Afternoon seeing the sites of Porto

After the wonderful morning with Rui in the VW, we decided to revisit some of the monuments and points of interest he had pointed out to us. We first went to the Igreja das Carmelitas and Carmo Church that were separated by a skinny (one metre wide) house built in between, so that there could be no contact between the nuns in the Carmelitas church and the monks in the Carmo church. The house is called the Casa Escondido (hidden house), and is the skinniest house in Porto if not Portugal.

We also wandered through the Praça da Cordoaria which is a park filled with trees that have misshapen and bulbous trunks, due to some type of disease, but were left to grow. They look quite interesting and magical - Rui had referred to it as the Harry Potter forest.

We then walked over to the old prison, which is now the photography museum. There is a statue out the front of two lovers embracing - they are Camilo Castelo Branco and his lover, Ana Plácido, a married women who would later become his wife. Camilo was imprisoned for copulating with a married woman. While incarcerated he wrote the novel “Love of Perdition” in 2 weeks, which became a Portuguese “Romeo and Juliet”, and is still read in school to this day. I bought a copy from the Livraria Lello bookshop, and can’t wait to read it.Read more