Europe 25: Porto, Day 6

For our last full day in Porto we had a lovely breakfast of Cleaning Out Everything In The Fridge, since that’s what you do in situations like this. It was good food. We didn’t want to waste it.

We had a pretty low-key day planned after the travel day to Aveiro, so our first order of business was to walk over to the Mercado Bolhão to revisit the stalls there and pick up a few things that we’d meant to get on our first visit. You have to love places like that, with all of the various foods and goods that they sell there. I got my daily pasteis de nata and an iced tea because that’s how I roll. We also found some piri-piri spice that had been sold out the first time we went there, and eventually we managed to get it back to the US without being tossed into a concentration camp or sold into slavery so we’ll count that as a win in today’s political climate. Plus we revisited the textile place, where we found not only a nice apron but also some espresso cups. These made it back safely as well.

The Mercado has three floors – all of which have street-level exits – and we visited each of them, though only the first floor has market stalls. The second floor was mostly for walking around and looking at the place from above but the third floor had a big art exhibit that I’ll get to in the next post. That’s the thing about European cities that sets them apart from American cities (besides the functional public transportation systems, streets full of pedestrians at all hours, and random fountains for drinking water) – they tend to have much more public art. You have to love that.

Right next door to the Mercado was the Capela das Almas de Santa Catarina – the Chapel of the Souls of Saint Catherine – which was possibly the prettiest of all the churches we saw in Portugal. Built in the early 1700s and rebuilt in 1801, the exterior was completely covered in blue and white tiles in 1929 and it is a striking sight as you walk up the block from the Mercado's exit.

Inside it is fairly small but still lavishly decorated in the Portuguese style. It’s a working church and there were people there for that purpose while we visited. The tourists were quiet and respectful while we were there – we certainly tried to be, as tourists – and as long as you don’t interfere with anything people are happy to have you there. That’s a pretty good rule for life, I suppose.

One of the resources that we relied on when we were planning this trip was Atlas Obscura, which you should go find if you haven’t already. It’s basically a collection of articles about weird and interesting things, some of which are filed under “things to do in various places” and others are not. You can just search for your destination and up come the articles about it. And one of the ones from Porto describes what it calls “most beautiful McDonald’s in the world.”

This is a set of words that are surprising to see together in that particular order.

But how can you resist a description like that, even if it does seem like rather faint praise? And since we had nothing particularly pressing on our schedule that afternoon we figured that would be an interesting place to visit.

The walk downhill and then uphill and then downhill again (Porto is lovely but sturdy shoes are a must) was in fact lovely and we took our time, peeking into shop windows and admiring the various buildings and street scenes. I always enjoy urban landscapes, especially from street level when I’m walking through them – they have an energy to them that I don’t find outside of cities. This may just be me, but then that’s all I’ve got.

We did find the World’s Most Beautiful McDonalds at the end of that, by the way. Oddly enough, it was literally right next door to the Estambul Doner Kebap where we had lunch on our first full day in Porto. We hadn’t even noticed its neighbor that day. Estambul has better fries anyway.

The Imperial McDonalds (the jokes just write themselves, don't they?) opened in 1995 in what had been the Imperial Café, and whoever did the transition was smart enough to leave the Art Deco interior pretty much intact – from the frieze at ceiling level to the stained glass behind the counter – though as with everything these days it has been invaded by digital ordering kiosks that kind of break up the sightlines. We ended up getting our American-sized Diet Cokes and just sitting there for a while, enjoying the view. Having been in a few McDonalds in my life, I can comfortably say that this was indeed the most beautiful one that I’ve ever seen, at least. You take your wins where you get them.

We walked back toward our apartment, stopping at Manteigaria for the true king of pasteis de nata. It’s been a couple of months now, and I still miss them. Someday I will have to learn how to make them myself, though I suspect that someday will not happen until after I retire. Whether that happens in the current climate is an interesting question. Wheels within wheels! But sometimes you have to focus on the good things right in front of you, and when those good things are pasteis de nata from Manteigaria, then at least for a moment all seems right with the world.

Back at the apartment it was time to get packed up for the next day’s flight to Stockholm. It’s always easier to do that once you’ve left home, since the amount of stuff that needs to be packed is far more defined and limited. At home you have access to all of your stuff and choices have to be made. Here, you just have to find the stuff that’s yours and fit it into the bags available. This was complicated slightly by a) two sets of small bottles of port, to be consumed at Midsommar, and b) eight hand-decorated ceramic tiles, to be transported back to Wisconsin. But packing is one of my superpowers – I once fit an entire dorm room, including the hamper and two of those giant old speakers, into a ’79 Mercury – so it went smoothly.

After a while we started to get hungry for lunch, so we headed out in search of such things as might solve that problem, stopping at the tile shop in our neighborhood to find some post cards and further knick-knacks because we’d already packed and now knew exactly how much room we had left over. Eventually we found our way back to Gazela’s and soon had a couple of cachorrinhos in front of us.

We’d forgotten two things, though. First, that you’re supposed to eat them with your fingers, something the waiter gestured at us before walking off in a huff when we asked for forks, and second, that Gazela’s is cash only. Fortunately we still had a few euros in cash with us, but this mostly cleaned us out. We had planned to do that at some point anyway, since this was our last day to spend them, but it was a momentary panic when we remembered.

Back at the apartment we rested a bit and checked in with Lauren, who was flying out to meet us in Stockholm the next day. She had to rebook her flights on the fly five times, which it turned out would be useful practice for her adventures in the two months since, but in the end she got there just fine.

Our last planned adventure in Porto was to go to the beach at Matasinhas to see the sunset. You can do that just by getting on the metro and taking the A line from Bolhão to Matasinhas Sud and then walking along the boulevard for about ten minutes until you suddenly run out of dry land and are staring at the Atlantic. You have to love a metro system that can do that for you.

It’s a big, wide beach and even as the sun was slowly setting there were still a fair number of people there. And a surprising number of dachshunds, for some reason, the significance of which escaped us. You can walk along the boardwalk at the edge of the sand, or you can go down to the beach and walk on the little pathways that have been laid out over the sand. There are little arenas for various beach sports if you want to see them, but most people were out on the sand just hanging out as one does on a beach in the summer time.

Eventually you get to the big net-like thing, which is officially known as “She Changes” or “She Moves,” but which people in Porto refer to as the Anemone. It’s been there for a while now and after some initial grumbling it seems to have settled into the local psyche. I confess I thought it was a radio telescope when I first saw it.

You can also see the fort at Foz from the other side from where the 1 Tram drops you off.

In the end we didn’t actually see the sun dip below the horizon – we were busy doing other things, I guess – but we saw it get low and we watched the sky afterward, and it was lovely.

We never did find a place to eat along the beach – a strange omission to an American – and in the end we stopped at a Lidl on the way back to the metro stop and got some snacks, which we ate at a small café that was kind enough to let us use one of their outdoor tables.

It was a crowded metro ride back to Bolhão, full of young adults in various combinations returning from dates or social outings, and it was lovely to see that.

Back at the apartment, the last thing I had to do was figure out how to take out the trash before we left. As with Florence, this is an intricate system where you have to bag things up in your apartment and take them multiple bins out on the sidewalk, though we didn’t need a fob to get access to them as we did in Florence. Coming from a place where we have two bins (Trash and Recyling) and we just wheel them out to the street on Thursday nights I thought this was a bit complicated but that was because I had forgotten what it was like in Sweden.

That refresher course was scheduled for the next day.