PORTO

In Porto ...

I saw the sun!

I remembered that the small city is a beautiful thing ... goodbye, endless hours on the metro.

Students dressed up (finals week tradition):

I ate a giant meat-stuffed sandwich (chorizo, ham, a fried egg, tomato sauce, roast beef, and fries). Yup.

I climbed to the top:

I swam in this!!

There were a lot of things about Portugal that were charming but slow.

I got my fill of printing museums:

The colors were all so intense ... such orange rooftops in the rain. Porto in the rain made me thing of what Margarit said about another place: "una ciutat grisa amb un gran port."

The city isn't all clean and shiny, but does it sound terrible to say that it's pretty clean for the Iberian Peninsula?

I went to an antique book dealer

And they let me go look at their basement stash. People there were friendly, patient. A little old man forced a pastel de nata on me while I waited for the bus to the airport home. 

All the shops had old fashioned facades and antique furniture (counters, cabinets). It was like stepping back in time.

The market was full of olives, seafood, sausage, fruit, and homemade jam.

There were traditional bookbinding, leatherworking, and woodworking shops. (I dig this).

They apparently don't have rules like in Barcelona about where you can hang your laundry. (In the part of the city where I live we can't hang it outside). I guess sometimes I feel like rules in BCN are made more for tourists than locals, but Porto felt pretty lived in.

I really liked seeing some baroque churches; Portuguese baroque is over the top (I mean that in the best of ways). The guide I had referred to this one as "Golden Cave #2."

 I saw a fellow Minnesotan (how was it that we didn't take any photos together???). But it was SO GREAT. MINNESOOOOOTA. So soon! 

More than anything I loved how being there felt like being in another time, not just another place. I seriously googled "expat in Portugal" when I got home. But you know what? MINNESOTA. That is all. 

I really love Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet. Recently I've been reading Joan Margarit's Noves cartes a un jove poeta (New Letters to a Young Poet). In the introduction Margarit claims:

"Vull dir que no m'interessa el poema que no contribueixi a fer-me una persona millor, a procurar-me un major equilibri interior, a consolar-me, a deixar-me una mica més a prop de la felicitat ..."

Here's a rough translation:

"I am not interested in poetry that does not better me, console me, or bring me a little closer to happiness."

Margarit will be at Poetry Week in May.

Es imposible engañar a una vieja ciudad.

Joan Margarit said that. I think a good English translation would be: "you can't trick an old city."
This is a photo of Paris: