Lisbon, Portugal

The Arco da Rua Augusta (August Street Arch) seen from Praça do Comércio, a large riverfront square is more dramatic at dusk...

Typical Portugese street scene with a small car and building facade covered in blue tiles

Music festival along the Belém waterfront

Really good graffiti and street art was everywhere...

Some jacaranda

Neither myself or these other travelers I met wanted to eat the cold snails the waiter brought us after our lunch.

Santa Justa Elevator

The Padrão dos Descobrimentos or Monument of Discoveries is a tribute to the Portugese navigators of the 15th Century.  In the background, the red bridge look a lot like the Golden Gate Bridge of San Francisco.  Besides their look-alike bridges, Lisbon is packed with steep hills, vistas and colorful buildings just like SF.

Belém Tower at the mouth of the Talus River

Reggae music was in the air at this DJ festival along the waterfront.

 

The Disneyland-like Pena National Palace outside Lisbon near Sintra

Porto, Portugal

Ladies wait for a taxi in front of a wall of Portugese azulejos.

View over Porto from the cathedral
Impressions of Porto:
Tall buildings with high windows look out to the sea, past the Douro River and out to the Atlantic, like the homes of Amsterdam - and there's a grayness in the alleys akin to London - yet the architecture resembles most closely that of her neighbor Spain - though Porto is grittier.  The grittiness was seeping around even the center of the UNESCO touristy area of sights and pretties and tour buses...I accidentally came across a seedy area by taking a shortcut, one turn into a narrow side street and there was a man sprawled out on the pavement in his own urine, and a corner with a line of desperate faces along the wall...waiting in line for...what? smack? any drug? some sort of illicit substance - from the faces of the people in line, I guessed heroin.  Other guys were lookouts and were clearly looking down the alleys for possible police I guess, like some kind of European adaptation of a scene from The Wire.  And then past the sketchy drug dealings and swoop, go up 48 stairs into another level of this city on a steep hill rising up from the river and you're once again at a nice clean wide boulevard - with new high-end hostels and restaurants pushing out ancient brothels.  It's forever been a port town and so it feels that it has the roughness of hosting sailors for centuries.  Plus, well...it's pretty and small enough to easily walk around.

Under the bridge...

Some sort of pop-up community event near the hostel

FC Porto scores.

PK goal
Before the match, I tried asking a stranger in my broken Portugese whether or not beer was available for purchase inside the stadium.  At first, when I walked up to him and said something along the lines of "Excuse me, can I ask you a question?" he didn't even look at me and kept walking like he was highly suspicious that I was a ruffian trying to abscond with his money.  It was startling how rude he was.  But as soon as he heard my reasonable question, "Do you know if they sell beer inside the stadium?" he became instantly friendly and explained that they didn't sell beer in the stadium and pointed out across the street where we could throw some back before entering.  It was just surprising how defensive he was to a stranger coming up to him...I think indicative of the higher number of folks hustling on the streets compared to other western European cities.

Fans celebrate.

One of the most beautiful bookstores in the world with an amazing interior, Livraria Lello and Irmao supposedly inspired Harry Potter author JK Rowling who once lived and taught in Porto.

The interior of the Church of São Francisco is lined with over 600 pounds of gold.  I've seen a lot of European churches and the lavish opulence and style of this one is way unique and worth the admission fee.  A guide told me that when invading forces came to Porto centuries ago, (Napoleon's or Spanish - can't remember), the priests painted over the gold so the invaders wouldn't realize its value and they left it be where it still is today.

In the crypt...

View from across the river

I never developed a taste for Port wine; I still think it's awful.  But the white wine and vinho verde is sooo good (and cheap).

Here's a lunch bill split with a friend showing off my cup of wine (vinho copo) for only .75 cents.

More azulejos in the train station

Hazul's Street Art in Porto

Amazing Graffiti by Porto street artist Hazul...

This piece on the side of a parking garage in Porto was commissioned.

However, Hazul's innumerable other works on walls around the city are not officially sanctioned.  His other works of graffiti are mostly on the doors of abandoned houses, of which there are plenty in Porto.  

Porto's UNESCO World Heritage designation in 1998 brings international tourists to come see the old city, but it also places certain restrictions on homeowners in the historic quarter.  In order for someone to restore an old home or building, they must maintain certain historic features on the facade and exterior per UNESCO's rules.  This helps keep the historic center maintain a certain style, but the high cost of this highly regulated renovation also prevents many from being able to restore old homes.  The result is countless empty buildings and houses in city where homeless citizens could use a place to live.  The city actually puts up concrete blocks in the doorways of these derelict, abandoned homes to prevent squatters from entering - and Hazul paints these beautiful goddess images on these doorways all over Porto...

Santiago de Compostela, Spain

Scallop shell trail marker in the road marks the route for the Camino de Santiago.  This ancient pilgrimage trail leads across northern Spain and the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela, (where the apostle St. James is supposedly buried), is the final destination for many of the pilgrims and hikers.

One of many churches in the old city

Santiago and Galicia are so rainy that there is moss growing on all the old buildings, walls and churches.

Typically gray Santiago

In Galicia, the majority of the street signs are not in Spanish, but are in Gallego, the local language that is somewhat similar to Portugese and is older than the nation of Spain.