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Writer's picturePilgrim Nick

Porto

Porto is a cute city.

I’ve only been to Portugal once before – a long weekend in Lisbon – and i’d forgotten just how into tiles these guys are. Walls completely tiled – whole houses covered in tiles – and here below a medieval cloister which someone thought would look better with a few tiles.

Tiles R Us



I may be be a little cynical but I’m guessing that the tile manufacturers of Portugal probably had a bit of the whip-hand when it came to decorative choices.

Still easy to keep clean.

The cathedral in Porto is one of those glorious Romanesque structures that you can just make out under a pile of later additions. I decided to replace my bulky Confraternity of St James pilgrims passport with a smaller one from the cathedral and I got my first stamp.

My first Santiago

Also, so nice to see my first St James statue in a room above the Treasury in the cathedral. A later statue of the man himself, dressed as a pilgrim rather than a warrior.

My first arrow


Funnily enough the best thing I saw was when I was leaving the cathedral. It may have been bucketing down at the time but it made me smile.

Those arrows casually chucked onto buildings, stone, lampposts, trees and anything else vaguely permanent are just so evocative once one has done a Camino. So simple, so direct, pointing the Way.

It cleared up a bit after lunch and I walked around the ancient centre of Porto. Lots of great things to see; one of the funniest things was the building below.


It looks like one building but actually it is three. On the left is the Carmelite Convent; on the right the Carmelite church. In the middle is a building about 6 feet wide. Apparently there was a rule that the monks in the church weren’t allowed to live next to the nuns in the convent. So by shoving a “building” between them, the word of the law was kept and a 40 ton juggernaut was driven through the spirit of the law. I get the feeling the Portuguese have that same attitude towards the law that Dara O’Briain says the Irish have – rather than that boring English approach of it’s either legal or it’s illegal, the Irish have three states of legality: 1) “that’s grand” 2) “ah, now don’t push it” and 3) “right now you’re taking the piss”. I reckon the dummy building in the middle is a good example of legal state 2).


Gold, gold,gold


The other building of note was a deconsecrated church of St Francis. The internal decor was clearly done by someone for whom restraint was a thing done by other people. If a bit of the church would look good with gold paint, then all of it would look good with gold paint. No guilt about overdoing the gilt…ho ho ho….

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