First, I will update my latest post (An Expat’s Lament) by sharing that after much time, money and exasperation, I have secured my 3-year residency renewal card. It’s a long story and not the topic of this post, so I’ll spare everyone, but as a result I am substantially less stressed.
This post is about a recent little jaunt I took up to the tiny town of Moledo to visit my friend Kerry, who has a lovely condo there. But to begin at the beginning … I left my apartment in Porto in high spirits, not having gone anywhere in quite a while. I took an Uber to the train station – not the famous one with all the blue/white tiles, but Campanhã, the other big station in Porto. I bought my ticket, a sandwich and a bottle of water, and settled happily down on Platform 1 to await my train, which I knew perfectly well had an end-point of Valença, in the far north end of the country. Scheduled time – 13:10. Set the scene:
That’s my foot on the left. Fine, at 13:05 a train pulls up, and foolishly jump on without looking at the destination written on an electronic board on the side of the train. Hmmmmm, looks kinda like a commuter train … I look to the board inside the car and shock! This train is headed to Penefiel, a town in the east of the country, way inland. I am going to the beach, oh no! I get off at the next stop, an obscure place (at least to me) called Contumil. I waited a few minutes for the Valença train to hopefully stop so I can get on, but it goes roaring by. Sigh, ok,made my way out of the station to the street to call an Uber to take me back to Campanhã. And what a trek out of the station that was! Uphill, turn a corner, uphill again, turn another corner, a long, long uphill haul, turn and then stairs … you get the idea. As much as I was annoyed, I also was very, very happy that this was happening after my hip surgery and I was fully recovered, because a year ago that little trek would not have been possible. I really don’t know what I would have done, but luckily I don’t need to find out.
Got up to the street which was separated by a fence from a 6-lane highway. The Uber driver pulls up, you guessed it, on the wrong side of the fence. There’s a lot of waving and gesturing, but I have to say here I was very lucky again, because most Uber drivers would have cancelled. This guy drove some crazy circuitous route all around to get to me, and I was grateful. He got a large tip, which is not customary here.
At the station, the agent helping me was a trainee, with a dour supervisor next to him kind of yelling in his ear. Poor guy was just trying to stay calm, and I think also not to laugh at me. Thankfully he spoke English or I would have just been totally screwed. We finally determined that I had to wait until 16:00 (4:00 pm for my American friends) for another direct train. There was a train an hour earlier, but it had two transfers and arrived at nearly the same time. What really amused me was that instead of just issuing a new ticket, they handwrote an explanation on the ticket I had, stamped it so it was “oficial,” and then wrote the new train destination and time on the bottom, which was pointed out to me very, very strongly. As in, pay attention this time. I deserved that, though.
Sigh, ok, finished reading “The Patron Saint of Liars” by Ann Patchett (very good) and started reading “The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions ” by Jonathan Rosen (excellent so far). Ate my sandwich. Ate a bag of M&Ms, there I said it, and it was delicious! Lots of people-watching. Actually the time passed pretty quickly and I got on the train without any problem this time, even though it was an old train and didn’t have any destination on it and a huge gap between the platform and the narrow steep stairs up to the cabin … I had to kind of throw my bag up and then jump over the gap, a sad sight I’m sure. Whatever, cruised up to my place, Moledo de Minho. Met Kerry. Had a glass of wine at a cafe. Strolled down to the beach, enjoyed the view, took a few selfies.
Called a taxi, well, apparently, the only taxi in Moledo and – oh, shoot, he’s not working! We really had no choice other than to walk the two miles to Kerry’s place, dragging my suitcase behind me the whole way. Wearing my boots. It was pretty flat, though, at least I can say that. Here’s the path we walked, it was very pretty. The little island that looks so close is called Fortaleza e Convento da Ínsua; according to Kerry, it’s in Spain, though according to Google Maps, it’s in Portugal. Credit to Kerry for these two pictures and several others below.
Once again, thankful for successful hip surgery, because I made it ok – tired, but ok. It was dark by the time we got there, so I didn’t see much, but the next morning, with glorious weather, the beautiful ocean greeted me. There’s a cool little structure on the beach, not sure exactly what it was. Again, credit to Kerry for this beautiful photo.
I’m going to skip to the end of the trip, a few days later, for the last bit of misadventure, for continuity’s sake. Did not get on the wrong train this time, it was fine, but when I arrived in Porto it was pouring rain, and so windy. No more glorious weather. Calling an Uber at Campanhã is pretty difficult because there are a lot of taxis and they don’t like the competition and so won’t allow Ubers to park. I decided to just take a cab, gave my address to the guy, and off we went. After some driving, it became clear to me that he didn’t know how to get to my address, which requires some extensive detouring around because of one-way streets and subway construction. He wasn’t using GPS and I could foresee paying for him to wander around Cedofeita (my neighborhood) indefinitely, so I just told him to stop and let me out. The bill was already twice what an Uber would have been. Then he didn’t have change, so I lost another 5 €, though in all fairness, I did give him a 50 € note. The rain was pelting down, I was 4 long, cobblestoned blocks from my house, cars were honking like crazy … so I ended up paying 15 € for the privilege of hiking home through pouring rain, my suitcase’s wheels rattling all the way.
Next blow: I got home, and the water wasn’t working. Almost no water pressure, even with the taps wide open. Toilet tank not filling. Very unhappy. Turns out (as I was told by my landlord, who called the water company, since they never put stuff like this up on their website, I mean, why would they inform their clients about such things?) that a main was broken in Parada Leitão square, which is near my house, and they were working on it.
Final blow: on the wall in my building’s entryway was the following note (translated from Portuguese):
The ground floor apartment on the right will be undergoing renovation work. Work will begin on March 18 and is expected to last two months.
I ask for your understanding in advance for any inconvenience that may occur due to these works.
Thank you,
João Lima
To which I say, ok, just shoot me now. That apartment is directly under mine. At least I’ll be gone all of April, so perhaps I will miss the worst of it.
OK, now on to the adventures part of my trip! Moledo is a tiny town, which as I discovered, to my sorrow, has only one taxi driver (see above) and a small main street with a few restaurants/coffeehouses. The station is so tiny it doesn’t sell tickets, and the platform works for both directions, though exactly how that functions I’m not sure! It seems like it’s mostly a beach vacation town, and quite a nice one. But just north of Moledo, almost at the Spanish border, is a slightly larger town called Caminha. Our visit there was really perfect, actually.
The weather was stupendous – blue skies, cool but not cold, a lovely breeze, my favorite kind of weather. The town was so charming, with cobblestone streets running at all sorts of angles, older architecture with little modernity interfering, a central square with restaurants all around, and a pretty ancient fort/church. Here we are enjoying ourselves.
And here are some shots of the town.
We had a delicious lunch at a simple restaurant called Casa Almeida – typical vegetable soup with orzo or some small pasta in it, lemon risotto with artichoke, and a big selection of desserts – I picked carrot cake with chocolate. Coffee of course. It was so good I forgot to take photos!
After lunch, a bit of shopping for gifts to bring back to the US, where I am traveling in just a few weeks for my niece’s birthday and then some time in San Francisco … I’ll be writing about all that for sure – and then back to Kerry’s to watch a beautiful sunset from her deck.
All in all, misadventures notwithstanding, a fun trip and very relaxing. With all the hard travel coming up soon – Portugal to Nashville, then San Francisco, then New York, back to Portugal, and then 3 weeks later, to Georgia via Istanbul – am I getting too old for this? We’ll see.
The Next Big Adventure 