- We'd reached Santiago with none of the delays we'd allowed for in our schedule, so we had a few days to take a pleasantly slow trip back to Oporto.
On the first of these we took the train down to the city of Vigo. As Santiago is the best known city in Galicia, I'd kind of assumed that it must also be the biggest. But Vigo, home to the largest fishing fleet in Europe, was a real, large city, three times the size of Santiago, and almost as big as Wellington. Like Wellington, it's also a hilly (and on our first day there, rainy) place, so we climbed up a series of hills and stairways to our accommodation, a room in a private house booked on booking.com rather than Airbnb.
That afternoon we went out for a walk in the rain along the waterfront. It may have been a suffered a bit from the weather, but also because it gave me the feeling of being the exact same as almost every other city that's tried to tidy and pretty up its waterfront. But it gave me the opportunity to pick up a new phone at the mall at one end (with the 21%VAT refunded, it'll work out as cheap or cheaper than the best prices available online).
And while the waterfront felt a little underwhelming, the city streets, especially the long pedestrian shopping street were actually really pleasant, despite the weather. They were grey, but shiny in the drizzle, and full of Vigo's hardworking residents out enjoying a Saturday afternoon off.
We'd actually had almost no real Galician food during our time in the region, so that evening we took our host's recommendation of a dinner spot and headed there at an early (by Spanish standards) 20:30. The decor seemed almost like a parody of a 1980s seafood restaurant, but there were several Spaniards there, and when our food arrived it turned our to be decent value and great quality. We had about the most Galician meal imaginable, Pulpa de Feira (Octopus with olive oil and paprika), Pimentos de Padron (fried small, slightly spicy green peppers) and a bottle of Albariño wine to wash it down. The octopus was incredibly tender, obviously really well cooked, but disappointed a bit in that it tasted (and even had a similar texture to!) Christmas ham! But still, it was a really fun meal, and a nice sort of a farewell to Galicia.
The next morning we took a wall up to Vigo's old fortress, which was green, sunny and warm, and had fabulously expansive views out over the whole city, the harbour, the Ria Bahias and the Islas Cies. It was a minor downer when as we were preparing to leave I was stopped from refilling our water bottle when I spotted a guy lifting up his little French bulldog and washing it's bottom in the drinking fountain, using it like an impromptu doggy bidet!
From Vigo we took the bus down the centre of Galicia via the town of Tuy. As with the previous day's train trip, much of our trip was crossing and recrossing the route that we'd spent the previous several days walking. It was really fun to look out the train or bus windows and see familiar spots, and to look, point and say to each other “Peregrino!” whenever we saw someone with a backpack walking along the trail.
At Tuy we turned west and followed the north bank of the Rio Miño, the border between Spain and Portugal. We arrived in A Guarda at the mouth of the Miño and did a bit of shopping, just catching the supermarket before its early closing on the Thursday before Good Friday. We walked along the flank of a mountain before dropping back down to the river estuary and the village of A Pasaxe from which a ferry crossed the river to Caminha in Portugal. Or used to cross. We arrived at the terminal to find a month-old sign stating (in Galician only, which meant that it took us a little while to sort out) that the ferry was undergoing mandatory maintenance and that crossings were cancelled until further notice.
We sat and ate a picnic lunch while pondering our next course of action. Just as we were finishing up, the owner of a water taxi appeared, readying his boat to take a friend across, and offered us a ride as well. He took us across, conveniently skipping the three or so kilometres of town street walking we would have had to do with the ferry, and dropped us right on the headland at the south side of the Minho (it's name, but not pronunciation, changes when you cross into Portugal).
From there we had a beautiful walk down the coast on a sunny afternoon. We'd really enjoyed our one day of walking on the coastal Camino as we set out, and this was a nice way to give ourselves one more taste of it before heading to Oporto. We passed by lots of beach with big, rolling surf, a gorgeously sited fortress out on a little island in the mouth of the estuary, a couple herds of sheep and goats being shooed along the coastal track by their keepers, and, of course, lots of Peregrinos walking in the other direction, all of whom we greeted with a comeradely smile and a cheery “Bom Camino!”
Our stop for the night, Praia d'Ancora was a pretty little beach holiday town. One of the nice things about being on the Camino route is that even if you aren't staying at the cheap-as-chips municipal albergues, you can be confident that there will be plenty of accommodation in every price range. So we spent one more night sleeping in a dormitory with our fellow Peregrinos. It was interesting to see the difference between private accommodation and the municipal albergues. This time there was no mandatory lights out at 22:00, so there was lots of laughter and loud (drunken?) talk in the next room over, someone playing Big Yellow Taxi on their phone very loudly at 23:00, and our one dorm-mate who furiously chastised the offenders, muttering something or other about the police in German even after they'd agreed to quiet down. The next morning was different too, as with no ridiculously early checkout time, none of our fellow guests were bashing around and turning on the lights at 06:15.
We ourselves didn't even leave until almost noon, catching a train into Oporto at 12:02.
In Oporto I kind of expected everything to be closed as it was Good Friday. But no! After being warmly greeted by our host Hamza back at his brand new Lovely Aguas Guesthouse, we went out for a stroll around the historic centre of the city. And it was all abustle, with everything from tourist restaurants to supermarkets to underwear stores all open for business.
We joined the crowds on the car-free (but not light rail-free, the trams drove straight across, tooting selfie snapping pedestrians out of their way) Luis I bridge. On our way home we popped into a little brewpub. It was fun having (a very little bit of, as they didn't really speak English) a chat with the brewers, though only one of the beers (a dry hopped saison, which was really more like a Belgian pale ale) was really any better than “okay”.
The next day was devoted to our one must do (or rather, “must drink”) of Oporto, Vinho de Porto, or Port wine.
At Easter Weekend, Oporto was astonishingly busy. The pedestrian mall we walked into town along was absolutely packed. The square in front of the cathedral, which had held less than ten people, almost all pilgrims in the 09:00 hail when we'd started out Camino was filled people taking photos and a queue of others waiting to go inside. But thankfully there were still spots available on a 15:30 tour of the Offley port cellars.
None of the cellars (or “Lodges” as they're curiously called) are actually in Oporto proper. They're all across the river in the city of Gaia, but we didn't notice any difference as we crossed from one tourist-strewn bank to the other, nor as we walked along the charming but busy south bank. The south bank of the Douro is lined with old barges that used to ferry barrels from the wineries upriver in the Douro valley down to Oporto for aging and export, as well as heaps of bars and restaurants taking advantage of the great views back to the colourfully tiled and roofed buildings of Oporto. And of course the banks are also lined with wine cellars, each taking advantage of the opposite view (the one from Oporto) to advertise their wares with big signs on their facades or roofs.
The tour of the cellars was more expensive than, and not quite as interesting as the sherry cellars in Jerez. There's not as much (obvious at least) process going on in the production of Port wine, though it was interesting to learn that the different types (tawny, ruby, white, etc.) derive their different characters pretty much entirely from aging in different containers (foeders vs. barrels) for different lengths of time. And that “vintage” port can only be produced in years independently judged to be of exceptional quality by an independent assessing body. Also intriguing is that most ports are only around 5% alcohol when their fermentation is stopped by fortification, all the way up to a whopping 20% abv.
We tried a few types, including the newfangled rose port (which, despite the additional sugar and booze, tasted surprisingly like a pumped up rosé table wine) and a Lacrima, the sweetest of ports (but still left in the dust in terms of sugar content by Pedro Ximenez sherry).
Following our tour we climbed up the hill from the river bank and sat ourselves down in the fabulous Jardim de Morro. High up on the south bank of the Douro, the view is arguably even better than that down at river level. We started with two Vienna lagers from a local brewery that had a stand in the park (as much for the glasses as their contents, but the beer was very good as it turned out). And with bread, lots of hard, salty Portuguese cheese and a bottle of Ruby port, we were set for the remainder of the afternoon until sunset. We were surrounded by music from the winery sponsored DJ, and a happy mix of tourists and Porto locals spending their Easter Saturday out in the sun admiring the view and one another's company.
Our final full day in Oporto was spent in almost exactly the same fashion, minus cellar tour, plus Vinho Verde, plus wind, plus a little rain. So I'll skip lightly over it, and just talk a little about how the city of Porto itself. It's really, really pretty. Most of the centre of the city is filled with three to five storey buildings. Many of these have facades of brightly coloured tiles, with lovely little wrought iron balconies. And the churches! Most of them have tiled facades as well, but these are blue and white, illustrating scenes from the Bible right on the fronts of the buildings themselves. But for all its prettiness and popularity with tourists, an awful lot of the buildings look like they've been unmaintained for too long. Plenty of them, right in the heart of the city near the river are literally falling down. It seems like central Oporto is a weird mix of places where no one can afford to live and where no one would really want to live (until they're fixed up, at which point they instantly become places no one can afford to live).
Before heading to the airport on our last morning in Portugal we supplemented our tourist visit with a wee bit of purely local flavour in the form of a Francesinha sandwich. I actually hadn't been that enthralled by the photos I'd seen of them. But our friends Dave and Denise had given the Francesinha rave reviews, and it is pretty much the food of Oporto (as opposed to the food of Portugal as a whole, which would probably be salt cod, which is one of the very few foods I actively dislike, and thus didn't eat while in Portugal). So I decided to give it a try. On our long slow ramble to the metro station, we stumbled across a Belgian beer bar (which had a few Portuguese craft offerings as well) and made a big deal about their Francesinhas. I ordered a Normal, with French fries but without friend egg on top. When it arrived at the table it was a solid looking square drenched in pale orange sauce. But when you cut in you discovered that the square was two slices of (surprisingly good, sturdy, non-fall-aparty) bread packed with chourico sausage, salami, ham, even a pounded-thin (and perfectly cooked!) steak. The sauce was, like the meat, salty, but lightly spicy too.
I'm not 100% sold on the Francesinha being an actual sandwich (if you can't pick it up and take a bite out of it [which you can't with a Francesinha without burning your hands and covering them in the sauce that's poured over top of it before serving] then it's not really a sandwich in by books). But I'll let that slide, since it is a big salty, spicy, juicy pile of deliciousness.
With this solid ball of food in my stomach (Sarah had had a salad… clearly not thinking ahead!) we headed to the airport to get checked in for and wait the final few hours for our budgo flight out of Oporto, heading most of the way across Europe to an unlikely destination in the middle of the Mediterranean.
