Heading To Porto

Our train from Lisbon took us along the Portuguese coast to Porto, Portugal’s oldest city and the nation’s namesake. This was a local train so many stops were necessary: Pombal, Nazarré, Granja do Ulmiero Alfarellos and Coimbra. It sometimes rattled and screeched on unsure rails, and at other times rolled so seamlessly you wouldn't know rails existed at all.

Prosperous and scrubbed is the way you would describe some towns, others were crowded with trash, unkept parklets and warehouses; some are industrial, others pastoral. Mostly the views from any train passing through urban areas are notoriously devoid of beauty. It's the green open spaces that catch your eye: the sleepy sheep that seem drunk in their corrals or great swaths of green farm lands, or, far off, the sea and it's crashing surf.

By the time we arrived in Porto's Campamha train station, it had begun to rain – a steady drizzle. Passengers poured at speed out of the coaches and onto the clogged platform. We ascended the escalator into the station itself crammed with people, bags, and umbrellas. Since we were in the station, our goal was to find the international ticket office and straighten out the tickets we wanted to arrange that would get us across Spain (we crossed Spain a year earlier four times - more on that in future dispatches). This wasn’t easy because despite the Eurozone and thanks to ubiquitous rail strikes (we encountered them in Portugal, Spain, France and Germany) the Eurail Pass system can be complex and frustrating.

We found a small man, hair plastered across his egg-shaped pate, patiently awaiting us behind the plexiglass. He diligently surveyed our digital ducats through frameless glasses. We had purchased Eurail passes that would give us 15 travel days within the next two months anywhere in Europe. We would need every one of these to cover the nearly 4,000 miles that would get us to Oslo via Spain, France, Switzerland, Germany and Denmark. Europe may be fractured by its many borders, but it is bigger than you think.

The ticketmaster knotted his brow, tapped many computer keys, and in time spit out two pieces of paper — our tickets to Vigo, Spain. But, he cautioned, this would only get us just inside the Spanish border. (This all in Portuguese and bits of English.) Once there, we would have to purchase new tickets and quickly hop another train before continuing onto Madrid, 8 additional hours. Miss that train and it’d be too late to make Madrid and the travel dominoes would fall. But if we succeeded, we would cross one half of Spain on April 16th, spend the night in Madrid and then cut through the other half April 17th to find our way to Lyon, France.

But all of that was ahead of us. Now we needed to find our accommodations. With the train ticket settled, we arranged an Uber ride with Fabio (not the famous beefcake version) and headed to the pick-up spot outside in the rain. By now the drizzle had become a downpour. Banging our bags across Portugal's cobblestones we crossed several streets and waited in the rain. This was a shift from Lisbon’s perfect weather. Here it was grey, almost cold at 57°. Then again, it was April.

Our clothes did a fine job soaking up what rain it could until Fabio found us and took us to our B&B. We snaked around town in directions that seemed senseless until we swung along the big Douro River that spanned two enormous bridges, one for cars, the other for trains. On the steep, opposite bank, ran wide paths for walkers and cyclist, none of whom were out in the downpour. High above the embankment stood the fortress church of Sé do Porto, the Porto Cathedral, a massive piece of architecture that dominated the Douro and dates back 1000 years. It's one of Porto's oldest buildings, and the place where Prince Henry the Navigator was baptized before leading Portugal to an age of seafaring discoveries that changed the country and the world.

In another minute we were in the heart of Porto hauling our bags out of Fabio’s Ubermobile and taking our soaked selves to the much awaited B&B. There Raquel, smiling and lively despite the rain, gave us our electronic room keys and several excellent tips on places to eat. We hauled our bags up a story and into our apartment, which, unlike anywhere else in Porto, was dry.