Over the Hill & Far Away

As I travel here and there, I’ve found that there are places in this world that are nothing like you imagined or hoped for, and there are places that are better than you could have imagined. 

A handful of times now, I’ve arrived in a location and it all was there before me. You walk out of the train station door and it’s “Boom! Dere id iz.” 

San Sabastian in the north of Spain is that kind of place. There’s no need to get to the interesting parts; the interesting parts are right there upon arrival. And more to be found.

I imagined this as a much smaller city, and no where near as developed. But I learn that San Sebastian was no sleepy beach town a century ago when Hemingway wrote of it in The Sun Also Rises. It is a rich and varied urban center that is beautifully laid out, and as charming as cities come. 

One reviewer on Trip Advisor called it “a mix of Venice and Florence and Paris.” I’ve only been to Florence, but I get what she was saying. This is a truly marvelous city, a testament to what thoughtful urbanity can be. The most walkable city I’ve ever set foot in, and one of the most beautiful. With so many plazas and cafes and restaurants. And the Atlantic Ocean in all its restless glory.

Walking around this city calms my mind and feeds my soul.

I only booked three nights here- really just two full days- and I feel I shorted myself. I could wander around here exploring for days. Just covering all the paths along the river and the sea is a multi-day experience. 

Adding to the pleasure is the fact that the lodging I booked, the Hotel Terminus, is a part of the train station. You can actually enter the attached hotel’s cafe from the platform. 

Howcoolisthat, I thought as I arrived late Friday night, despite being tired from a five hour-plus train ride, and quite happy to forego a taxi ride. 

And the attached cafe? Like the hotel, obviously, it’s around 100 years old, a classic, with 14 foot ceilings, a great long bar, and tall windows looking out to the trains. Plus a sunny a side patio for folks who don’t want to look at the choo-choos.

As if delicious and inexpensive tapas plates and excellent, cheap Spanish wines weren’t enough. 

People in San Sebastian can stroll, bike, skate board and jog along either side of the River Urema, which empties into the Atlantic about a mile from my hotel.

And they can walk the broad sidewalks of Zurriola Hiribidea to the Plays de Zurriola, a wide curving beach were Hemingway’s alter ego Jake Barnes body surfed nearly a century ago.

It was a hugely popular destination in Hemingway’s time, and is still a popular destination today.

Nowadays surfers ride impressive waves to the shore and young lovers cuddle, little kids frolic and old folks leaning on canes smile out at the sand and sun and blue water, perhaps recalling the days they frolicked or cuddled there.

This morning I joined hundreds- probably thousands- of people strolling along the long walkway above where the river meets the sea. It is a sight to behold. More on that to come in a subsequent post.

America doesn’t know squat about what real class is. We think it’s about what things cost. Europeans appreciate the finer things, but they understand far better than us that everyone is entitled to some good things, and as a part of daily life, not just on special occasions.

The best of their cities, like San Sebastian, exhude that ethos.

Any time you see a well dressed man holding a glass of wine while he stands on the station platform waiting for a train to arrive, you know you’re in a very civilized place. 

Took the Afurada river ferry across to Porto just after noon and a bus to the far side of Matoschinos (beyond Porto), where I’m relaxing in a cafe for a couple hours before Ubering the short distance to the airport.

Headed to San Sebastian via Madrid on the train. Then on to Lourdes, France for three days, then Barcelona.

I had another post for OTHAFA planned, but my computer touch pad was getting touchy and I couldn’t use it properly until last night.

I’ll post it when I’m in San Sebastian.

It’s just before 4 p.m. Portugal time (10 a.m. in Chicago) on a Friday afternoon. I’m sitting on a patio outside Pedra Furada restaurant, just a stone’s throw, and a short throw at that, from the River Douro. 

Looking to my left I can see the surf pounding the beach on the Atlantic Ocean around a mile away. To my right, less than 1,000 feet distant, is the Arribida Bridge, the first span crossing the Douro from the Atlantic, lesser known than the 138 year old Ponte Luis I a mile or so to the east, but eye catching in its own right.

I am in Furada, an old fishing village that’s part of and yet separate from Vila Nova de Gaia, where I will be staying for my last seven days in Portugal.

Or maybe not. After experiencing just a couple hours here, and my beautiful studio apartment a mere 55 steps away up the street, I’m feeling inclined to alter my plans and return here after my stay in Barcelona. 

As I gaze out over the Douro, the river taxi slips away from its pier and drifts over to the opposite shore, as further in the distance the Porto trolley rolls slowly westward on its rails, like a toy under a Christmas tree.

I’ll spare you more descriptive adjectives and just admit I am enthralled. 

This is everything I hoped Portugal would be- sun and seafood and wonderful inexpensive wines, the river, the ocean, a relaxed pace of life. And more. Just four or five minutes by bus along the river to downtown Gaia, a 2 euro river taxi from Porto. Restaurants preparing all sorts of seafood taken just this morning from the Atlantic, cooking on open grills on the sidewalk. 

There’s a small mercado three doors away from my front door, two restaurants with outdoor seating looking out at the river, less than 150 feet away.

None of it will ever likely be pictured on postcards, unlike the Porto skyline a mile up river. But it is all magic nonetheless. 

I feel at peace more than at any time since I left Malaga, Spain in mid-January. Maybe more so. And I think to myself, how long would it take to become bored with this place that stands on its own just across the river from Porto and just down the road from downtown Gaia?

I suspect I may just find out after I’m done visiting Barcelona the first week of March. The beaches of Valencia sound very nice, and I’d planned ten days there to write. I think now that three or four days of sun and sand will suffice.

Wouldn’t want to get bored now, would I?

Too sore and tired after yesterday’s loooong wander up and across the Ponte Luis I and down through the beautiful labyrinth of the Ribeira neighborhood in Porto. A UNESCO World Heritage Site.

So here are a few photos and one video until I feel like writing again.

They’re building and renovating all over the Port cellar district in Vila Nova de Gaia. Had to walk past this crane lifting up loads of stone or pre-fab concrete to the roof of one of three construction sites on the street I walk down and back up every day to my apartment. Gotta say, pretty cool to watch.

A few more photos of my wanders about the waterfront.

Too many photos and too much to write about to post tonight on my trek down from the Luis I bridge through the high backstreets of Porto.

But had to post this very brief video. Weirdness is where you find it, isn’t it?

When you reach the banks of the Douro River (Rio Douro) in Porto, you instinctively look for the Luis I Bridge (or Ponte de D. Luis I). Designed by Gustav Eiffel’s top protege back in 1880, it’s 172 meter span at the time was the longest of its type.

Now it merely looks large and imposing and beautiful. And like the Eiffel Tower in Paris, it will likely never be torn down.

And like the Eiffel Tower, I was pretty sure I’d fight off peeing my pants to scale its height.

On my 11th of 21 days in Porto/Gaia, I finally made the effort to trek up to the bridge and make the crossing. That entailed, one, a loooong f’ing hike, most of it uphill, and two, pushing aside my fear of heights. I did both, and I’m sort of proud of myself.

And tired and sore. And a bit buzzed, because this is Portugal, so any sort of walk through the city involves wine, not to mention that, when I finally made it back to Luis’s hospitality at La Tasca al Forno up in the hills where I’m staying, he just had to introduce me to Mahou, a sorta wine, sorta beer beverage that… well, never mind. It’s a great hot weather drink.

I digress.

As Steve Marriott once famously said, “Are you ready? ‘Cause this one what’s coming up is a long one.”

Walking down from my perch up past the Cockburn Port “caves,” I made my way along the Gaia river front – or “atwrforny” as Apple spell check puts it – to a small tree shaded park looking down at the river and looking up at the bridge. Way. Up. There.

Which really … did not… help worth a shit with my fear of heights. Face my fears my ass, I growled to myself. Wait! I have a bad ankle. And it really hurts right now. That’s a great excuse! No… no! Gotta do this… SFP!

To paraphrase the Munchkins, “Follow the f’in’ brick road!” So upwards I did. On, and on, and on. Clutching the tube of Salonpas in my jacket pocket.

Someday I’ll publish my musings on what made people settle along a river that required them to walk up in every direction. There is about 10 percent downward here and 90 percent up.

All I can say is it was a very good thing I’d been walking around three or four miles a day the past ten days, and nearly all of it at a steep upward angle the last four, or they would have found my skeleton with it’s mouth gaping open, tucked in a rocky crevice three quarters of the way up the path.

Temptation reached out to me about that time, but I knew it was a bad idea with climbing ahead of me.

And then, when the legs felt like the ache was going to move from annoying to disabling, there was light at the end of the tunnel. Or at the top of the hill, or- whatever, pick your own analogy.

And look!!

So after a glass of Moet et Chandon, I turned to the task ahead.

Walking the 60 or 80 miles across the bridge span shouldn’t be so difficult. After all, teenagers jump from the bridge al the time. Really. There are stories about it. But then, teenagers, as we all know, are immortal and can’t be injured, so they have an advantage over tired old guys with acrophobia.

Then I thought, what the hell, I may be old and scared, but I saw Led Zeppelin live four times, while their music mostly sucks, so there, all you fearless little bastards!

C’mon… Gimme a break. I was really grabbing at straws here.

So I just started walking. Took no more than an hour or two. Or maybe just a few minutes. Who can tell with these things, after all.

In any case, I was able to pry my clenched fingers off my genitals long enough to take out my iPhone and manage to type in the password and take a photo of the Douro at the midway point across the bridge.

And I was thinking how really pretty the view was and how peaceful and all everything was when

… holy f… what’s this train doing on this bridge?!

One… foot… after… the other.

And then… the end was near.

So I’d done it. Looked fear in the eye, spit in it and told it to piss off. Moved forward in the face of doubt, ignoring the demons within me and…

Ummm, hey, would love to stay a while and tell you all about my triumph, but I really need to find a bathroom. Maybe later?

This may seem petty of me, but I just want to inform whoever will listen that, while typing in the word “waterfront” as I took notes on my afternoon along the Gaia, Portugal. you know, waterfront, as “along the water, Apple spellcheck decided to change it, for some reason known only to the supposed geniuses at Apple, to “atwrforny.”

atwrforny. 

Ok. That’s all. Thanks for listening. I feel better. Kind of.

It’s the coming back up that’s the bitch.

And hey, Dante. This one’s for you. My new neighbors for the week.

Laundry’s done. Time for early dinner on the riverfront. Text and photos on my Saturday tour and tasting at the Cockburn Port facility tomorrow. (Btw, the “ck” is silent, but that doesn’t stop the jokes.)

I’m very tired and quite content as 5 o’clock approaches in the Yellow House in the Vila Nova de Gaia overlooking Porto on the other side of the River Douro.

No one photo does the ramshackle beauty of the Porto skyline justice. Only the human eye scanning from right to left and back can capture it’s mesmerizing tumble down attraction.

And the food and wine. OMG.

Much to post, but I’m too lazy this evening after carrying some 65 pounds of luggage 500 meters, most of which was “up.” A photo and a video will have to do for the moment.

Oh, yes. The view behind me schlepping to my new lodging…

… and the view looking up at part of the distance I still had to go.

I wanted to take a photo of the third segment of the climb after I turned right for two blocks, but I was too busy fending off a heart attack.

That said, my late lunch and the view was fabulous, so I’ll stop complaining.

The tram line in downtown Porto, which runs along the Douro River up just before the Luis V bridge area, has only one set of tracks.

So trains have to take turns going each way. One comes up the tracks, and then the other tram switches over to the main tracks and uses them to return down the hill.

Also of note, the things run on the sidewalk.

I’m guessing people are really practiced in being very careful before they walk out their front door on this street.