Porto Day 2: Wine Caves

Prepare yourselves for the classiest trip I have taken yet.

As you already know, I was in Porto. The first day, if you read the last post, was spent just wandering around, getting to know the town. You know, the usual. Well, the second day was a very different pace.

Hillary and I struck out right away. We knew that MGMT was playing a concert for the Burning of the Ribbons Festival, and the lady at the desk told us we might be able to get tickets if we went to some random café and asked around, maybe a random student could help us. Problems abound, one being we didn’t speak Portuguese and another being we couldn’t find said café, we were unsuccessful in the procurement of tickets.

Well, it was 5 o’clock somewhere so it was time for a drink.

Really though, around 11 am we headed off to our first wine “cave” or cellar for our first tour and tasting. We scoped out the lot of options we had and picked out the cheapest ones (read: free). Our first tour and tasting was at Croft. They served us a nice white port which was very smooth and sweet. We then set off for the tour. After the tour we got a ruby vintage port which we enjoyed on the terrace. (Are you getting the sense of classiness yet?)

I learned a little bit about ports on this and my other tours.

1. Port is sweet because they stop the fermentation process early, locking in the natural sugars.

2. Port is a strong wine, usually 18% to 22% alcohol.

After number 1, you may wonder how number 2 is true. You clever ones might be thinking, I thought the fermentation was stopped early. Well, that brings me to number 3.

3. The fermentation process is stopped by adding alcohol. From what I gather, it is brandy.

4. There are a few different types of port. The most common being Ruby, White and Tawny. They each pair with different courses, but usually as a dessert or aperitif.

So that is about all I know about port, or maybe just the interesting things I picked up that would fit in a blog about travel.

Hill and I thought that drinking too much before lunch was just alcoholic, so we got some lunch at a small Portuguese diner and then came back to Taylor’s for more tastings (after a siesta in the park of course). Taylor’s is situated up on the hill and has a great view of the city from their gardens. They also have this awesome tasting area which has a ceiling reminiscent of a circus tent with colored fabric draping across and a really nice library with books the size of my torso and the age of my great great great great… you get the idea. The books were old.

Oh, and every place we went had stools and tables made out of barrels. Neat!

After another tasting and tour we passed out on the river bank. Finally, we headed back to the hostel with a tawny in tow and made dinner, taking it easy on our last night.

The last day we picked up some post cards, wandered a little, and were sent off with a complimentary glass of tawny from our hostel and the promise that if we ever found ourselves in Porto again, we would have a home. I think this lady was the owner, and she was one of the sweetest Portuguese ladies I have met (although I haven’t met too many Portuguese ladies).

On to Madrid!

Oh, you may have noticed the blue and white painted buildings. These were everywhere and were actually made out of painted tiles. I guess Portugal is kind of a big deal when it comes to decorative tiles.

Porto Pics

Porto 1

So my parents went home and you might expect that means my travelling was over. Well that would make you wrong, because I still had another country to visit and the entire weekend back in Madrid. First Porto, Portugal.

I was getting worried at first. A full year in Spain and I wasn’t even going to make it to Portugal? What was I doing with my time? Well, now I can proudly say that I have made it to every one of Spain’s neighboring countries. Yep! Even Andorra and Morocco. It just so happens that Portugal was the last one marked off the list, even though it is so close!

Waking up early yet again for a flight, I say my farewells to my family and fly to Porto, Portugal. If you are pretty clever and have a slight knowledge of varieties of wine, you might be thinking, “Zach, is Porto where port wine comes from?” Why, yes, yes it is. Porto and the surround Duoro River Valley is the only place in the European Union that can claim to produce port, while other countries get away with it if they aren’t in the EU.

So as you can guess, I drank a lot of port. But that really isn’t the only thing I did.

The first day Hill and I formed our own little DIY tour of Porto with the help of Hill’s iPad, Wikipedia and Lonely Planet’s Porto Guide. We followed the itinerary across the city, seeing all the amazing sites.

Porto isn’t very well known I would guess. Yeah, it is Portugal’s second largest city, but how many of you knew that? It is pretty small as cities go, only 250,000 or so for a population (the metro is larger at 1.35 million) and there aren’t any Eiffel towers or the likes to see here. Just a lot of beautiful, old buildings lining the banks of the Duoro, charming streets winding up steep hills flanking the river, and of course wineries.

Okay, well I guess there may be one famous must see site in Porto, Livraria Lello. Look it up. It is gorgeous. I couldn’t take many pictures because they said it was too busy. I don’t know. Anyways, it has probably one of the most interesting stair cases I have ever seen and is filled with an eclectic mix of old and new books in Portuguese and English. It also has really beautiful stained glass sky lights combined with really old intricate crown molding to make such a perfect bookstore atmosphere. It is up by the university.

Speaking about the university, I have another thing for you to look up. Burning of the Ribbons. When we checked in, the woman working at the hostel (I believe she was the owner) told us that we would notice a lot of people dressed up in their school colors or black jackets in the city because it was a very special week for the students. Some sort of graduation celebration similar to Cornell’s Senior Week. I was not prepared for what it actually was.

There were students dressed up in black capes, with colored top hats and canes and groups of students all dressed up like bob the builder or with other costumes running around chanting. It was incredible to see so much school spirit and true elation. It made me nostalgic for high school graduation where there was just this huge sense of cohesion and accomplishment hanging in the air.

Oh, and the black capes looked like Harry Potter, and for a very good reason. Apparently JK Rowling wrote a lot of her first Harry Potter book in Porto and the capes served as an inspiration for the uniforms in the book. How great is that!?

After the tour, we picked up some cheese and our first bottle of port and brought it back to the hostel for lunch. Hill and I just enjoyed our white port and goat’s cheese while chatting with the girl working at the hostel.

We headed out again and stopped at this hipster mall that served a huge piece of chocolate cake for just a euro that the girl in the hostel suggested. Then we went to the park to pass out and relax. Apparently it was supposed to have spectacular views of the river because it was situated on some bluffs. Well, it did have some nice views, but we couldn’t relax too much. We heard this really loud music in the distance. It was constant, and we couldn’t figure out where it was coming from, but kept on getting closer and closer to the source because it kept getting louder and louder as we walked through the park.

Finally, down below, we spotted a huge gathering of students lined up along the street, ready to parade through the city. We made our way down to the parade to find all the students that were dressed up standing on and around large trucks blasting all types of music into the streets. The ones wearing capes and top hats were going around hitting each other on the head with their canes while whispering questions or phrases of good luck or congratulations or something between each whack. Like I said, it was spectacular and I was so happy just from their happiness.

A quick dinner finished our first day in Porto. We were ready for a long night of well deserved sleep. We needed rest for our port wine winery tour the next day.