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More Porto

Most of today, we stayed in Porto. It’s 4:41 local time (16:41 they say here) & I’m writing on the train that pulled out at 16:32. The smoke from the wildfires is much denser.

I want to start with a shout out to Paulo, our host & owner of a nearby cafe. We went there for cafe americano & pastry this morning. He was kind enough to allow us to leave our suitcases in the apartment building all day while we returned to the historic district. And he comped our coffee & pastries. I had something that looked like pastis de nata, but was more like a little pecan pie without any nuts. Anyway, onward.

First stop, the highest ground in the old city, occupied by a bunch of churchy stuff.

Turns out Portugal’s part of the Camino goes through here. We were briefly on it. A sign?

Next Sao Bento station, for more spectacular tile. I grabbed a shot of one panel to document it, but was equally interested in the structure of the train shed and a weird elevated restaurant beside it.

Now it was time to come to the bridge and cross it. This is also maybe time to say a little about Meg’s anxiousness when I’m leading somewhere & our jokes about me being right or wrong. In a shocking development I am not always right. In this case I thought I made a mistake but that turned out to be wrong.

So we crossed that bridge, descended to the riverside, and walked to the edge of the port business places, then found a restaurant for sangria made with vinho verde & pineapple pieces —too sweet—and francesinha, a ridiculous local sandwich. Thick white bread, pork, ham, kielbasa-like sausage (linguica? chouriço?), cheese melted over it all, & an amazing sauce poured on, topped with a fried egg.

Back across the bridge we rode the funicular up the bluff. Funicular’s are fun! Find my video on Facebook.

We walked back through now-familiar scenes to find that Paulo left us a box of pastis de nata with our suitcases.

The man deserves all the review stars he can get.

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