I have made the decision not to travel quite as extensively outside of Portugal during my remaining time of this particular stay in the country for myriad reasons, the likes of which have been discussed introspectively on this blog to give it its very purpose for existence. I'll explain: because of the way my stay has worked out, I have been hesitant to solidify plans to travel, whether for weekends or otherwise, because life has happened at a pace too fast for me to ever quite get settled into anything other than the fact that I am no longer capable of waking up at a decent and respectable hour of the morning, preferring instead the latter portion of that period of day closer to what some might consider lunch time. In other words, too much is going on that I find myself ill at ease with adding so much more stimulation in the form of visiting entirely foreign places in languages I know nothing of and meeting (yet more) people I will connect with for a weekend in person and a lifetime online, all indeed because I am seeing, doing, and feeling so many things in a way that is remarkably similar but in the same place. The temporality of these months has made itself readily apparent and I am fully aware of it – there is no need to add to it. Going back to the United States will not be an easy process, however long the duration of my stay there, and the difficulty involved is directly inverse the amount of chaos and rooting that is taking place here.
To speak of all of this is, of course, not to overlook the fact that a kind of rooting is actually happening here and that I am working out the details of going through the process of turning what was originally a sojourn into a complete relocation to a country I had not previously expected anything from, much less a connection and opportunity as significant as this one. Part of the significance of this has sunk into me in the recognition of the need to discover the entire country and not just Lisbon, however lovely it may be, because the impression of a city may not necessarily be the same for the rest of the country you expect to reside in on the long term, but also because Portugal is a small country in every sense of the term and there is no particularly good reason not to see each region of it. Instead of a grand tour of the Iberian peninsula, I will instead have an interesting and sufficient tour of the western portion of it.
Such is all of this that I found myself at the beginning of March in the middle of what would turn out to be an unending upheaval playing host to a friend who, given the fifteen years of our friendship, is more of a sibling in spirit than just a regular friend. She came for ten days, being possibly the only person I could entertain without needing respite for such a period, and we decided to visit Porto as well as allow her to let Lisbon sink in amid all of the wonderful things it has to offer tourists and locals alike. Despite the fact that we are very similar, both generally speaking and by virtue of time spent and having been more or less raised together, we are as different as any two given people are from each other. In traveling together we bonded over those very differences, which as we have gotten older and somehow managed to begin to become semblances of adults have also served to strengthen our senses of self and the character necessary for any fully grown person not to be just a parrot of those around them, helpless and hopeless pieces of grey Silly Putty who interest no one and excite yet fewer. So I found myself thinking about these things, observing how she prefers to relax and take a moment to breathe when going somewhere for the first time as opposed to doing all of the touristic things you can pay insignificant sums of money to have sit in photos on your coffee table compiled in a neat, artsy book anyway. As has become clear on this blog, I prefer to run at a frenetic pace — sometimes literally, as even my parents could not quite keep up with me on the Paris metro — taking in and seeing and doing as many things as I can cram into any given period of time so that I can take the full bite, chew, and digest at some other, later point in time.
Thus, in some sense, I have adapted her approach to my stay in Portugal, taking a moment to breathe and allow myself to simply enjoy the things in the country I was intended to be in instead of running around to as many somewhere elses as I possibly could. The rest of Europe will still be there when I get back, whether it has imploded in on itself in more abstract ways or not in the meantime. So we went to Porto and didn't cram each and every possible thing one could do in the city into the three days we decided to spend there, deciding instead to focus on the historical center of the city and the river. We had to figure out just as well what there was to do in the city as we had to actually do it. Luckily, we stayed in a hostel, so that process was made simpler than it otherwise could have been, and yet it still happened. We took a walking tour both on our own and with a guide, ate a whole host of things including a pizza that had three entirely unexpected layers of meat underneath the cheese topping and of course the famous francesinha Porto is known for, did a tasting of Port wine, socialized with people from across the world, stared at pigeons, managed not to get charged for one of the dinners we ate, and did at various points nothing at all. We were relaxed about seeing the sights of the city and we were also trying to be somewhat frugal (although that went out the window with an unfortunate pack of sunscreen and after-sun lotion in Cascais after we got back) and we enjoyed all of it quite as thoroughly as it should be. I know that if I had been on my own, I would have felt more driven to see and do more, but I felt a most different sense of satisfaction out of the trip having gone with someone else and done differently. I intend to step back a bit and enjoy the rest of Portugal similarly – Coimbra, Évora, Albufeira and beyond.
To speak of all of this is, of course, not to overlook the fact that a kind of rooting is actually happening here and that I am working out the details of going through the process of turning what was originally a sojourn into a complete relocation to a country I had not previously expected anything from, much less a connection and opportunity as significant as this one. Part of the significance of this has sunk into me in the recognition of the need to discover the entire country and not just Lisbon, however lovely it may be, because the impression of a city may not necessarily be the same for the rest of the country you expect to reside in on the long term, but also because Portugal is a small country in every sense of the term and there is no particularly good reason not to see each region of it. Instead of a grand tour of the Iberian peninsula, I will instead have an interesting and sufficient tour of the western portion of it.
Such is all of this that I found myself at the beginning of March in the middle of what would turn out to be an unending upheaval playing host to a friend who, given the fifteen years of our friendship, is more of a sibling in spirit than just a regular friend. She came for ten days, being possibly the only person I could entertain without needing respite for such a period, and we decided to visit Porto as well as allow her to let Lisbon sink in amid all of the wonderful things it has to offer tourists and locals alike. Despite the fact that we are very similar, both generally speaking and by virtue of time spent and having been more or less raised together, we are as different as any two given people are from each other. In traveling together we bonded over those very differences, which as we have gotten older and somehow managed to begin to become semblances of adults have also served to strengthen our senses of self and the character necessary for any fully grown person not to be just a parrot of those around them, helpless and hopeless pieces of grey Silly Putty who interest no one and excite yet fewer. So I found myself thinking about these things, observing how she prefers to relax and take a moment to breathe when going somewhere for the first time as opposed to doing all of the touristic things you can pay insignificant sums of money to have sit in photos on your coffee table compiled in a neat, artsy book anyway. As has become clear on this blog, I prefer to run at a frenetic pace — sometimes literally, as even my parents could not quite keep up with me on the Paris metro — taking in and seeing and doing as many things as I can cram into any given period of time so that I can take the full bite, chew, and digest at some other, later point in time.
Thus, in some sense, I have adapted her approach to my stay in Portugal, taking a moment to breathe and allow myself to simply enjoy the things in the country I was intended to be in instead of running around to as many somewhere elses as I possibly could. The rest of Europe will still be there when I get back, whether it has imploded in on itself in more abstract ways or not in the meantime. So we went to Porto and didn't cram each and every possible thing one could do in the city into the three days we decided to spend there, deciding instead to focus on the historical center of the city and the river. We had to figure out just as well what there was to do in the city as we had to actually do it. Luckily, we stayed in a hostel, so that process was made simpler than it otherwise could have been, and yet it still happened. We took a walking tour both on our own and with a guide, ate a whole host of things including a pizza that had three entirely unexpected layers of meat underneath the cheese topping and of course the famous francesinha Porto is known for, did a tasting of Port wine, socialized with people from across the world, stared at pigeons, managed not to get charged for one of the dinners we ate, and did at various points nothing at all. We were relaxed about seeing the sights of the city and we were also trying to be somewhat frugal (although that went out the window with an unfortunate pack of sunscreen and after-sun lotion in Cascais after we got back) and we enjoyed all of it quite as thoroughly as it should be. I know that if I had been on my own, I would have felt more driven to see and do more, but I felt a most different sense of satisfaction out of the trip having gone with someone else and done differently. I intend to step back a bit and enjoy the rest of Portugal similarly – Coimbra, Évora, Albufeira and beyond.
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| Missing from this charming view of the Ribeira area of Porto is the blow-up doll (or just sexualized mannequin) prominently affixed to one of the balconies on the streets leading there. |
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| This is the ungodly meat and cheese calorie-bomb confection known as the francesinha — "little French girl" in Portuguese — that is a specialty of Porto and claimed all across Portugal as a national dish. |
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