Many ports in a (rain)storm

written 11th January

Given the weather, more power shower than rain shower for the first couple of days at least, Will was apparently waiting for an opportunity to shoehorn in this particular bad pun all weekend but unfortunately, circumstances did not conspire in such a way as to allow him to do so - 'any port in the drizzle' isn't quite the same :)  so I promised him I would use it as a blog title and give him the credit...

It has also been commented already that there were apparently seven (I didn't count them) references to Port in a post supposedly not about port but as we are in Porto in Portugal, it really is unavoidable... :)  and as we took full advantage of every port drinking opportunity, I now consider myself something of an expert on the matter :)

There are many, many port wine lodges in Vila Nova da Gaia, most of whom offer tours of their cellars and tastings for various fees ranging from free to €3-4.  Unfortunately we only had time for two, Taylors which was free and Sandeman's which we got heavily discounted from €4 to €1 on a combined ticket from the Palacio da Bolsa.  And honestly, the Taylors' tour was far far better.

Here are some things I didn't know about Port:

The wine itself is made from grapes grown in the Douro valley several 100kms from Porto

Douro valley table wine found itself in Britain during the 17th century when King Charles II banned the import of french wines and his portuguese wife made Portugal the obvious choice for alternative supply.

Douro Valley wine doesn't travel well, so the British sailors added brandy to it before the voyage, which is the origins of the drink we now know as Port, although the brandy is now added much earlier in the process.

The Douro valley is the oldest demarcated wine region in the world, and the only one where the wine is aged in a different place from that where the grapes are grown.

It was demarcated in the 18th century to protect the quality (and therefore the price!) of the wine and also to ensure that only the best wine was exported - thus protecting the reputation of Portuguese wine worldwide (some should tell that theory to the makers of blue nun... ;) )  Ironically, given the popularity of Port, one of the things the demarcation legislated against, was the addition of spirits and fruit juices to inferior table wine to imitate the taste, texture and colour or better wine. 

Only Port made with grapes from the Douro valley and aged in Porto can be called Port (or have any reference to the word port on its label) and it was protected following a lengthy court case in Britain, pretty much as soon as there were laws under which such a case could be brought.

Although Port is called Port after Porto, it is actually all aged and shipped from Vila Nove da Gaia on the south bank of the Douro, a separate city although part of the same municipality, where export taxes were, and stll are, lower.

There are three main types of Port; Tawny (which comes further subdivided into Tawny, Fine Tawny, 10 or 20 year old varieties), Ruby and Vintage.

Port wine making is far, far more complicated than normal wine making although the initial process is similar - grow grapes, pick grapes, crush grapes, ferment grapes - but with port, the fermentation process - the conversion of the natural sugars into alcohol - is halted artificially early by the addition of neutral spirits so the wine is sweeter and also more alcoholic than table wine.

Once the fermentation process is complete, the port is left to settle for 6 months in the vineyard before being transported to the wine lodge to age.  This used to be done by boat (special boats called rabelos which are now only used for tourist river trips), until the river was dammed in the early 60's and is now done in metal tankers which is better for the wine quality anyway.  To ensure that the quality of the demarcation is protected, a member of the Port Authority must seal the tanker at the vineyard, travel with it and unseal it again at the lodge.

The master winemaker will decide what sort of port each harvest will be used for.  Initially, all the port is aged in large oak barrels in the lodge (20,000l+) but a harvest which is considered good enough to be a vintage is bottled fairly quickly and then left to age in the bottle for a minimum of 17 years.  It must display the year of the harvest on the bottle and is unfiltered so must be decanted on opening.  Once opened, it is best consumed within 24 hours (we were told this in Sandemans, shortly before a video about Port which was prefaced by a lengthy "consume alcohol responsibly and in moderation" public health warning!) as it will not keep in the decanter.  Port lodges will aim for vintages every year but in reality will only achieve one every 3-4 harvests.

Late Bottle Vintages (LBV) are apparently the bread and butter for companies like Taylors (who are one of the only companies who only make Port, all the others also make Douro table wine - same grapes, different process).  These are not as exceptional as proper Vintage but are still made with grapes from the same harvest, and must display the year of harvest and year of bottling on the lable.   They are aged for up to six years in the barrels before bottling, do not age further in the bottle, and can be open for 8 weeks or so before losing any quality.

Tawny Port ages longer in the barrel and the resulting oxidisation give it the golden colour.  Although it is called "10 year old" or "20 year old" port, this doesn't actually refer to the age of the actual wine within it as tawny port is made from a blend of different harvests from many years.  Taylors' oldest wine in the barrel is from 1934 and this is added into the blends for 20 year old port. 

There are strict characteristics laid down by the Port Authority as to what constitutes a 10 or 20 year old port (colour, tastes, alcohol level, sugar level etc etc) so it is the master wine makers job to blend lots of different harvests together the achieve this.  It is initially aged in large barrels then blended and decanted into smaller barrels to age, which are all kept in a 'lot', a group of barrels labelled a a particular type.

Periodically, it is tested, drained out of the little barrels into a big bucket to oxidise further and then returned to the big barrels so it is all fully mixed together.  This process can happen several times until it reaches all the right criteria and the wine is filtered at each stage so once it is ready, it is bottled and sent out ready to drink so it does not need to be decanted and will not get any better by keeping it.  Thus a 20 year old tawny from a company like Taylors should always taste the same, no matter what year it was bottled.



Ruby port is the youngest and reddest and is only aged for a couple of years before it is bottled and ready to drink.  It ages in the big barrels so does not get much contact with the wood or the air which gives it its fresh redness.

To ensure an uninterrupted supply of consistent quality port, each wine lodge is only allowed to bottle a third of its stock in any one year to  ensure it is never affected by a bad harvest.  In 1999 for example, Taylor's entire harvest had to be destroyed but the company still bottled and shipped out fresh supplies of port that year.

Port wine is traditionally red, but white port was created in the 1930's to fill the gap in the British apperitif market left during the spanish civil war when sherry wasn't easily available.  A couple of years ago, in an attempt to make a Port an all year round drink rather than a christmas/winter log fire drink, a couple of enterprising companies created rose port, to be enjoyed on the rocks, in the sun.  It proved popular so they forced the Port Authorities to accept it as an official Port variety and now most companies make it.

There, now you know as much about Port as I do!

As I say, we only had time for two tours; Sandemans and Taylors.  Sandemans, which is down on the quayside and one of the first ones you come to, was a large tour group, a bit like a tourist conveyor belt

and although the tasting was free (the tour was one of the more expensive however) the port wasn't the nicest we had all weekend.

Although, saying that, the free exhibition about the history of the Sandeman's disinctive emblem - the man in the black spanish hat (representing Sandeman's sherry business) and the black cloak (the Coimbra undergraduate's cloak representing the Port) holding a glass of port - one of the very first brand logos (from back when brand actually meant hot iron burn mark on a barrel), their battle to make advertising something one did (rather than seeming cheap and desperate) and their involvement in the court case to protect the word "Port" against cheap imitators was very interesting.

Taylors tour however is free, but very out of the way so we were the only people in our tour with a really knowledgeable guy who knew his stuff and was more than happy to answer our many questions.

The setting was less theatrical than Sandemans (tour guide dressed in the hat and cloak and moodily lit cellar) but it was definitely a working lodge with port wine oxidising in buckets and everything.

I think the tastings were charged by the glass, but as we had had a meal in their restaurant beforehand -

the absolute finest of fine dining that I think we have ever had, anywhere, and with a fabulous terrace view out over Porto, the river and the bridge -







we got one free glass of white port before lunch and a glass of LBV 2003 after our tour, which probably should have been served with the coffee but we wanted to go do the tour.

Unfortunately we had to cut short the tasting at the end as we had already got tickets for Sandemans and the parents had a plane to catch which was a bit of a shame but we weren't to know we had already had the best.

We liked our LBV so much that before heading to the beach the following day, we navigated our way back there in the van - through the one way system and down a couple of streets only inches wider than our wing mirrors! - to spend our roadside repairs port money on a bottle, so we have a much more upmarket tipple than our usual in stock now!

My advice (assuming you want it), go to Porto, try as many different Ports as you can - we also liked Porto Cruz, especially the white one, and another one we got a free tasting of in a bar on the quayside but can't remember the name of - try several port wine lodges but make sure you save your pennies (or take your parents!) for lunch at Taylors and prepare to spend the rest off the afternoon supping port in their gentlemans club tasting lounge - life doesn't get much finer than that!

I like Port - I believe this is already apparent :)

Pretense, Pretension and a Puzzling Lack of Public Information

written 11th January

We did the proper tourist thing in Porto and crammed as many museums, sights and attractions as we could in between cafes, coffee and port drinking... :)  On the first day, we had Porto cards which promised free transport and free or discounted entrance to things - as it turns out, we walked to most places and then found that a lot of them were free at the weekend or on sunday mornings.  They do always sound like a good idea but to get your money's worth, you do have to be quite busy all day :)  Still, it made things easier on the first day when you don't know where things are or what there is and we had both tram and funicular fun out of them which was all good!

Here are some of the things we did, in case you think about going or doing, but don't take my word for it, always better to go and make your own mind up :)  but, as a warning, they were all characterised by one thing -  complete lack of information telling you about what is there which might encourage you to go in the first place, and, once you're actually there, any information as to how to get in or how to find whatever it is they don't want you to see!

Ribeira Quay District

Porto is famous for its old town, clinging to the banks of the river and its jumble of higgledy piggledy crooked streets and houses, festooned with washing.

It is apparently mainly rent controlled housing which explains the run down air as there is no incentive for landlords to do much upkeep, but it is very atmospheric and definately worth a wander

- you also come across some very odd and unexpected things, like the tiled walls - a particular feature of many buildings in the city, not just in the Ribeira,

bits of random art - like this big cube fountain we found, and the figure of the naked lady seemingly considering jumping from a third floor balcony....  very odd :)

Bridges
There are six bridges which span the Douro river between Porto and Vila Nova da Gaia on the south bank of the river.

The iconic one in the centre is the Dom Luis I bridge which has road running on the bottom level and the metro balanced on the top of the single span arch.  There has been a bridge in that location for centuries, starting with the mediaeval floating pontoon bridge, which was replaced by a road suspension bridge and finally the current bridge, when they wanted to get the railway over the river as well.  It was designed by a student of Gustave Eiffel and is very similar in design to the bridge further up the river that Eiffel did design.  You can walk over both the top and bottom level of it and the views are fantastic - although once on the other side, it is not at all obvious how you get down from there to the port wine lodges which are the attraction of Vila Nova da Gaia - my advice, walk over the top, tack your pics, walk back over the top, down the steps and then walk back over the bottom level - it will be quicker!

The only other bridge of note (or rather that I know anything about!) is the newest one, the Arrabida bridge, which is the furthest down stream towards the sea.  Built in the 1960's it carried the pay motorway on southwards to Coimbra and Lisbon and at the time it was built, it was the largest concrete bridge in the world - so now you know!

Clerigos tower:

The first thing we did with our Porto card was climb the Clerigos tower (50% discount) which, on a hill above the old town, has 200-odd steps which circle round the inside the tower, up past the carillion - bells with a piano-like keyboard - getting steadily narrower until you pop out on the platform at the top for fab views over the town, the river and out to the sea.  Worth doing on a clear day!





The church was nice too, with an altar that looked like a wedding cake and a really creepy Jesus, lying, Snow White-like in a glass coffin, draped in a net curtain that looked like cobwebs with all bloody wounds meticulously painted in - very, seriously creepy.

Museum of Port Wine:
A freebie with the Porto card and unexpectedly not about the wine at all (although to be fair, it did state this upfront in its "mission statement" - why do museums feel they have to justify their existence by spending their first exhibit talking about themselves??), but about the city and the impact of the wine on it.  It also had a display of the evolution of the wine bottles, from small, mishapen ones initially used just to transport wine from barrel direct to table, through to the rackable, stackable ones we have today.  Very interesting but not sure I would have wanted to have paid full price for what was there - although I did learn some things which shall be imparted to you, dear readers, in due course :)  and it had some old pottery stuff and some archeological stuff to keep my mother entertained and was dry and a good place to watch the rain bucketing down and the trams passing - so my father was happy too :)

City Park:

The city park, up at the north end of the beaches of Foz, was lovely.  Built on reclaimed marshland, between the city and the new port at Leixoes, it has lakes, wooded bits, grassy bits, fake ruins, tennis courts, five-a-side pitches

and some sort of water based science park effort (which was shut) and is lovely, easy and relaxed - honestly like a walk in the park :)







Cheese Castle

Yes, this is actually its name!  well whatever the portuguese is for cheese castle anyway.  It is apparently called that becase the rocks it is built on look like cheese (or so they say, couldn't see it oursleves but maybe it is not the sort of cheese we get in the UK...)  couldn't go in as it was shut, and like many tourist attractions, there were no indications as to opening times if any.  But is was quite a nice castle to look at :)

Palacio da Bolsa (Stock Exchange)
This was an unexpected treat and wasn't on the original to do list (and reasonably expensive at €6 so definitely not on our budget list) but it was really fascinating.  Again, no information about what there is there to help encourage you to part with you cash, but what you get is a guided tour around the building - not a stock exchange in today's sense of the word, more a building established to ensure that the businessmen had a place to meet, it is still active to a certain extent, with a committee and an annually elected president -

which is full of beautiful and surprising rooms such as the small meeting room off the main room, where as you walk in, all the paintings facing you are of demure young ladies but if you sit at the desk facing the door, they're all nudes - I bet late attendance at those meeting is not a problem - they'd all be fighting to get the best seats ;)  There is also a room with the portraits of the last 6 monarchs of Portugal (it became a republic in the early 20th century with the last king coming to the throne aged only 18 and after only a few years', being exiled (or exiling himself) to Britain where he died, childless, in the 1950's).  The main thing about that room is the wall panels which look to be wood and marble but as in fact all fake and made of plaster - we assume because labour was cheaper than raw materials - and it is astonishingly good, even close up it is had to tell - no pics allowed unfortunately.  The final room was the best though, the Arabian room, which is a vast ballroom of a building where the walls are covered in arabic style patterns in blue and gold leaf and passages from the koran and the words God save the Queen (or something similar) in arabic in raised and gold leafed text - not sure why as Portugal is a very catholic country - it apparently took 18 years to complete and it simply stunning.  It is also the room where, on 2nd May 1992, the treaty of Oporto was signed which set up the European Economic Area (EEA) with effect from 1st January 1993 bringing closer together 19 countries and 400 million people (or so the plaque says - again, something I didn't know!

An unexpected bonus at the end of the tour was the free Douro wine tasting in a funky modern room, with a very knowledgeable girl serving and some "arty" posters about wine.  My particular favourite, in justification of my penchant for a glass of the old Vinho, was this:

"Let us celebrate life!  Here is a way to make our ideas more dynamic, to let joyfulness flow and to widen the dimension of human existence.  If all that is good about life leads to celebration and renews our motivation to do me and to do it better, then let us drink to the soul of the Wines of Portugal for we share with them the passion that gives us life."

I'll drink to that!

There was also one about sparkling wines being like golden clouds which make us dream and which enjoy being opened with care, without a pop, instead with an elegant and smooth sigh, or some such twaddle - our cheap spanish fizz is far too cheap for that!

I also didn't know, that far from protecting the cork trees from extinction, the new trend for screw caps and plastic corks is actually making it worse as cork trees need to grow for 40 years before they will produce cork, and then only do so every seven years but if the cork is not stripped from them, the trees die - so bring back real cork I say!

Transport and Communications Museum:
Probably the most frustrating due to lack of information!  Free on weekends, it is housed in the old customs building, which was built to ensure the correct taxation of the wine exported from the Douro but was late in conception and by the time if was built, trade from the river has all but dried up as the river became increasingly silted up, it was unsuitable for the modern method of transporting good in big containers which required a road or rail network and the new port of Leixoes took over all the good trade and was 5kms up the coast.  It is a massive, well proportioned building which fortunately they decided not to just pull down, but it is sadly lacking in purpose or calling, other than the odd exhibition or concert and the Transport Museum which is run by the Portuguese vintage automobile club and is the hardest thing to find - even when you have got through the main entrance to the building! We weren't sure what to expect and it turned out to be a varied and seemingly unconnected collection of cars of various ages and nationalities, including the first car ever to be driven in Portugal - a french Panhard and Levassor which on its first trip into Portugal ran over and killed a donkey - bloody french drivers! not an auspicious start to the motoring highlife in a new country!  The cars were very shiny and there were some information panels which probably would have been interesting about the history of motoring and its impact on society etc etc but they were all in portuguese and the effort of trying to understand them was just too much - which was a shame. 

Two video exhibits did make the whole expedition worthwhile though.  The first was a 1950's Cadillac publicity film which showed a very correct, brylcreamed and be-suited business man working in the back of his car with all modern conveniences in this mobile office, including a record player, a slot in the door for your briefcase and umbrella, an in-car telephone and a swivelling passenger seat with a fold down desk and typwriter for his  perfectly coiffured secretary - everything the business man on the move could want!

The second was called 'Clive Alive' and was a car safety video from Volvo told by a crash test Dummy called Clive - apparently crash test dummies live longer at volvo! - who went round crashing into things and leaping out of the car whooping with glee after every smash.  As well as ably demonstrating all the myriad of safety features in volvos, we also saw Clive's budding romance with a female crash test dummie which led to marriage and a romantic honeymoon jump off the Eiffel tower - thats the kind of guy Clive is...  oddly, after the credits, in the final, more recent, crash test scene he was single again - what happened in Paris, obviously stayed in Paris.... :)  honestly, it must be somewhere on you-tube and is well worth the effort of finding it for sheer madness and entertainment value.

Photographic Museum
The museum with the least prior information - again a shame - and no information at the door as to what exhibits you might find if you go in!  We only went in as it was free (all the time) and filled an hour between the end of coffee drinking time and the beginning of looking for a restaurant time and we could have done with longer!  It is housed in the former gaol building and when you go in, you get two whole side of A4 about the history of the building - the cells are named after male and female saints for men and women respectively, with big communal cells on the ground floor and smaller, more comfortable cells higher up which prisoners could pay to upgrade to - but nothing about what there is in it now!  The ground floor rooms were full of really old sepia photos of places in spain and portugal, including lots of those double pictures you put in the really old 3D viewer things (but unfortunately no 3D viewer to view them with) then upstairs there were several rooms full of all sorts of cameras from the really onld one, to spy camera - real and novelty - and specialist cameras.  Would have been really good with more time.  We also missed at least one other exhibition - islands or something - as it was closing time.  shame

Cathedral
quite nice but nothing special, after Burgos and Santiago, most churches we have since seen have been a bit 'meh' shrug.  Cloister was quite good though and had various  tiled chapels, a fancy sacristry and a treasure room, including some saint's tooth in a silver pincer.

Serralves Foundation Park and Contemporary Art Museum
This is the pretense and pretension bit.
Out of town - another van day out - and on the way to the beach, this was again somewhere we probably would not have gone with out the parents' influence and we ended up spending most of sunday there.  Arriving mid morning - free entry 10-2 on sundays! - we found free audio guides to the park and buildings  and set off on the 90 min guided walk.

The park is full of "art" - the iconic giant trowel being the best,

the holes dug round a tree and covered with glass sheets, entitled "Being tree and art" being the dullest, the nylon thread wrapped between trees which was "untitled" being the laziest and the three rows of four bus shelter seats which swing round from the center (also untitled) being the most fun

- at least we assume this last was the art, it was marked in about the right location on the map but having no title gave no clue as to whether this was art or just mucking about...

Having appreciated the "striking, highly accentuated verticality of the sugargums" (a tree lined path where the most striking thing, given the plaque, was the lack of straightness of the trees...)

we found ourselves in the pink art deco palace of the park's villa (surrounded by parterres of particularly fine laterality and paralleity - ok I am making that bit up, there were some hedges and water channels ;)





although you were supposed to appreciate how, as you approached the water feature, "the seemingly unbroken plane of the water, flowing away from the house was dismantled before your eyes into its multiplicity of constituent levels" - it was that sort of place).

The villa was largely unfurnished but a beautiful place with large, high ceilinged, well proportioned rooms and all the little art deco touches like door handles, light switches and a massive pink marble bath - not been that fussed about art deco before but that has changed my mind.

Onwards to the lake, reflecting pool











the working farm (a "staged descent into picturesque bucolic rurality" and an opportunity to make our own "art"...), through the scented garden, the tennis court (with a stop for coffee), the rose garden with pergola and sundial and round to the holm oak clearing (and another piece of "art" which was two big metal walls at either end of the foot path entitled "walking is measuring" where do they get this stuff from??)  As you can tell, we were well set up for the actual contempoary art inside the museum... :)

The museum is divided into several rooms, most of them being dedicated to the photographic work of one man and basically full of display cases full of his published collections with cases full of many copies of the same book, just open at different pages, with bigger versions on the wall (including a corridor with a warning of sexually explicit content that "people who might be easily offended" should avoid - random mix of pix ranging from a woman fingering herself to an empty sofa, gotta watch those sofas, red is particularly offensive... -  and some of those odd films, like you get in the Tate Modern of things like 72mins of a video camera balanced on a dashboard of a car on a free way with a bad road surface, and a really slow motion film of an american tourist in hong kong having her picture taken with a wax work of George Bush.  Call me a philistine but it was all just a bit random and I think I could just print my flickr photostream out on shiney paper and they would be as good - sorry if I offend anyone but I truly believe that sometimes the real "art" is persuading people to buy this stuff - although, from the number of his books in glass cases, it is possible that the museum bought the whole print run...

Onwards and downwards, appreciating the "transition through time and horizontal and vertical dimensionality" (the stairs in the corridor) leading to the "invisible portal which seemlessly connects yet separates one from wider world" (the window) and the "journey though enclosed space whilst staying in one place" (the lift) - yes yes, I am actually making this up but mum was still listening to the audio guide and I think it was telling her very similar things...

Downstairs was different pieces of "art", including a crashed jag, upside down on its roof with the radio blaring, a video of a bloke whose "art" is walking, alone (although with a cameraman) through deserts and occasionally stopping to rearrange rocks into circles or lines and then moving on - the walking is apparently also "art" - an unrecorded journey through the desert which only he will experience and one of the things he likes most about it is that his "art" is both permanent and fleeting, existing only for him at the time of day and in the light conditions under which he sees it (apart from that video camera) - strangely compelling viewing, if only to listen to the arrogance of the man!

The bit I most appreciated was the small installation about photography which was a collection of quotes including:

"I want to reproduce objects as they are, or as they would be, even if I didn't exist" Taine

"Photography cannot record abstract ideas" Encyclopedia Britannica, which makes a complete mockery of all the self important pictures in the upstairs galleries..

and my personal favourite piece of philosophy which justifies the 256mb of photos I seem to be able to take every day (can't find the bigger sd card, which is probably not a bad thing as some editing is forced to happen on the fly)
 "In my opinion, you cannot say you have thoroughly seen something until you have a photograph of it."  Emile Zola  - Pics or it didn't happen!

At the end of it all, Will found a big self justificatory bit of twaddle which said that since the 1960's, a new contemporary art movement has emerged in which it is not the execution of "art" which is the important thing, but the concept and many great pieces of "art" exist only in their creators' minds and are never realised, which means that even those who cannot paint, draw or sculpt can now fufil their dream of becoming "artists" - really??  I mean, really???

It was a good day out though :)

We also didn't do several things (believe it or not from the long list above!), including;

the tram museum (apparently a fine collection of trams and free travel on actual trams for 4 hours included in your ticket price.

St Franciso's church, apparently the must-see church in Porto for its intricate gold leaf covered carvings - the parents went and said it was good, but we are a bit "churched out" at the moment so spent our money on coffee and port instead :)

All in all, Porto was a fine city and a great mini-break destination!

Jolly holidays

written 6th January 2010

Porto is the known as the unvanquished city and the capital of the north.  It sprawls on the northern bank of the Douro river, out to its estuary at Foz and on someone elses tourist euro, we have eaten well, drunk well, visited things we wouldn't have visited and generally had a lovely holiday - thank you Daddy!





Here are some things I didn't know:

Porto, originally a celtic settlement called Cale which pre-dated the Romans, is one of the oldest cities in Europe.

It's Roman name, Portus Cale is the origin of the eventual name of the country of Portugal, although the city has never been its capital

Through the marriage of the first king of Portugal with the house of Lancaster and the Treaty of Windsor in 1386, England and Portugal have the oldest international alliance in the world.

As a sea-faring nation, Portugal's empire rivalled that of England, and Henry the Navigator, who later went on to discover places like Brazil, Goa, Mozambique and Macao, was born in Porto.

The citizens of Porto are known as Tripeiros (Tripe eaters) as during a sea campaign to Africa, the people of the town gave all the meat to the sailors, leaving themselves with only tripe to eat.

I like Port, a lot, a lot a lot :)

Our journey to Porto was largely uneventful.  As Will wanted to fettle on the laptop, I was allowed the drive, the first time I have done so on foreign soil.  I had been quite happy driving Jules around in the UK, right from the first day we bought it when it was a choice of driving home down the A14 in the rain in the midget which had broken windscreen wipers or my new and unknown van which had working windscreen wipers (of sorts).  I opted for visibility :)  We bonded from the first and all was well, even the left hand drive-ness didn't feel odd (well except for one occasion on my second or third trip out when, having stopped concentrating quite so hard, I put my foot on the clutch to change gear, took my left hand off the wheel to reach for the gear stick, actually reached for the gear stick with my right hand, and suddenly wondered which hand was steering...).

This however was the first time I had driven abroad, largely as we have well defined roles for a reason; I like looking at maps and guide brochures and am reasonably good at planning routes, spotting road signs and parking places and taking pictures out of the windows.  Will likes looking at other cars on the road and is very good at knowing where the edges of the van are, changing lanes in heavy traffic and being calm in a crisis such as Jules unexpectedly stopping or me changing my mind about which way to go at the last minute...  on the whole, it works well this way round :)

Still, I was quite excited to be driving and van and girl were happily as one on the well signposted road, until, that is, we got to near Porto, ran out of obvious road signs and I got scared by two lorries, their grills filling all available rear mirrors, which were gaining fast up a hill on a motorway - at which point we pulled off and Will took over again :)  We also got the satnav out and under its guidance, the quest for the tourist office was the easiest ever!  Armed with a map and the reassurance that the metro station my mother had given us as a landmark to find there hotel was a couple of streets away, we confidently set off, only to find that Porto has the most ridiculous road system we have thus far encountered.  The one way roads were not marked on the map, some of them are only one way at certain times of day - so there are both road signs pointing to places you want to go and signs telling you you can't turn that way -  once off the big road and on the side roads, it is virtually impossible to get back onto the big road, you can only cross it - who designs a road system where you are going down a one way street towards a light controlled junction and you cannot turn right, on to the main road using the light controlled junction???  turn right!! its not even as if we wanted to turn left across the traffic in some road blocking way! - and everywhere, people think that appropriate parking etiquette is to stop, with no warning or signal, and put your hazard lights on, in a road which may or may not be a bus lane and may or may not be one way in the other direction...

still, we found the hotel and the requisite parents and all was well :)  And, with help from my mother, the packing queen, father christmas had also visited (he didn't find us in our little van, presents addressed to "Jules, The Campervan with Daisies on, Europe" and the bbq being on the roof in lieu of a chimmney not being enough guidance for him!)  So we are now equipped for further travels with; LPs for Scandinavia and Eastern Europe, as well as the required phrase books (we just have to actually get there now!); two new china campervan mugs which replace the one of Will's which I broke (an unrequested surprise, apparently I am not allowed to touch them which suits me fine, Will can wash them up :) ); four new plastic campervan mugs, two of ours having inexplicably split when making tea in them (and therefore replaced by Just Kampers, no quibble); new gloves all round (we shall probably loose one of each in due course but we now have plenty to chose from!); the new laptop battery, all the way from china via Hong Kong to Cambridge; the lpg gas adaptor; a whole library worth of books to keep me entertained, christmas cake and chocolate pennies (wouldn't be christmas otherwise!) and 160 tea bags, packed into all available spaces.  I am reasonable sure that tea smuggling is not actually a crime but it is a good job she wasn't stopped by customs as there were clearly far more than could be believably justified as 'for personal consumption' and as they were all sensibly bagged up in little sealy bags to keep them dry, they were all too obviously for dealing by some master criminal, no one would mistake my mother for anyone's mule... ;)  at the present moderated rate of consumption we probably have enough to keep us going until we come home - whenever that might be!

It being late-ish by this point, we parked the van near a nice quiet park near the hotel and set off to find the restaurant recommended by the hotel reception.  From the outside it wasn't promising, looking like a tatty caff as it did, but inside was better, it smelt nice, and as we were seated, we were promised a waiter who spoke english - which he did, after a fashion...  His tactic was to describe the dishes in portuguese, repeating himself more slowly and more loudly until we got it - I know it is an old cliche but it does actually work! - and then to point at what he thought you should have saying "iss good, iss very very good"  until you gave way and agreed with him.   Two portions of octopus and prawn skewers, two protions of bacalhu (portuguese salted cod) with mayonnaise and fried potatoes, four different deserts (one of which, Will's translator programme told us was camel - we think it meant caramel :) ) and a bottle of lovely local wine later, we had to concede that he had indeed been right to insist!

The next day was new years' eve and with the weather forecast indicating showers, so we set off into town in search of Porto cards (one day travel card things with access to museums and other things) and things to see, do and go to. 

As an attempt to stop this being just a long piece of homework enitled "what I did on my holidays", and as we did more than we usually would and  am writing this more days after than I normally would, the sights, museums and monuments will be discussed elsewehere ('Pretense, Pretention and a Puzzling lack of Public Information') for those who might be interested or who might one day go.  Port wine deserves a post all to itself :)  Here are some highlights of the rest:

Thursday (New Year's eve):

After a day wandering round dodging the showers - more power shower than rain shower to be honest! - a couple of museums,

some tram riding,

some funicular fun (it's very clever, world's slowest self-leveling roller coaster, just drops over a steep edge but you would never know!),

some bridge walking

some market (octopus looks much nicer cooked than raw!)

and some fine lunchtime and evening port (got to embrace the lifestyle!), and having eaten early and gone back to the hotel (so the parents could have a little nap - got to help the aged... :) )

we found ourselves heading back out into town in search of fireworks at 11ish.  The streets and metro were surprisingly quiet given the festive occasion and even as we neared the main square where things were supposed to be happening, it wasn't that busy.  It was still crashing down with rain every now and then so most of the way was lined with dark figues huddled under every available shop front or building overhang which was a bit odd to see.

However we got to the square and found the big stage with lights, a cheesey compere and the requisite dancing girls wearing very little.  The music was very "swing your pants" (a target reference for anyone on board who grew up with 80's saturday morning TV - you know what I mean... :) ) but the surrounding audience seemed to like it and be joining in and the occasional rain showers resulted in some seemly ochestrated  umbrella up-ing and down-ing :)  nearing midnight however the sky was clear.

The band stopped surprisingly promptly and everyone was just hanging around when we noticed people suddenly putting ummbrellas up which seemed a bit odd as it was dry, until suddenly the count down begun and everyone popped and fizzed their champagne everywhere - rain of a bubblier kind!  We had bought some horribly cheap Cava to celebrate the occasion but hadn't felt festive enough to drink it before coming out and hadn't thought to bring it as in the UK it would have been confiscated  immediately as a riot hazard, but here in Porto, it was all very jolly, no one was out of control drunk and there was no question of trouble - it was all rather nice.

Fireworks from the top of the town hall were good (although some of them weren't quite aimed right and were bouncing off the clock tower!) but the only "ooh-ing and ahhh-ing came when suddenly the heavens opened again and all the umbrellas went up in one concerted gust - was a lot of fun!  Belated happy  2010 everyone!

Friday:

Anticipating everything being closed, we had  decided to head off out in the van on New Year's day so picked up the parents for a little trip-ette.  A more unlikely pair of van-dwellers you couldn't expect to meet but we packed them in to the back and set off anyway and I think they secretly rather liked it - I mean, with special, one day only, New Year's day sea view tea and coffee on tap, who wouldn't! :)

We had hoped to go to the contemporary art museum but finding that closed and with the new year's sun shining brightly, we headed for the beach instead and found the cheese castle (honestly, that's what it's called see elsewhere for more!) and an odd building called the 'Edifico Transparente', a surprisingly opaque building (largely glass but dirty windows with big steel frames) which we initially mistook to be a gym but which turned out to be one of those "contemporary, free flowing, multi-purpose public spaces, which offers the best of the indoors whilst seemlessly bringing the outside in through the perfect harmony of its the simple contruction, and which is designed to anticipate, meet and excede the needs of today's contemporary beach goers and enhance their whole 'oh I do like to be beside the seaside' experience" or some such designer twaddle :)

It was actually surprisingly nice, and open, so after a wander on the beach to watch the news year's swimmer and see the cheese castle, the open view allowed us to anticipate the coming rain storm so we ducked in for some lunch.





Planning to eat in the evening, this was only supposed to be a snack lunch so we ordered two Francesinas and two mozarella salads between us - with some delicious Super Bock beer (apparently the only thing to accompany such a meal according to the waiter, another of those brilliant "I will tell you what you want until you agree with me" types).  Like salt cod, francesina was also in mum's illustrated guide book as "a typical thing you should eat" - who are we to argue! - and is the ultimate in toasted sandwich; pork sausgae, roasted port, ham between two slices of toast, topped with prawns (in this version) topped with melted cheese, covered in piquant tomato sauce - looks unpromising, is actually surprisingly delicious! and filling!

To walk off lunch, we headed to the city park across the way for a nice long walk and then set off once more in search of a sunset, lighthouse and cup of tea end to the day at the other end of the beach where Douro meets sea.

The roads were surprisingly rush hour like busy but we managed to score a brilliant sunset, light house view parking spot and set off once more for a walk up the breakwater.  The waves were fantastic, crashing up five or six feet up above the wall much to the shreiking amusement of all who were trying to either dodge or photograph them - lots of wet, salt water fun all round!


To avoid the traffic, we walked to the actual light house - old, out of use, shut and soon to be the recipient of some restoration grant money but not yet, and decided to sit in the van for a cup of tea whilst everyone else went home - or at least this was the plan, until a little battered white van pulled rapidly in behind us and stuck its bonnet up.  Will looked at them looking at it for a while but was unable to resist going to have a look, only to discover that the problem was that the hose at the bottom of the radiator had come off and therefore all the water had drained out.  It didn't look like the van had ever seen much mechanic time and the guy looking at it also didn't seem that handy (he sent his wife for water to refill it and she came back with two 500ml bottles of mineral water - bless.) so Will stepped in and took over operations.  They didn't speak english (although we later discovered they had a little french) and the hose, which fortunately only needed re-attaching, was in a really awkward place but they didn't bat an eyelid at some foreigner turning up with a bunch of tools who started taking panels off their car...  Between dad and Will, and after about an hour of cursing, the hose was reattached and it was discovered that the fan never worked anyway so there was no point in hanging around and running the engine to get it up to temperature (when the fan comes on) to check everything was ok as you would never know (probably the reason why the hose came off in the first place!).  They tootled off and hadn't broken down again whilst they were still in sight so all good!  As well as liking to help people and to get his hands dirty, Will is offering to help anyone we see with car trouble in the hope of building up our Breakdown Karma (or Busma as I am calling it) in the hope that someone will do the same for us if (when) we need it.  They also pressed enough money into Will's hands to by us a nice bottle of port and when we were finally ready to leave, there was no longer any traffic - brilliant!

Saturday:
Guided walk round town day.  We had bought a book with 4 self guided walks on different themes (mediaeval, baroque, neo-clasical and tiles or some such architectural things) but on discovering that they were all overlapping, Will had spent an hour in the bar the previous night transposing all the points on the one map and joining the dots :)  and so a nice and not too wet day was had seeing things which are described elsewhere - particular unexpected highlights, for those who don't fancy reading elsewhere, being Palace de Bolsa (stock exchange) with unexpected free wine tasting and the "Clive Alive" volvo car safety video as told by a particularly chirpy devil-may-care volvo crash test dummy called Clive.  Apparently "Crash test dummies live longer a Volvo" - you-tube it, it must be there, its brilliant!

Sunday:

Sunday was another van day out for all the family, free entry to contemporary art museum and park day and was a very good zero euros worth of fun and somewhere we probably wouldn't have gone without the parents - although I am still not sure about contemporary "art"- see elsewhere for full art fun - and some walking in town in the dark ful

Monday:
Port wine tasting day - a post in itself :)

The parents had to fly home monday night and after originally considering another day in the city and some more port lodges, we decided that actually we had had enough holiday city fun - being very different from our usual, no timescales, don't have any 'return home' deadlines in which to cram everything you want to do, pleasing only ourselves, van lifestyle, it did actually feel very holiday like - in a good way! - but you know when you come back to the office after a good but busy holiday doing and seeing things and you bring in your gift biscuits and tell everyone you've come back to work for a rest and really you need a holiday just to recover from the last holiday...  we went to the beach... :)

more to follow...