Porto Sketches, xi.

by the time i woke on monday the routine was standard and i was out the door and down at a café before 11. the previous night's burning bellyache was gone but to make sure it would stay gone i went down and got some plum and pastry from the old women hawkers in the market.

most of what id seen outside of wine places had been closed the previous day so a lot of the morning was revisiting the open and bustling locales. i spent almost an hour in "europe's most beautiful bookshop", mostly sitting on the floor reading about olive oil production and then dodging other tourists and their camera viewfinders trained on the grand central staircase and stained glass ceiling. i went back by the central train station and other sites i’d seen the first day in the same morning sun, combing every street, alley and square to burn their image firmly in my mind.




moss covered paving stones in the corners of small courtyards where two or three of the sloping alleys coincided, mc escher style. sewer-like stone tunnels down by the river with heavy iron grid doors that might hold in a galley full of recently captured pirates. i climbed to the top level of the luis i bridge and felt fear in my gut when the breeze blew by me as i stood 350' up looking up and down at the cliff-like river sides and the other bridges.

then somehow i was back down on the other side again, sniffing the doors of port houses for samples. finally tried it with chocolate as every taste tour seductively suggested. i found it a sexier idea than actual activity. this i debated with the english and irish couples there on holiday enjoying these things for their first time. i went to the calem cellar and got a pre-tour taste - very nice touch - and then my own private tour as the rest of the group lost patience and couldn't understand castellano. before i left i tried rosé port. terrible idea to attract women and white pants-wearing mediterranean men. i needed a real drink to wash it out so i left to build my appetite in bars along the way back. the sun was still high and burning brightly.

on the heroin street  i found a restaurant with a cheap dish of bacalahau i desired. i went in and sat, again alone in an empty restaurant. i reasoned that it was monday in an obscure section of town. very few people strolled by. but midway through my meal of oven roasted cod/onion/potatoes, a blond kid about my age walked in with his rucksack and sat heavy in a chair. he looked tired, alone, and less than comfortable. i nodded. when the little round grandma approached to ask what he'd be having, he was lost. i helped him secure some wine and fish. we talked a bit. it turned out he'd finished the camino de santiago some time before and was walking down through portugal before flying back to (holland?denmark?) via madrid. but there were no albergues in portugal, or at least not many that he was finding. my guess was he spent most nights out. i noticed the look he wore, sitting in that restaurant in that holiday town(even if it was heroin street. he was probably too tired to notice anyway). sometimes it's hard not to feel like a loser when you’re carrying your life in a bag on your back. sometimes it's downright impossible not to feel like an outsider, and all the worse when you're alone. i wrote my name, email, and phone number and metro stops where i lived. told him when he ended up there he had a place to stay and clean up. his blue eyes thanked me warmly, even as his reticent voice belied his emotion. i paid my bill and left, back up the hill to the plaza of the poor and casa tasos, an important stop at this hour when my carried cash was almost gone and my phone was dead.