Happy to be Traveling

Sunny. Seventy degrees. Yawn. Bus to São Bento station. Then the train to Braga. Twenty-five stops later, we’re there. The basic idea was to go north and stop in some picturesque town before we got to Spain. Braga, whose citizens are reputed to be the happiest in Portugal, seemed a good pick. Besides a brooding…

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Gelato. In this shop, you purchase a cup or cone in your desired size and then you are entitled to as many flavors as can be crammed in. I chose Chocolate, Café, Bourbon (cream heavily flavored with bourbon) and Pistachio. Grubb’s choices were Indian mango, fig, blueberry amoretto and strawberry cheesecake. That kept us going…

But after the beautiful bookstore and before the church, we stopped for a Delta cappuccino. The Igreja do Carmo or Church of the Venerable Third Order of Nossa Senhora do Carmo was built on land adjacent to the Church of the Carmelites. At the time, two churches were not allowed to share a wall, so the Casa Escondida do…

You might have heard of a bookstore in Porto, the Livraria Lello, beloved by Harry Potter fans. One the most beautiful bookstores in the world if you’re inclined to favor wooden two story shelves with a deep golden varnish bisected by a crimson spiraling staircase spreading its Victorian wings along the upper landing. Narrow and…

The Livraria Lello bookstore, opened in 1906 and is billed as one of the most beautiful bookstores in the world. J.K Rowling lived in Porto for a couple of years (prior to her rise to stardom) and is said to have frequented the bookstore. Harry Potter fans may notice a striking resemblance to the Flourish…

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Or rather, uncorking a memory of corked Coke was my arresting moment of time travel today… But first I had to wake up to another day of resplendent sunshine and balmy breezes. And I wasn’t able to fully take it in until we had our morning cappuccinos on the Ribiera dock. Ella pointed out that…

The other side of the Douro River was today’s destination. Requiring crossing the Luis I bridge…on foot. The warning – if you have vertigo, don’t try this at home. We don’t, so we did. Reminded us of getting married on the catwalk 5 stories above the soundstage at the Albuquerque Studios (now owned by Netflix)….

Goodbye to all that is beige. In Porto, if I were a chameleon slithering down the streets, I’d be green. Even the sidewalks are green. Easter holiday here and old guys like me sit on benches and watch the couples court and the kids run loose. Not enough benches in Albuquerque for elderly eyeballing. The…

Best artist of the day…Mark Bradford. An L.A. based contemporary artist seen at the Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves in Porto. My personal favorite: Fire Fire painted in 2021. And an untitled one painted at the beginning of 2020 that should have been called Covid, Covid. Best garden trowel of the week. Best Tree…

The fast train to Porto was smooth and comfortable. Being eligible for those senior fares, for a couple extra Euros, we bumped ourselves into the first class car. A mere 3 hours and voila, here we are. And then there was the taxi. Grubb will fill you in on that.  For those of you who…

After arriving at the Porto train station, we were shooed towards the next cab in line where our driver, after Ella told him, “Viela Ilha de Ferra 12,” looked at the printout of the address and then started wagging his finger at us, “Porto, no Porto!” I was confused. Was this a warning? Or was…

Here is what the inside of our Lisbon AirBnB looks like. I am guessing it is a typical layout for an apartment in Lisbon. It is old but spotlessly clean and well kept. You can see in the kitchen, the range is about half the height of a regular range. The microwave and washing machine…