We got a ride to the bus station from our friend Heather. The bus driver surprised those paying attention by passing the usual exit for Logan. Someone actually went forward to ask him. So he got on the mic to explain about construction.
The Logan time was the usual stand in a line, then go to another line, then wait until time for the next line.
The flight was uneventful. Passport control was a long line. Our bags were waiting on the carousel. No Customs.
Bought Metro tickets & took a 3-stop ride to Oriente station in Lisbon. Found the ticket window for the train, and —this is like 14 hours into travel on maybe 3 hours of sleep— hit our first real speed bump. The next train to Porto we could get tickets on wasn’t for four more hours.
Four hours to explore Lisbon a little while hauling our suitcases. We walked through a mall, down to the water, and along the shore, around an arena and a stadium and a row of restaurants and bars to a little stand-alone organic market cafe, then back around the other side of all that stuff to kill the final hour before the train back at the station. That sentence may be hard to follow but everything was by then.
We slept most of the first two hours of the train ride. The countryside is beautiful and the air is full of smoke from the wildfires. The most notable thing is that in every village and near every train station there’s buildings with broken windows, collapsing masonry walls, caved in ceiling tiles, rotting rafters, or maybe rusty steel, bent aluminum and torn plastic.
Finally Porto
I called our host to let him know we’d arrived and we towed our luggage once more through the streets.
Most of the sidewalks and walkways here are paved with a pattern of rough little yellowish cubes and dark cobblestones. We were both nervous that a suitcase would break a wheel on our first day, though we didn’t speak about it until we were safely in the apartemento.
We cleaned up a little and headed right out for dinner. Within 5 minutes walk there are two blocks full of restaurants, cafes, and bars. We picked one pretty much at random and had vinho verde and bacalhao, then came back for a port nightcap: tastes of Portugal!
After 36ish hours with less than 5 hours total sleep one hour or less at a time, we slept great.
There’s been a book at home titled Sonnets from the Portuguese. I figured I’d bring it along & read it. If you know it you already know the punch line here: They were written by Elizabeth Barrett to her future husband Robert and have nothing to do with Portugal. I brought it anyway & here’s a poem:
Thou hast thy calling to some palace-floor,
Most gracious singer of high poems! where
The dancers will break footing, from the care
Of watching up thy pregnant lips for more.
And dost thou lift this house’s latch too poor
For hand of thine? and canst thou think and bear
To let thy music drop here unaware
In folds of golden fulness at my door?
Look up and see the casement broken in,
The bats and owlets builders in the roof!
My cricket chirps against thy mandolin.
Hush, call no echo up in further proof
Of desolation! there’s a voice within
That weeps . . . as thou must sing . . . alone, aloof.
But here’s a poem that fits with the subject of this post by an actual Portuguese poet:
The Furies, by Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen, born in Porto
Banished from sin and the sacred
Now they inhabit the humble intimacy
Of daily life. They are
The leaky faucet the late bus
The soup that boils over
The lost pen the vacuum that doesn't vacuum
The taxi that doesn't come the mislaid receipt
Shoving pushing waiting
Bureaucratic madness
Without shouting or staring
Without bristly serpent hair
With the meticulous hands of the day-to-day
They undo us
They're the peculiar wonder of the modern world
Faceless and maskless
Nameless and breathless
The thousand-headed hydras of efficiency gone haywire
They no longer pursue desecrators and parricides
They prefer innocent victims
Who did nothing to provoke them
Thanks to them the day loses its smooth expanses
Its juice of ripe fruits
Its fragrance of flowers
Its high-sea passion
And time is transformed
Into toil and the rush
Against time
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