The Ottawackers’ day out in Porto

As part of our quest to spoil Ottawacker Jr. and make his future adult life as miserable as possible, we decided to accede to his request to go on a train journey while in Portugal. In addition, as there was essentially no difference in price, we were going to go first class. But there was a condition. Yesterday, having exhausted almost every possibility to get to the train station by car or bus, and not knowing whether local taxis were reliable enough to turn up when asked, we decided Shackleton-like to leave the tent, and walk. On our feet. For those who know me, this was a big deal. My osteoarthritic hips reduce me to a distance of few blocks in Canada; I’ve often claimed I can walk much better and much further in Europe, and especially in southern Europe; now was a chance to put this to the test. According to Google Maps, it was a 30-minute hike—mostly downhill, thankfully—along winding one-way streets, which intersected with huge boulevards and crossed highways. Our train was at 8.30: it would take us to Porto, where we would spend the day before returning via the last train. Would I make it, though… that was the question.
 
In the end, it wasn’t even close. I strode ahead of the two laggards, stopping to photograph things of interest and things that, in hindsight, weren’t of interest. We made the station well before 8am and headed for the station café, which was, I was delighted to see, a very 1980s-style station café, the type they used to have in France, with a central counter and standing tables around the edges of the room. Here, I had four of the very small, very good Portuguese coffees. Like the café, the whole of Coimbra “B” is a throwback, and I felt very nostalgic for a Europe I had known and loved and which I thought no longer existed. In fact, the station is like the whole of the city. Lived in, slightly dilapidated, but a great place to be. When our train came, we found our seats (or what we thought were our seats) and having ejected a poor Central American woman who was sitting there, we settled down for the journey. Five minutes later, the inspector came through, told us we were in the wrong carriage – but we could stay there if we wanted – and delivered the whole speech with a really nice smile, as if it pained him to even tell us about it. As one who grew up on British Rail service, where a smile was something an inspector would only do if a passenger was having a heart attack, it was a memorable experience. We moved, pausing only to apologise to the Central American woman on our way out.
 
An hour or so later, we arrived at Porto Campanha and took the free train shuttle to Porto São Bento. This was as far down as I got on my 1992 trip to Portugal. I have about a dozen faded instamatic photos of the inside of the station – its azulejos are remarkable – and were I organised, I’d have some of them here as a compare and contrast. But I don’t, and I haven’t and I am not: I won’t do a compare and contrast of myself, either, in case you were worried. We walked up towards the cathedral and got a great view of the old town; then, as we hadn’t really planned the day, we thought we would go into the cathedral and see what that was like (it was great, thank you for asking). Actually, it really was. Again, the azulejo tiles are well used, especially in the outside courtyard. There is also a top cloistered section to the courtyard, with more tiles. It seemed like each of the tiles had its own group of four Japanese people in front of it – all pouting lips, sunglasses, and “V’ signs, all having a 20-minute photo session with a dedicated photographer asking them to strike just the right pose. So, we took a hike up to the top of the bell tower and saw the views, as well as a worker who was about to launch himself into the void to do some repairs on the wall. Thankfully, we were the only ones around, as my palms were sweating and the vertigo was beginning to kick in. If there had been groups of pouting-“V”-signing influencers there, I might not have been responsible for my actions. We wandered round the cathedral itself, which was stunning, and I was sitting there open-mouthed in wonder at the Baroque chapels and the high altar, when I was jolted back to reality by the plum of my loins.
 
“Dad,” he said. “I really need a pee.”
“Well, find a toilet,” I said, helpfully.
“There isn’t one,” he said. “Mum looked.”
“Well, find a corner,” I said, perhaps less helpfully.
“Daaad.”
 
So, off we went, and asked the young man at the front desk if there was a toilet available. There wasn’t, he said, but there was one next door in the Bishop’s Palace. So, that is where we went.
 
I paid the entrance fee and then asked the lady behind the desk if Ottawacker Jr. might avail himself of the toilets. Silence. I asked again, a little more loudly. Still silence. Then she held up her index finger, signalling me to wait while she finished her task. The fact that she wasn’t actually doing anything was rather apparent. She was staring at a screen, and I could see the reflection of the screensaver – a kitten moving up and down the screen – in her glasses. Still silence.
 
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Was I speaking Urdu?”
 
She finally deigned to look up.
 
“What?” she said, her face twisting into a rictus of repulsion. I asked again about the toilet. She looked at me as if I were something she had just trodden in. She was, without doubt, in the history of my life, the most sullen, sour-faced, obnoxious person I have ever met. And I have worked in some pretty weird places, including schools. This woman shouldn’t have been in charge of an arse-kicking punishment for child molesters, let alone be serving as the physical representative of a tourist or quasi-religious facility. She looked like she was 80, but she could have been about 20-25 years younger. It was her attitude that made her seem older. Her lips were pursed in a permanent scowl, as if she’d been doused with manure but only she could smell it (maybe she had trodden in something?). When she spoke, it was like a buttock masticating a haemorrhoid. It wasn’t just that she was condescending – it was that she made you feel as if she was being especially condescending to you. Because you, you were special.
 
“The café is closed,” she said. “So, no toilet. So sorry.” She said the last two words with an attempt at a smile. She looked more like Alan Rickman playing Severus Snape than Alan Rickman looked like when he was playing Severus Snape. I explained that my 11-year-old son was desperate and that we had only come into the building to use the facilities. Was there, perhaps, a staff toilet he could use? Or could she make an exception and let him into the café toilets? She didn’t look up.
 
“Is there a public toilet nearby, perhaps, or somewhere with a lot of trees?”
 
“No,” she said. Then the miserable old crone got back to whatever she was doing, waiting for the computer to charge so she could continue dissecting live kittens or pulling the wings off songbirds in a dark chat room, probably – and we stood there, contemplating how much trouble we’d get into if I told Ottawacker Jr. to pee against her desk. Or her legs.
 
“It’s alright, dad,” said Ottawacker Jr., as if he could read my thoughts, “I can hold on. It’s not as bad as all that.”
 
And he did. We wandered around the bishop’s palace, where I introduced Ottawacker Jr. to the word “bishopric”, which rapidly became his favourite word, and the bishop’s palace became, in our parlance, the bishopric. I wonder if you can guess what Miss Congeniality became known as? Even now, a month later as I write this up, I am still seething about that woman. Mostly, I think, because of all the people I met in Portugal, she was the only one – and I mean, the only one – I didn’t like. I wish I had taken a photo of her. She’d have been the blip of the day.
 
We left, eventually, and walked down innumerable flights of stairs, past cohorts of workmen carrying buckets of rocks up towards the cathedral, laughing and joking as they did so. This too was a timeless moment. We paused often, oohing and ahing at the appropriate places and new views came into our path. We made for the line of cafés along the Douro waterfront, where Ottawacker Jr. announced that his mother could go for a pee first, as he wasn’t that desperate. I looked at him with something like astonishment in my eyes, wondering if he really had needed to go to the bathroom an hour ago or whether it was just some elaborate ruse to get out of the cathedral. So we sat by the Douro, watching the boats go by, enjoying the exorbitantly expensive drinks and happy to be here on a warm November day. We got up, made sure everyone’s bladder was empty, then crossed the magnificent Ponte Dom Luís I, heading for the south bank and Vila Nova de Gaia.
 
It was here that we decided, spur-of-the-moment like, that we would go on a river cruise. We wandered down to the Cais Gaia and saw a tour being offered that would take us up and down the river and show us the six bridges of Porto. Never let it be said that we don’t know how to have a good time. In fairness, the tour was fine: there is a hell of a lot to be seen on the Douro river, and the guide made a good job of explaining the various designs and giving the names of the architects. You got a real sense of Porto’s importance as trading and colonial hub. Ottawacker Jr. and I sat at the front of the boat, which was a triple blessing: not only did we have an unobstructed view of where we were going, we had a cool breeze blowing into our faces, the noise of which drowned out the building-by-building commentary of the American couple who were reading directly from the Rick Steves’ guidebook, and telling their friends across the boat where they were going next. (It was Setúbal, by the way, if you are interested.) By the end of the tour, though, I could tell Mrs. Ottawacker was suffering PTSD flashbacks to our accommodation in Lisbon, so we got off quickly and decided on something to eat.
 
Right next to the boat jetty was a rather container-like restaurant called “Uva by Cálem”. I have several rules in life, one of which is never to eat in a restaurant that is in a container. Another is never to eat in a restaurant by a tourist attraction. When there is a restaurant in a container next to a tourist attraction, I would rather die than eat there. So, of course, that is where we went. Not that I had any choice in the matter, it was all Mrs. Ottawacker’s doing. And thank God she took the initiative, because it was without doubt the best meal I had in Portugal. I had a pork shanks dish on a bed of cabbage and potatoes. I wasn’t holding out much hope for it, to be honest, but the pork was done to perfection, with a honey glaze to create the crackling. The potatoes were perfect and the cabbage was al dente and actually tasted of something. I had a glass of a Douro Valley white, which was superb too. I can’t remember what the others had – and frankly, I don’t care – but they seemed to like it. We all left in a state of food-induced benevolence, and headed back over the bridge to the Cais de Ribeira side, where I grandly treated Ottawacker Jr. to an ice cream, and we sat and listened to the buskers providing concerts to all who wanted to listen.
 
Soon, though, we decided to discover some more of the city. I went into a souvenir store where the owner was smiling and friendly… or rather she was until I asked whether she was enjoying the rather excellent free music.
 
“You must appreciate the free concerts,” I said, smiling.
“I enjoyed it for the first 2-3 days,” she said. “But he only has two songs. And he plays them over and over and over. It’s like having teeth pulled now.”
 
So, we walked. And walked. And walked. Up the hills and down the hills, stopping for a drink here and a museum there. I’ve developed a skin tag in a rather awkward place (on my inner thigh, just to the right of certain pendulous protuberances if you must know) and, with all the walking I was doing, it had become a little bit inflamed. This gave me a good excuse to stop more frequently for a drink. We stopped at the “A Cachorra” on rua Trindade Coelho (another good find), walked around the area by the station again, and then wandered up for a final bit of tourism at the Igreja do Carmo and the Igreja dos Carmelitas, which are two churches in Porto divided by a narrow one-metre-wide house, built to separate monks and nuns and stop them from becoming the Carnalites. Admittedly, I might have made that bit up. It was amazing, of course, filled with gold and silver from the colonies, inspirational and terrifying in equal measure. It might have been this that made us realise we had had enough of walking, so we found a nice Italian restaurant called the Nosolo Italia, and ate outside. Then we found the train station again and headed back to São Bento, where we caught the free train to Campanha, and then headed back to Coimbra on the 20:32.