Spain & Portugal Pilgrimage

We had a dreadful night sleep, because our air-con machine was so ineffective that our room was sweltering. We had to open the windows, which made little difference other than to hear distant dogs barking all night & a domestic somewhere at 3am.

After breakfast, we packed up & drove to Tui. We parked & walked back to the Cathedral. I approached the man at the audio guided tour desk and requested “2 please”. He replied “What for?”
“What do you mean what for? The audio guided tour”.
“Oh ok, what language?”
This bloke was taking the p*ss. I paid him €5 each for our admission & in return he gave us just a scrap of paper with a q code on it for us to download the audio guide to our phones. This was not a good start.

Tui Cathedral is actually a castle cathedral and the walls are adorned with battlements and fortifications, some dating back to the year 1120 AD when building work first commenced.

The guide tour was actually quite good, but with maybe a little bit too much information for some! As a mini protest I played my audio guide at almost full volume as we walked around the hushed cathedral. The tour lasted 50 minutes & then we departed for Portugal.

Our first stop in Portugal was Ponte de Lima to see it’s famous medieval bridge for which the town is named after.

Ponte de Lima is one of the oldest towns in Portugal (founded on 4 March 1125), it was historically significant as a Roman settlement on the road from Braga to Santiago de Compostela and Lugo, and the first place in Portugal getting a municipal charter. Today, it is a significant stop on the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route.

Ponte de Lima was a lovely looking old town. We parked in the free riverside car park & took a walk along the river bank & over the granite bridge with it’s 14 arches and dates back to 1368. It was a very pleasant interlude on our way to Porto.

We then headed west to the city of Viana do Castelo described as ‘the gem of Northern Portugal and exemplifies all of the finest aspects of the Costa Verde region. There are pristine beaches, dramatic natural scenery, and a city rich in history and Portuguese culture’. We didn’t find this, but managed to end up in the port & industrial area with a horrible little beach so we decided to move on.

We drove the 100 kilometres down the coast to Porto arriving just after 3pm. (Note: Portugal is an hour behind Spain). It was a short 3 minute walk to our next accommodation, but was up a very steep hill all the way. We arrived at Sao João Novo Apartments where we met Carlos who let us in. Carlos gave us a map and very kindly spent quite some time marking it with all the places he felt we should visit; restaurants & bars he recommended, even what food & beer we should sample. He was very informative & we were very grateful.

At 4pm we headed out & climbed northwards to Jardim da Cordoaria, a nice little park, but we were too thirsty to appreciate. We hunted for a cafe for a beer & settled on Pastel de Bacalhau ‘Portugal Experience’. Instead of beer it only sold port and some sort of croquette which they said only contained cheese, so……….when in Rome. We bought 2 ports & 2 croquettes for an extortionate €25 & sat down to enjoy. FFS, they tasted of fish & when I looked at the sign in the window it clearly described them as a ‘Codfish cake with Serra de Estrela cheese’. I did well to swallow the first mouthful, then scooped the cheese out of the middle. Jackie took one mouthful & decided they were too stodgy for her. So we just sat and enjoyed our nice, but now very very expensive glass of port. Not exactly thirst quenching!!

Next stop was the Lello Bookstore, considered to be one of the most beautiful libraries in the world. The store has an excellent neo-gothic façade, where you can see two figures painted by José Bielman, representing the Science and the Art. This facade is apparently only surpassed by its stunning interior, designed by Xavier Esteves, with a marvellous stairway and the wooden walls & stained glass ceiling are also very exquisite.

Rumour has it that J.K. Rowling’s inspiration to write Harry Potter has begun in Porto, particularly at this library. The well-known writer lived in Porto for 10 years working as an English teacher in the early 1990s and she used to drink a cup of coffee at the second floor of Lello’s bookstore. There are indeed great similarities between Lello’s bookstore staircase and the one described in Hogwarts.

I didn’t know all this information when we got there, so we were surprised to see there was over an hours queue of people waiting to go in. We decided against it. Instead we walked through the square to the town hall, then headed to Mecado do Bolhao, the indoor market. It was full of brightly coloured stalls selling, I’m told, only Portuguese food & plant products. It was very attractive on the eye & spotlessly clean. The only downside was that it didn’t feel like a proper market, but more a tourist attraction with tourist prices to match. We didn’t buy anything.

We walked on down past Cafe Majestic with it’s ornate exterior & interior. Again a massive queue of tourists outside emphasising the power of the Guide Book. Instead we continued on to a restaurant called Brasao, recommended by Carlos particularly for their Franceshina (a Portuguese National dish). It didn’t open to 7pm, 90 minutes away, so we located a nearby bar for a cold beer & to watch the world go by.

The bar & area we were in was interesting, probably described as slightly seedy. On the table next to us was this horrible scrawny looking young drug dealer with his 2 henchmen. He was very skittish, ordering the waiters about & arguing with people on his phone. They left in a top of the range BMW. In the area we also saw numerous emaciated smack heads & several prostitutes trying to drum up trade on the street corners.

At 7.10pm, we returned to Brasao & was surprised to learn we needed a reservation. We were allowed in when we confirmed we would free the table up by 8.30pm. The restaurant was on two floors and felt very posh indeed. We had originally planned to share a Franceshina & have a couple of beers, but it didn’t seem appropriate. Instead Jackie ordered the Franceshina, which the majority of diners were ordering. I ordered a rump steak with mushroom sauce & a bottle of red to wash it down. My steak was perfect, but sadly Jackie wasn’t so made up with her Franceshina, which she described as a huge toasted sandwich containing a big slice of beef and slivers of ham, coated in runny cheese, sitting in a pool of sauce & to top it off with a fried egg on top.

We ended the evening with a stroll along the Douro River, with it’s bars and street entertainers, before calling it a night.

Song of the Day : Running Up That Hill by Placebo.Read more