I hit the cobblestones running in Porto after a packed overnight flight from Newark on TAP. It's true: EVERYONE'S going to Portugal!
My hotel in Boavista was about half an hour on foot from the historic center, providing some welcome insulation from the hordes of other tourists, if not the sound of the metro just beyond my window.
In a city as old as Portugal, the streets offer a random survey of architectural styles through the ages, often on the same street. I wished I'd gone inside Armazéns Cunhas where Portuguese merchants have been buying housing goods since 1898.
Just across the street, a century separates the convent and monastery that the Catholic church built side-by-side, with three-foot wide house inserted between the two to inhibit any hanky panky.
Tile covers one side of the Carmo Church, built in the eighteenth century. It depicts the scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.
Students at the University of Porto shaded themselves under distinctively pruned trees.
A stylized statue of António Ferreira Gomes, the Bishop of Porto from 1952 to 1982, introduced me to the country's tortured politics. António de Oliveira Salazar, head of the fascist Estado Novo party and de-facto dictator, exiled Gomes for ten years after the bishop wrote him a letter trying to persuade him that his anti-communist politics were radicalizing the nation's poor.
Spring flowers bloomed nearby in the Cordoraria gardens.
Thirteen 21st century sculptures laugh at one another (and visitors) throughout the garden.
You won't get rich manufacturing or importing dryers to Portugal. Nearly everyone hangs laundry from their windows.
Construction cranes loom over the city.
Some of the shop signs are pretty creative.
What better place to talk on the phone than your sunny balcony?
Have you ever wondered when European colonization started? Look no further than Henry the Navigator, born in 1394 and baptized a king's son in Porto. He initiated what is more benignly known as the Age of Discovery which enabled Portugal to begin building its world empire in North Africa. Henry would pop up again in Belem and Batalha.
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