Recommended Travel: Porto (and Barcelona)

The sun is setting to our right, as the train chugs along towards Lisbon ("Lisboa" here in Portugal) from Portugal's second largest city: Porto. In Porto, we have had an amazing day and are ready to move there. After a few days of travel logistical headaches and the like it was wonderful to get to a place that was so welcoming, interesting, beautiful and relaxing.

The Porto Train Station

Before Porto, we were in Barcelona. It is not an understatement to say that Barcelona was a stop on our journey that I had been looking forward to for months. Since I visited Barcelona once before in 2005, I knew that the city personifies so many attributes that I admire, being incredibly international, melding old and new perfectly, super pretty and personifying an unselfconscious coolness that sure seems appealing.

Barcelona

Our plan for the full day we had in one of the coolest cities on earth was a "walkabout". A walkabout, an aboriginal Aussie term, is how we think about a journey that people embark on without a clear plan, taking shape as it evolves. We have co-opted the term for our big days exploring the impressive Euro cities on our itinerary. The Barcelona walkabout did not disappoint.

I must note, we did have a rough plan (this being us) that involved a few Gaudi stops, the beach, the famous street in the old town "Las Ramblas" and the surrounding neighborhood, the Olympic park and the CaxiaForum. I also hoped to check out the Picasso museum, since his work is so interesting and covers a variety of genres, mediums and historical moments. Very luckily, i made it to the museum with about 45 minutes to spare and got to see the impressive collection of early works and the utterly amazing retrospective of more than fifty paintings that re-imagine the famous Velaquez work, "Las Menias". Picasso's 58 piece retrospective takes Las Menias and reworks all or part of it in various color schematics and cubist techniques. It was quite literally spellbinding.

La Familia Sagrada (By Gaudi and still under construction 100 years later)

The highlights for our walkabout day and the evening before included:

Watching the Real Madrid championship league game while enjoying Patatas Bravas, Black Paella (from the squid ink) and other Spanish delights in this great tapas spot in the Garcia neighborhood, the beguiling Parc Guell designed by Gaudi, and Mu's happy and admiring face about how cool the little designer clothes and shoes were in the various boutiques in the old part of the city.




Porto

While Barcelona was great, it felt a bit impersonal. Also, the travel to get to and from Barcelona was off-putting as well. In the end, we actually preferred the city that our train left a few hours ago: Porto. Porto is at the mouth of the Douro river and has a long history of trade. It is one of the economic centers of Portugal and proved to have super cool modern artist, designers, architecture and food. It also helped that we could go out for great dinner for the two of us for 10 Euros instead of 50 Euros. Both Mu and I came away from our (short) time there very impressed and i really encourage anyone thinking about a vacation location to put it under consideration.

Church -- not even a major tourist destination

Why is Porto so awesome?

In short, it melds the old and new worlds seamlessly. One perspective gives you intriguing modern art, hip design and a nightlife of local youth that goes until 6 am without breaking a sweat. The other side of the coin includes classic winding streets, tiled buildings, and gorgeous churches everywhere. The best parts of the city combine both of these, all the while being incredibly friendly and welcoming.

Shopping in Porto :)

Upon reflection, I think this might be the main difference between Barcelona and Porto. In Barca, it was hard in such a short visit to find anything that seemed unique or discovered. In Porto, that happened on an hourly basis --

-eating lunch at a taverna where the owners grilled my deliciously seasoned salmon out on the street while they ate their own saturday afternoon lunch)




-visiting a sweet gallery hosting a photography exhibit of a woman who went to Lapland for a week by her self in the dead of winter and took haunting pictures at -25 degrees celsius;

-wandering around the "Serralves" (Porto's modern art museum and grounds) at dusk on a Friday evening with the place almost to ourselves;




 

-marveling at the views of and from the Se Cathedral;




-stumbling upon a youth art fair with maps of the city over time and the handicrafts of the Portuguese youth in the city...etc .

Porto melded the traditional with the new in a pitch-perfect fashion. As we near Lisboa, i am excited about what the next several days hold and hope that our positive momentum from Porto carries forward. I am sure it will.