Postcard from Portugal, 2024

I’ve been away for a while. Here is the story of some of what I was doing during that time.

POSTCARD FROM PORTUGAL 2024

Maps present a landscape, but writing about a place re-represents a place as it was experienced, the feel of a place as it registered in one’s muscles and bones. If we experience space as an idea, we experience places through sensory impressions – the seen, heard, smelled, felt, tasted. As I began to write about our journey on the Douro River starting in Porto, Portugal, it struck me that we were back in the country where these travelogues I call “postcards” began more than thirty years ago. Like the blast of a ship’s whistle or the click-click clack of train wheels, travel can be insistent. The minute you leave home it starts demanding that you tell its story. It tugs at your elbows. It becomes a daily pest. For me, at least, travel is more than a series of sights. It is a change that goes on, in the words of St. Augustine, deep and permanent in the ideas of living.

Miki and I both enjoy river cruises for the small ships, easy access to the land, the ability to sleep in the same room for a week, and most important for her, the lack of mal de mer, the dreaded sea sickness. (The irony of a man who loved sailing and skiing choosing a mate who is intolerant of both is not lost on me.) This was my fifth river cruise and the fourth with Emerald, and we were running out of European rivers. Despite having traveled around most of Portugal on prior occasions, we never managed to get to Porto, the country’s second largest city. My son and sister in law had been there, and they had nothing but good things to say about the city. Our own experience substantiates their assessment. We flew in a day before our ship, the Emerald Radiance sailed, giving us a chance to walk about and see some of the city sights. Our hotel located in Ribeira in the center of the old city, just a block from the Douro River and its many cafes and restaurants, gave us easy walking access to many of the nearby attractions. Rightly famous for its 20,000 tiles arranged to depict episodes of local history, the Estacao de Sao Bento is the railway station that is a must stop for anyone in the city. From there, it’s only a short walk to Porto’s Cathedral (Se) sitting on top of the hill. The cathedral itself is not a particularly fetching piece of architecture, built in a heavy Romanesque style. More interesting is the adjacent Gothic cloister with again blue painted tiles depicting scenes from later periods. The obvious strategic advantages of the site led the Romans to build a fort at the spot, and some of the original defensive walls from the middle ages are still standing.

It had been raining in the city since shortly after our arrival, but we came prepared for the weather, so it didn’t dampen our spirits. Rain has a way of bringing out the contours of everything; it throws a colored blanket over previously invisible things; instead of an intermittent and thus fragmented world, the steadily falling rain creates a continuity of acoustic experience. Having walked up from Ribeira, we opted to walk back around the Cathedral to the Ponte Luis I, a bridge over the Douro to Vila Nova de Gaia. The lower tier of the bridge is for cars, but the upper is reserved for street cars and pedestrians. The walk along the top bridge gives a panoramic, almost dizzying view of the old city walls, as well as the boats and river cruise ships, including the one we were about to board the next day. Crossing the river and stopping in Vila Nova gives you the opportunity to take great picture postcard photos of the old city. This is also where most of the wine tasting rooms are located, given this was the spot where the barrels of wine from the nearby vineyards are unloaded and processed, creating the rightly famous Porto wines shipped around the world. There is even a gondola that traverses over this part of the city, affording more aerial views for the tourists. I’m glad we were there in the beginning of April, as later in the year the tourists swamp this relatively small city, and the heat can become oppressive. Most places are not air conditioned!

Still jetlagged from our LAX-Amsterdam-Porto marathon, we opted for an early (by Porto standards) 7:30 dinner at a tiny restaurant we passed on a narrow side street. I have a fairly good nose for food, and if a place smells right, it usually turns out to be wonderful. This was no exception. With only five tables, we managed to get the last one, and accepted the owner’s recommendation for a local cod. It was excellent, washed down with a local bottle of wine at a price lower than we would have paid at a fast food place at home.

We ate an early breakfast at the hotel from the ample spread available. Taking the opportunity that we still had most of the morning to ourselves before the arranged pick up to the ship, we walked about some more to take in the Porto sights. The old city of Porto had been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and we enjoyed meandering through its somewhat eccentrically laid out network of lanes and alleys reflecting its medieval history. Knowing that this was the spot of departure for many expeditions during Portugal’s Age of Discovery, we walked by the imposing statue Prince Henry the Navigator. We chose to bypass touring inside the Palacio da Bolsa, the new Stock Exchange as well as the Igreja de Sao Francisco. Looking at the photos from inside, one would not guess that this church was dedicated to St. Francis who created the order based on poverty. With the massive profits from the country’s colonial expansion, especially Brazil, as well as the wine trade, the church appears to be a great example of material excess of which we’ve seen enough. I knew we were leaving a great deal of worthwhile attractions left unexplored, but that would have to wait for another visit. I decided, based on the vibe of the people, the food I smelled and sampled, and the physical charms of the city Porto was a place worth a longer visit if opportunity presented itself.

The transfer to the ship went smoothly. Emerald has a basic design they apply to all their ships, so we immediately felt comfortable with our surroundings. A light lunch was being served, allowing us to meet some of our fellow passengers.  We had already met a British couple, Peter and Joan back at our hotel. Now on board, we met yet another British couple of the same names, who in turn we eventually introduced to each other. As the serendipity of discovery continued to unfold, they grew up in close proximity to each other. Furthermore, one couple was celebrating their fiftieth wedding anniversary while the other the sixtieth! As we found them to be delightful, well-travelled, capable of easy laughter and with interesting backgrounds, we ended up sharing many of our meals together. We would have been happy to do this even if they hadn’t shared their bottles of celebratory champagne with us, though a glass of good bubbly is always a nice lagniappe (derived from the South American Spanish phrase la yapa referring to a free extra item. I became enamored of this word and its concept during my four years living in New Orleans, where it often cropped up in the Creole culture.)

C.S. Lewis, one of my favorite British authors, pointed out that friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather is one of those things that give value to survival. Anais Nin said it another way, pointing out that each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive. This is one of the main reasons I love travel: it exposes us to new people in a setting removed from the usual pressures of our lives, allowing us to form new bonds, gain new perspectives of looking at the world through experiences and philosophies almost always different from our own. No matter how long we live, we can only see and do so much on our own. When we can share the experience of another who has seen the same vistas, the same situations that we have, but from a different point of view, we gain a dimension of that experience that ads color, granularity and meaning we might never have otherwise known. Access to this prismatic quality of the universe is but one of the many benefits that friendship provides.

Enough philosophy; back to our trip. This cruise turned out to be particularly rich in providing meaningful contact with some of our fellow travelers. David and his wife Caroline were a couple I noticed at breakfast at our hotel before boarded the ship. They were sitting by themselves, exhibiting a certain reserve, yet with a quality that drew my eye. She was informally elegant, wearing a colorful scarf, while he had an air of quiet authority with his grey hair and calm demeanor. When we boarded the ship and we were going through the initial introductions with the crew, the cruise manager asked what countries people were traveling from. Most of our passengers were British, with a smaller contingent of Americans, Canadians and Aussies, but he identified himself as being from Malta. Miki and I visited the island country for a week almost twenty years ago. I was impressed with their complicated, fascinating history, along with their archeology. At some point I approached Caroline to start a conversation about the island. She revealed that she was actually British, a retired operative nurse who met her husband, David, an academic colorectal surgeon while working together, and he was born in Malta, where they now lived. Since I’m a gastroenterologist who was affiliated for some time with one of the big LA universities, we knew many people in common and traded a few war stories relating to our professions. He reminded me, with his self deprecating behavior and knowledge of the old classics, of one of my own mentors whom I much admired. They had both recently lived in Perth, Australia, where David spent almost five years working, while we recently returned from three week visit to Southeast Australia and Tasmania. We had lots to talk about, and not enough time to do it.

Life on ship revolves around meals, and the food on this cruise I found to be very good, occasionally excellent. There are always enough menu choices that it’s almost impossible not to find something you enjoy. I like Emerald because they have an open seating policy, so you’re never stuck at one table with a group of people you might not want to share time with. Breakfasts and lunches are served buffet style, while at dinner you are served at the table. Wine and beer is included without charge at the meals. Since we were in Portugal, we had a selection of different local wines with every meal. However, if you liked one particular bottle that was served at a previous time, you could always request it and they were happy to provide it. My own favorite was Planalto, a dry white Douro 2022 Reserva wine that I would recommend for anyone to try. As you might imagine Portugal has excellent seafood dishes, as well as a selection of local sausages, ham and roast beef often provided as Franchesma to be found at local restaurants. I also developed a fondness for a local dessert, Pastel de Nata, an egg custard delicacy for which our on-board chef provided a demonstration of its preparation. You can get this in Porto year round, but especially during Easter, which was the time of our visit. The only problem with all this culinary indulgence is that my cholesterol will likely to be high, a small pouch of newborn fat is flapping below my navel, and my liver is seeking asylum with the Canadian authorities.

The original cruise itinerary involved sailing back and forth on the navigable 130 miles of the Douro River, with stops along the way at small towns, visits at numerous wineries, as well as a visit to Salamanca in Spain via bus. Being another UNESCO World Heritage Site as well as the home of one of the oldest universities in Europe, plus never having been there, this was an outing I was especially anticipating. Unfortunately for me and my cruise companions, Nature was not cooperating. Unlike on one of our previous Danube cruises from Budapest to Bucharest, where water levels were low and the passengers and luggage had to be offloaded to buses for a short segment to allow the ship to pass without scraping the bottom, our problem was too much water. It had been raining for over a week, and the high water levels created an unsafe condition for the ship to go through the necessary locks. In a way, we were lucky. We left Porto at 6 AM, just before sunrise. I was one of the few people up in the lounge to watch our departure, as we sailed under Porto’s five bridges leaving the city behind. I was rewarded with the slow illumination of the surrounding landscape by the gradual brightening sky, while lights of buildings slowly dimmed in a pleasant mixture of pastels. A few patches of morning fog added a trace of mystery to the peaceful scene. We reach Carrapatelo Dam and the deepest lock in Europe. The ship traverses a height of 35 meters from the bottom to the top of the river, making for an impressive experience. We were able to sail from Porto as far as Pinhao, which we reached on the second day of the journey. Pinhao is a small town of about 700 people, established originally as a railway station, as well as a port from which to send the boats with its barrels of wine to the big city. Now, all these small towns are shrinking, as young people no longer see a future for themselves there, and migrate to the big cities or out of the country. This out-migration in turn leads to predictable labor shortages, threatening the viability of the Douro wineries with their heavy requirement for manual labor, especially at harvest time.  During our trip, we visited a number of wineries and sampled their products.

I have a penchant for minutia, so I won’t bore you with all the tidbits I learned on this trip. However, here are a few things that stuck out. Did you know why the grapes are crushed by stomping of the feet rather than by mechanical presses? It’s because it keeps the seeds from being injured in the process so they can be then removed without adding bitter taste to the juice. There are five main grape varieties for making red Douro Valley wines(Touriga Franca most common) and three for whites (Malvasia the most common.) Not all the Douro wines are made into Port, which is a blended, fortified wine using as many as 80 grape varieties. An important feature of port wine is that fermentation is topped as soon as 48 hours by the addition of grape spirit (77% proof). The earlier this is done, the sweeter the wine. (Most ports have an alcohol content of 19 to 22% proof.) There are a number of different types of Port, including Ruby, Tawny, Vintage, etc.. Like anything else, let your palate decide what you like the best. One thing I will say – you never suffered a hangover like the one from drinking too much port!

Once the announcement was made that we would not be able to navigate the river as planned, the ships cruise director Natalia Santos was faced with significant challenges: how to convey the news to the passengers without inciting mutiny, how to entertain us with limited resources available, and how to make the remainder of the trip as positive as possible. Having chaperoned adult tour groups in Europe as a kind of hobby, I could sympathize with her plight, and offered the only assistance I could. I happened to have with me a USB drive with a number of my lectures, including one on the subject of happiness. I offered her the opportunity to make a presentation on the topic to anyone who wanted to hear it. She was at first understandably reluctant, not knowing me or exactly what my talk contained. However, after I gave her the presentation to review, and assuring her that I in fact ended up doing this lecture on another Emerald cruise, she was happy to fill the dead space on her schedule. From the feedback I got, including from her and her staff who came to listen, it all went well. I felt badly for Rute, the activities director on board, as a number of events she scheduled involving the use of the outside top deck had to be cancelled due to rain and heavy winds. Any experienced traveler knows that weather and travel plans cannot be guaranteed, and you have to make the best of the situation. As the old Jimmy Buffet song goes, “We do it for the stories we can tell.”

Any cruise you wish to take always has disclaimers regarding weather and water levels, which can prevent the company from providing the experience you were promised. You would think anyone who signs up already knows this. You would be wrong. Though they were a minority, some of the passengers were quite vocal about their displeasure about having to make due with less than what they expected. Some people you just can’t make happy. They come that way or they don’t. This is likely why I never chose travel guide as a full time occupation.

Besides doing tours of wineries, some of which had beautiful gardens and buildings associated with them, we did manage to get to Lamego and the Shrine of Our Lady of Remedies. This provided us the opportunity to stretch our legs and gets some exercise, despite the lack of less than ideal weather. The church lies about 600 meters above the rest of the town of 26,000. It has a monumental staircase with 686 steps linking nine terraces, containing ornamental urns and blue and white pictures using tiles (azulejos).  The main purpose of the stairs is to provide the setting for a series of sculptures depicting the Fourteen Stations of the Cross. I was impressed with our friends David and Caroline who hoofed its whole length despite the persistent drizzle.

Since our regular tour was cancelled, we had the opportunity to visit Mateus Palace, previously offered as an extra-cost option. The Palace is familiar to any of us who grew up in the sixties being featured on the label of the iconic shaped bottle of Mateus Rose wines. The Baroque palace offers a demonstration of wealth and splendor balanced with a sense of playfulness and lack of pomposity. The descendant of its builder still resides here, though much of it is open to the public. The large pool outside provides a wonderful mirror of the building and its spires to the millions of photographers who have trooped through here over the ages.

Another previously extra-cost option we now got to see gratis was the amazing property of Quinta da Aveleda. A mixture of romantic architecture and botanical gardens well worth the visit,  we had the added bonus of seeing all the cherry blossoms in bloom. Who needs to go to Japan? The place has a quality to it that makes you expect to see a knight or a mythical creature as you round the corner of its winding paths. I would have been sorry to have missed this had we been on the regular tour.

And who can forget the outsize personality of Maria, the woman whose winery tour was a last minute addition? A combination of Zsa Zsa Gabor and telemarketer, her story of riches to rags and back to riches captivated the crowd, and entertained all but the most jaded. The tiny local sandwich food she provided was excellent, an assessment confirmed by our tour director Natalia. Besides hustling her winery, she also managed to sell a number of her custom designed scarves to many of the ladies on the tour.

Though we never had a chance to visit Salamanca, I have to say the tradeoff was worth it. We knew going in that the Douro would not provide the sights or variety offered on the Rhine or the Danube. What we experienced, however, exceeded my expectations. In addition to the couples I already mentioned, we met a number of other delightful people on the ship. I enjoyed my conversations with John, the British psychologist who particularly seemed to appreciate my views of happiness. John Emm and his wife kept us entertained during a dinner, and I was taken by his ability to overcome some not insignificant disability caused by a recent illness.  Nadeen, the Atlanta attorney who reached out to me following my talk and expressed interest in my involvement with the Partnership Scholar Program was an interesting woman who I suspect I would have enjoyed knowing more had the opportunity presented itself. I remain grateful to Brenda and her husband Ian for sharing her chocolate rabbit with me so I would have enough to bring to the grandkids in Paris.

I’ve always felt that strangers are just friends waiting to happen. Friends are the most important ingredient in this recipe of life. I’ve had an absolutely wonderful holiday in Portugal, most importantly because I had a chance to begin to know some wonderful people like you. I know this Postcard is long, but at least you were spared my discourse on cork. I do hope you will stay in touch periodically, and until our roads cross again, may your troubles be less, your blessings be more, and nothing but happiness come through your door.

Best wishes to you all