O Porto

In Porto, I'm staying with Patricio, the most metrosexual straight man ever (and in Europe that's saying a lot). In his bathroom are no fewer than five different kinds of hair product. He has really nice crystal. He cleans. I've somehow found the only vegetarian in Portugal, but he cooks. Really well. He might be perfect, except that it's hard not to get a little self-conscious. He dresses better than I do, and smells better than I do, and has better hair than I do and, well, he's just prettier than I am. All this recent ego-bruising has to be good for me. I'm just gonna keep telling myself that.

Anyway, Porto. Northern Portugal, on the Duoro river (Duero en español, as in ribera del duero), home of Port wine. Well, not exactly--the grapes are grown farther east in the Duoro valley and the wine is aged just across the river from Porto in Gaia. Porto has a port wine museum, but there's no port wine at the port wine museum. I felt robbed. But, most of the wine caves in Gaia have free tours and tastings. And it tastes really good. I love port wine. They stop the fermentation process early by adding brandy, which makes it both sweeter and more alcoholic than regular wine. Port wine production got big in the late 1700's, and a lot of the companies were started by British people, so the wineries have names like Croft, Sandeman, Offley. Blah, blah blah.

The riverfront in Porto is touristy, but walk away from the river and it gets authentic and gritty pretty quickly. Lots of clotheslines, lots of cats and dogs, old ladies in housecoats, barely dressed little kids running around.

I've been kind of a bad tourist in Porto. I've been sleeping in and having long lunches and not seeing all the sights. I went to the contemporary art museum, which is nice in that scratch-your-head kind of way and has a really nice garden. And there's a photography museum, housed in the former appeals court/jail. Portuguese criminals used to be sent to Africa, but the ones with money could pay to stay in Portuguese jails. Those payments helped fund the construction of the jail/court, and now that it's a museum one of the main exhibitions is of photographs of Africa. It all comes together.

And they eat these awful sandwiches here. They don't taste bad, they just are bad. They couldn't be more debaucherous even if they were covered in chocolate. Take a hamburger, and then add ham, salami, and sausage. Then cover the whole thing in melted cheese--a lot of melted cheese--and then cover all that in hot sauce. It's called a francesinha, which I think technically means "little French girl." Whatever. Maybe the single unhealthiest thing I've ever eaten but, fear not, I had it with a Coca Cola Light.