Day 7, March 29th, 2017
I get the car and head north. I would be so, so, so screwed trying to get
out of Lisbon if I didn’t have the built-in GPS in the car. How did people attempt
this before GPS? The Portuguese are like
the French in that the signs are put in the perfect places if you already know
how to get where you’re going.
The landscape becomes hillier along the drive and
finally, they get proper trees, instead of the scrub brush looking sad little
things pretending to be trees. I think these proper ones are cork trees.
Getting into Porto is Chaos, but I get parked and
to the hostel, right in the downtown area.
I have time to sign up for a walking tour, dinner at the hostel, and a
port tour tomorrow and then I’m off for the walking tour. The guide, Nuno, is gregarious and he takes
us through the various sites of the more modern part of the city (the morning
tour does the medieval part, the afternoon does the 19th century
forward). He explains how Portugal has
had legal abortion for 80 years (ever since their dictatorship took over) and
gay marriage since 2001 and decriminalization of drugs for twenty years or some
such.
I’ve not mentioned it so far, but I’ve been
hassled about “smoke? Marijuana? Cocaine?” throughout being here. Nuno says that those people are selling fake
crap, and then offhandedly mentions that the park we’re in, The Plaza of
Virtue, is where people get the real stuff. Ha.
Then he finishes the tour by showing us a statue
of Henry the Navigator and revealing that history books don’t tell the full
truth, but that Henry was openly homosexual.
Then the tour is over and Nuno insists on a hug. Real progressive place they
got here.
I wander a bit, but I saw a doner kebap shop on
the main square, and even though I’m doing the hostel dinner at 9pm, I say hell
with it and get a doner and a beer and enjoy sunset. I had a doner kebap stand around the corner
of my flat in Germany (Doner by Klaus!). Life has its moments.
Then it’s back to the hostel and they have draft
beer in the lobby and I have some pints and chat with folks and then the dinner
happens and there are more pints and a group is going out on a pub crawl, but I
have no interest in feeling like hell tomorrow when I know I have a lot of
walking, so I wander back to my bunk and sleep, blessed sleep.
No comments:
Post a Comment