We wanted to do a little more intensive exploration of the city of Porto, but Saturday was a drizzly day and not suitable for sightseeing. So we returned to El Corté Ingles, our local department store shangri-la, and did a little clothes shopping for Gerrit instead. Pat had managed to bring sufficient clothes with her when we came to Portugal, at least a couple month's worth, but Gerrit had little more than a couple pairs of jeans, eight or so shirts (mostly tee), and some orthopedic looking shoes.
We had lunch at the food court there: pork sandwiches. They were called "piglet sandwiches" on the English menu, which is a technically correct way to describe a young pig but makes readers of Winnie the Pooh squeamish. Our qualms quickly vanished, though, when we found how tasty they were. The buns were crunchy and soft artisan bread too.
Neither of us likes shopping much, and it's worse when you don't know your size and can't understand the labels very well. The online size translation tables we found before we left were wrong about the pants, but trial and error got us there. Pants are sold with a fixed inseam length here; you just hem (or roll) them up if you need to. Fortunately Gerrit is on the tall side in Portugal so it looks like the standard length will do. He got a couple pairs of summer pants, some dressier shoes, and the thin grey shorty summer socks he's been looking for all his life. Why did we have to come to Portugal to find them? The rest of his wardrobe enhancement will have to wait for another day.
Sunday was a beautiful hot summer day. We wanted to take a more extensive driving tour of Porto to at least see the sights we wanted to concentrate on later. Pat set up a nice itinerary of a half dozen stops recommended by Rick Steves, and off we went. Gerrit was sporting his new Portuguese pants and shoes, feeling very stylish.
After way too many wrong turns and wild excursions due to a silent Google Maps (our bad), the first stop was at one of the many "Chinese stores" (yes, that's what they call them) to pick up a fan since Monday is supposed to be a scorcher. Casa China turned out to be about an acre of the gaudiest and poorest quality of anything you can imagine. (At least in Gerrit's opinion. Pat kind of liked some of it.) Whatever exists, you can find a trashy and poorly made version of it here. Notice we're not saying "cheapest" because they aren't. The low-quality fan we got was €29.99, and should have been about €10. Well, at least we'll have moving air in the apartment on Monday.
To continue the theme, next we had a rather disappointing lunch. Gerrit tried a traditional Portuguese dish called a Francesinha, which is a sandwich of fried egg, beef steak, ham, and sausage between thick slices of bread, wrapped in cheese, and smothered with gravy. It's about as dense and filling as it sounds, kind of like a croque monsieur or Canadian poutine on steroids. The steak in Gerrit's was the toughest he'd ever tried to saw through, but other than that it was okay. Pat had bacalhau (cod) with three amêijoas (clams), one camarão (shrimp), and batatas fritas (french fries), but she found it disappointing and hard to eat. The waitress was very kind though, speaking slowly and simply for us which we really appreciated, and the restaurant décor was cool mid-20th-century modern.
But then our afternoon began to improve. The intrepid Google Maps lady (talking to us now) guided us through the labyrinthine streets of Porto along Pat's route to some of the best spots in the city. Porto was intense this time: swarming with tourists, chaotic, disorganized, and thrilling. We were awed by the narrow cobblestone streets, the crowded squares, the grand medieval churches and spires, the mixture of the ancient and the new. Gerrit is really starting to drive like a European, fully confident amidst all the chaos. He didn't hit a single pedestrian.
Here are a couple quick shots from through the car window:
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 | | Porto City Hall |
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 | | Clérigos Church |
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On Monday night we tried the next installment in our ongoing series of "Portuguese frozen fish". This time it was grouper filets. They were good, but we again had the impression that one of them was a little old. We need to look into the best way to buy fish here. The Portuguese actually consume far more fish per capita than any other European country, so they should know. There are many new (to us) varieties of fish to be found here including the grouper we just tried, which is a nice firm white fish a bit similar to halibut. We have some perch to try next.
As of Monday, the temperature is getting up above 30 C (86 F), a little too hot especially for Gerrit. Our Chinese Store fan is helping, but Gerrit wanted to get the apartment air conditioning going. After a fair amount of cursing and poking, he found how to operate it with the remote control here. Very nice! To avoid feeling too much like spoiled Americans we're keeping it at 26 C (79 F), but that makes a nice difference especially with the fan in conjunction. That and a glass of chilled
vinho verde keeps the hot afternoons pleasant.
And all of a sudden we have our internet and TV connected! Our Portuguese fixer read the carrier (Vodafone) the riot act for taking so long, and we literally got a call when the installer was on the way the next morning. In Portugal every company is required to keep a Complaint Book which customers have access to. There are serious repercussions for complaints, so we bet our fixer threatened them with an official complaint. Whatever she did, it worked.
As the installer started rummaging around in the front closet Gerrit peeked over his shoulder and discovered we have fiber to the apartment! Sweet. We will have bandwidth galore. This is the most state-of-the-art communication network either of us has ever had, and now we can retire the lame, slow cell phone hotspots we've been using for internet. And we can watch all the
futebol we want!
(As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, scroll through them all, and click in the black area outside a photo when you're done.)
