must see sites. I don’t know how they walked when they figured out these times, but given our age and the fact that it was, again all up hill, we figured 15 minutes might be ambitious. Turns out it was a total exaggerations and we were there in about five minutes. And let me tell you train station is indeed worth the visit: the tile murals are incredible. We were told they were outstanding, and boy, were they.
We scouted out several restaurants for possible dinner sites. And when dinner time came we ended up at a restaurant I have to check the visa bill to know the name of because it’s not painted on or above the door or the windows. What IS on the window is a notice that advertises live fado nightly at 9.
We walked in not knowing what to expect, and fully expected to be gone by nine. Thankfully we were wrong.
The restaurant is lovely filled with pre-raphaelite art, soft lighting, linen tablecloths and napkins. And a wickedly witty server. She knew we were friendly and gave us a delightful hard time. The food was as amazing as we have come to expect. I once again dodged salt cod. Ken likely had the dourada. He had it six or eight times this trip so saying that’s what he ate is a pretty safe bet.
I had the dessert which came with port. I loved the dessert. The port, not so much. Since my alcohol palette stretches to dry red wine and drinks with umbrellas, you can understand why the port didn’t cut it for me.
But the best was yet to come.
At nine, the lights went down and the woman we had decided (rightly or wrongly) was the owner, put a beautifully embroidered shawl on over her otherwise casual pants and shirt, and walked out in front of the bar, flanked by two guitar players and started singing. I don’t know what I expected. But I wasn’t expecting to enjoy it. I did. I didn’t understand a word, but it didn’t matter. Music is an international language, and this was beautifully spoken.
She did a few songs and then was joined by a younger man, son??? Son-in-law???? Totally unrelated??? Who knows. But they did several duets, and again, amazing.
Lights came on, suddenly food was being delivered everywhere. We thought we were leaving, but no one would bring us a bill. The nice couple next to us, from Stuttgart thought they were leaving too and had their coats on and everything. But the lights went down, the two guitarists walked back to the staging area (our route out, so we were trapped and weren’t we lucky to be trapped) followed by a man in a long black cape. He started singing, and we were entranced.
At one point the serving staff, who were standing near our table, clapped in time. Clap, clap, clap, clap pause repeat, pause repeat, pause repeat. We were expected to join in. So we did. At the end of that number the guitarists had their moment in the sun and what amazing musicians they were. I was wishing we were seated so I could watch their fingers fly over the strings. One played the normal six-string guitar, the other played what I believe is a fado guitar, with a more rounded shape, and twelve strings, coming out the top of the guitar. Beautiful music.
Oh what a night.