Wednesday 27 April 2011 - Sunday 1 May 2011
'There ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them' - Mark Twain
Well the last time we saw Nuno, Isabel and Emilia - or the Portuguese Doctors as we like to call them, even though they are actually pharmacists - we were queuing for visas at a dusty border post in the northern regions of Bolivia. We had just spent a couple of weeks roughing it through South America together, and their drugs - the ones you get in a pharmacy, not the ones you import from Colombia - helped us to survive the whole ordeal. Besides, you really get to know each other if you are all squeezed into a jeep for 12 hours frantically trying to escape angry Bolivian miners. Fast forward a couple of months and here we are, thousands of miles away from La Paz, in the Portuguese city of Porto for a small reunion.
We started off our Porto trip in style by having lunch at the impressive Casa de Musica building with one of the richest people in the whole of Portugal (pre-bail-out that is): the Chairman of financial group BPI. Ok, it was far from a match made in heaven as he was wearing a suit and I was wearing shorts. Also I don't think he got my name and I may have forgotten to shave that morning (and a couple of mornings before that). We didn't really talk much either, actually not at all, and conversation wasn't helped much by the fact that he was sitting two tables away from us and barely acknowledged our presence. Nevertheless I did feel we really connected. Not sure it was a mutual feeling. Actually pretty sure it wasn't. In the meantime Nuno, Isabel, Em and I had a great time (and lunch for that matter) without him.
The Portuguese Doctors pulled out all the stops in the evening and took us to their "secret port place" to enjoy some "Portotonics" (a blasphemy for real Portuguese drinkers) while overlooking the Douro river. Given that both us and the Lonely Planet now know about the place, we feel less bad about spilling the beans. If you ever make it to Porto, make sure you don't miss out on Solar do Vinho do Porto. It is a hidden gem. Well maybe not that well hidden by the time you get there.
And now for some real magic. Nuno - a lifelong Benfica fan - had sold his soul to the Devil and somehow managed to secure tickets for us to go and see the FC Porto - Villareal game in the semi-finals of the Europa League. Going to a FC Porto game is like going to a Harry Potter movie. They play in the Dragon stadium, have a bunch of players who go by exotic names such as the Hulk and the Falcon and their supporters call themselves SuperDragons. To finish things off in style, their Spanish opponents on the night call themselves the "Yellow Submarines". Only thing missing was Harry Potter himself and those broomstick thingies he flies around on. Together with 45,000 ecstatic football fans we witnessed FC Porto slaughter Villareal 5-1. "Cinco torpedos no submarino" it screamed from the front page of one of the Portuguese dailies the next day.After all that excitement we finished off the night with a Francesinha at Capa Negra II (it is called Capa Negra II but apparently there never was a Capa Negra I, so much for logic). A Francesinha (literal translation "Little Frenchie") is as much as a baked sausage and beef sandwich covered in melted cheese with two eggs on top (sunny side up). Pretty much a heart attack on a plate. But damn it was good.
As true tourists we of course had to spend a day in the Douro valley, taking the boat down to Regua in the morning and the train back up to Porto in the afternoon. The train journey through the Douro valley is a truly epic journey, passing blue and white tiled train stations in quaint villages going by traditional Portuguese names such as Mosteiro, Vila Mea and Caide. While we were at it, we also squeezed in a visit to some Port cellars. For some bizarre reason unclear to us, most of the Port producers have been bought up by a Spanish bank. That makes as much sense as HSBC buying Carlsberg and Heineken. Exactly, none whatsoever.
Emilia and Paulo had us all over for a seafood bonanza in Gaia where we also tasted the local delicacy percebes for the first time in our lives. Percebes is a particularly ugly shellfish native to Portugal, with a scaly shell that resembles a recently hatched dinosaur. You eat it by twisting the little tentacles and sucking out the inner tube. Yep doesn't that sound nice? It gets better. All this is accompanied with plenty of juices splashing all over the place when you break of the tentacles. Despite it all sounding like some Guantanamo Bay torture technique, it was actually quite tasty.
We said goodbye to Porto with some late night drinks at Porto Palacio, Porto's own version of Tokyo's Park Hyatt.
We thoroughly enjoyed Porto and special thanks is due to the Portuguese Doctors. Nuno, Isabel and Emilia, we had a fantastic time. We can't wait until our next check-up.
Next destination: #26: Chasing the deadliest catch in Alaska
No comments:
Post a Comment