By Christopher Muther |
Globe Staff November 09, 2013 / http://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/travel/2013/11/09/porto-sophisticated-new-edge/Qo25mGhnY4HaRTUzdKGpJM/story.html
PORTO — I read descriptions that called Portugal’s
second-largest city “gritty” and “emerging.” So as we drove into Porto the
first evening of our visit, I anticipated towering smokestacks belching tinted
steam into an orange sky.
What I found instead was a series of charming old stone
buildings, church squares, and open-air markets. There’s a river that glistens
as it snakes through a city that clings precariously to cliffs and a night-life
scene that rivals any European hot spot on a summer night. I had a guidebook
that claimed that all of Porto could be seen in a day of brisk sightseeing.
After one day, I extended my stay to four nights.
I had never heard of Porto until my partner, Alex, and I
started planning this vacation, which would take us up the coast of Portugal
and into northwestern Spain. Porto was a curiosity, not a priority. By the end
of the trip, I concluded that Porto was the highlight of our Iberian adventure.
To me the city seemed a blend of Lisbon and Salzburg, Austria, soaked in a
barrel of delicious port wine.
Perhaps this is why I have such fond — and foggy — memories
of Porto. It’s a city fueled by port wine, or at least that’s what draws large
numbers of tourists down to the Ribeira neighborhood along the Douro River. The
Ribeira is lined with cafes selling port, and on the other side of the river,
in a town called Gaia, there are wine caves that offer tours and tastings.
Much like champagne, the only true port comes from the
grapes grown along the Douro. At one time, the wine was brought along the river
in flat-bottom boats to be processed and stored in Porto and Gaia. Trucks now
handle that work, but the boats are still plentiful and the facilities that age
port now host tours.
Before Portugal, I was under the impression that port wine
came in one variety — sticky, overly sweet, and red. I was in no rush to sip
it, even in its birthplace. I was too busy consuming the very tasty, cheap, and
ubiquitous Vinho Verde. But after I tried a dry white port it became my
standard after-dinner drink the remainder of our stay.
At this point in the story, I would start telling you all
about our adventures in the wine cave tours in Gaia. Those didn’t happen. The
streets around the river were so swarming with tourists (mostly drunk) that we
preferred looking for port in bars and cafes, ignoring the guidebook’s advice
that the caves tours were a necessity.
Instead, we decided to get a view of the entire scene from a
building that is classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The 17th-century
Serra do Pilar Monastery, which looms impressively on a hill alongside the
river, opened to the public for the first time last December, and probably
offers the best views of the city and the nearby bridge built by Gustave
Eiffel, best known for the Eiffel Tower.
Because the monastery doesn’t offer port wine, and it
requires a bit of walking to reach, it’s one of the more peaceful spots to sit
outside and enjoy the view. It was completed in 1670 and inhabited by Augustine
friars. There are tours of the chapel and courtyard, along with a Stairmaster-worthy
hike to the roof top. Once there we could see a continuous jumble of white
buildings with terra-cotta roofs.
After the serenity of the monastery we took the nearby
Teleferico funicular, which runs parallel to the river on the Gaia side. It
deposited us on a stretch that felt a bit like a carnival. It was lined with
newly-built restaurants that practically screamed “Tourist trap! Don’t eat
here!” With a bit of walking to downtown (warning: Be prepared to walk when you
are in Porto), we discovered celebrity chef Rui Paula’s restaurant DOP inside a
former 14th-century convent. DOP stands for “Degustar e Ousar no Porto”
(“Daring and Tasting in Porto”).
I’m not one to take pictures of my food at restaurants. I usually
feel that food is meant to be digested and not shared on Facebook. But I took
out my camera, the good one no less, and photographed my steak tartare and the
beautiful presentation of the truffle-style alheira (a meat and flour-based
sausage) on a bed of toasted bread, bacon, and almonds. I was already feeling a
bit like a celebrity eating here, and that imaginary status was elevated even
further when Paula came out to ask if we were enjoying our food. I was
officially starstruck.
Our waiter recommended so many good wines that I was
pie-eyed by the time we left, and I still had more port to sample.
These boozy dinners were a fine jumping-off point for
clubbing. Porto’s booming night life is centered around the Baxia neighborhood
and we could hop from the uber cool Candelabro to the uber gay Passos Manuel to
the uber quirky Galeria de Paris. We walked, spotted an interesting place,
grabbed a drink, and moved on to the next destination. After 1 a .m. some streets were
impassable for cars because pedestrian traffic was so thick. Despite Portugal’s
current dire economic straits and the glut of empty real estate in some
sections of Porto, the city’s restaurant and bar scene is rapidly growing.
I found the best place to nurse my hangover was with
breakfast at the Cafe Majestic. I made a straightforward choice of the cheese
and tomato omelet. The menu is fairly limited, but the truth is that the
Majestic is a necessity for the decor more so than the food. It’s a beautiful
slice of Porto history that feels like a trip back to the Belle Epoque with
cherubs playing on the walls. Much the same way people generally don’t purchase
books at the beautiful beaux arts bookstore Livraria Lello, a lot of people
don’t focus on food as much as the decor at Majestic. However, my omelet was
perfect for my infirm condition.
By the time we arrived in Porto, we had spent a week seeing
nearly every church in Lisbon, so we did most of our architectural admiration
from the outside during leisurely strolls. I found the key difference between
Lisbon and Porto was the pace. We spent afternoons just walking aimlessly down
Rua de Santa Catarina, the main shopping boulevard, or finding gems such as the
open air market Mercado Porto Belo where vendors sold clothes from young
designers, scratchy vinyl records, and organic food. Lisbon felt hurried and
overwhelming, Porto felt more like a vacation destination.
There is also a cultural renaissance in Porto, thanks in
part to buildings such as the avant-garde Rem Koolhaas-designed Casa de Música,
which opened in 2005. With its odd angles and strangely-sloping rooms, it feels
as if Willy Wonka and Dr. Seuss collaborated with Frank Gehry on the design. I
recommend a tour, and seeing a concert in the acoustically perfect main hall,
which is adorned in gold leaf.
As interesting as Koolhaas’s work is, my favorite building
in the city was a pink private residence-turned-museum with 44 acres of gardens. The
Fundação de Serralves encompasses a 1930s Art Deco house, a chapel, and a
modern art museum with 14 galleries that opened in 1999.
The house looks as if it was picked up in a tornado on
Miami’s South Beach and dropped in northern Portugal. On the late afternoon
when we visited there were just a few other people at the museum and it felt as
if we had the place mostly to ourselves. We walked through the sunny rooms and
strolled as much of the gardens as we could, hearing only birds and distant
jazz from a concert at the museum.
Everything about the day was ideal. As we took a long walk
from the museum to the sophisticated Foz neighborhood for dinner on the roof
deck of the Restaurante Museu Dos Presuntos, the description of Porto as
“gritty” and “emerging” couldn’t have been further from my mind. Or maybe I
just forget after all the port.
Christopher Muther can be reached at muther@globe.com.
Follow him on Twitter @Chris_Muther.
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