A slow weekend in Porto

Every so often Lisbon gets too loud, too hot or too full of my own to-do lists, and I go north. Porto is three hours away on the train, it is greyer and steeper than Lisbon, and it always feels like visiting a slightly sterner cousin who turns out to be very good company.

I went in late September with a small rucksack, a paperback and no real plan, which is how I travel most of the time now (I wrote about that habit in the year I stopped planning trips).

Friday: the train from Santa Apolónia

The Alfa Pendular leaves from Santa Apolónia, the pale yellow station by the river, and if you book a week or so ahead it costs about the same as a nice lunch. I always take a window seat on the left for the stretch where the line runs alongside the water, past Vila Franca and the salt flats with their white egrets.

I ate a pão com chouriço from the station café, read half a novel and watched the land go from flat and gold to green and folded. By Coimbra it was raining. By Porto it had stopped, and everything smelled of wet granite.

From Campanhã I took the short hop to São Bento, which I recommend even if it’s not strictly necessary, because the entrance hall is covered floor to ceiling in blue-and-white tiles and it is one of the best free things in Portugal. I stood under them with my rucksack for ten minutes and let the commuters part around me like water.

Saturday: rain, markets and the francesinha

Saturday began with drizzle and a galão at a café on Rua de Santa Catarina, where the waiter called me menina and I decided not to mind. I wandered through the Bolhão market, bought a bag of dried figs and some tinned sardines in very beautiful packaging, and climbed up towards the Sé until my calves complained.

Lunch was the francesinha, because it has to be. For the uninitiated: it is a sandwich of bread, steak, ham and sausage, sealed under melted cheese, drowned in a hot beer-and-tomato sauce, sometimes crowned with a fried egg, and served with chips to dip in the sauce. It cost eleven euros. It weighed roughly what my cast-iron pan weighs. I finished it, which I’m told is a point of honour, and then had to sit down by the river for an hour.

Saturday evening: the Douro at dusk

This is the part I really came for. Around seven I walked across the top deck of the Dom Luís I bridge to Gaia, which is not for anyone nervous of heights — the metro rattles past beside you and the river is a very long way down.

On the Gaia side I found a low wall near the old port lodges, bought a glass of tawny for four euros and watched the light go. The Ribeira across the water turned from grey to honey to a deep, glowing orange, every window catching the sun at once. The rabelo boats knocked against each other at their moorings. A gull stole a chip from a German tourist, and everyone, including the tourist, applauded.

Lisbon shows off at sunset. Porto just quietly lights up, as if it would rather you didn’t make a fuss.

I took the morning train back with a bag of figs, a sore pair of calves and about forty photographs of the same view, all slightly different shades of orange. Dona Fernanda met me on the stairs and asked if I’d eaten a francesinha. I said yes. She said, “The whole thing?” and looked at me with new respect.