Day 1 Travel Log: Porto First Impressions

Lisbon to Porto

The train is swaying back and forth as I type. I’m making my way from Lisbon to Porto after traveling all day yesterday. The plane landed at 10 AM and the journey continued with a metro ride to Oriente Train Station where I boarded a train bound for my final stop for today.

At Oriente with hours to kill before my train arrived, I did exactly what I said I was going to do: I wandered into a cafe without looking up TripAdvisor reviews. I had a hunch that if I left the station, I’d stumble upon a place that doesn’t cater solely to travelers. I exited Oriente, walked a mere five minutes when the alluring fragrance of fresh baked pastries drew me inside. It wasn’t exactly a hole-in-the wall tucked away in some hidden corner, but it wasn’t a tourist trap either with high prices and shitty food. I bumbled an attempted Portuguese pronunciation and kept slipping into Spanish, made a mess of the Nutella croissant (somebody tell me how to properly eat one without an explosion of crumbs all over my lap), and slowly sipped a cafe con leche that’s actually a cafe e leite here.

For Transparency’s Sake

I write about tangible experiences because I am brimming with wanderlust and curiosity for places beyond my own. I crave more integration with the world because I know my little corner of it is microscopic and I often don’t realize how limited my perspective is until I’ve left familiarity behind again and again and again. But I’m conscious of the potential for travel writing to sound braggadocious. People with lots of stories tend to pull them out as if unique encounters are a competition. Flights and hotel stays are not cheap, especially when purchased frequently. I’ve read many beautiful books that describe stunning trips and pilgrimages, and the reviews are always rife with, “what a privileged jerk” “which I could afford to jet set,” etc. 

I’ve shared this before, but I’d like to share again just for transparency's sake: I am not a well-traveled person. I am not a person who can name drop destinations as if I have a story for every main city. I have been to some places. But I’ve not been to most places. I first traveled outside of the U.S. my freshman year of college, which was a church mission trip to Colombia, South America. And while I still believe the work we did was valuable (we dug latrines and poured concrete floors), I also know I traveled abroad with an embarrassing amount of naïveté about poverty, colonialism and the dark underbelly of missions in general. Growing up, I didn’t know anyone who traveled for fun or curiosity or immersion. The act was relegated to what we could give to the world, how we could share our particular gospel, feed our particular egos that we called our hearts. 

It wasn’t until the last few years that I really started thinking intentionally about how I wanted to engage with the world, how I wanted to consciously interact with it and experience it, not to pass on my knowledge and wisdom (ha) but to learn and lay down my assumptions about how things ought to be. Traveling keeps getting expensive and while there are great deals out there, it’s still a hobby that racks up fast. That’s why I was so drawn to the points and miles game. Every international ticket I’ve booked over the last year and a half were purchased entirely with points and taxes (the taxes range from $5.60 to $200, so the most I’ve paid for an international flight over the last few years is $200). The Navy keeps sending my husband away (I say this with all the humor I can muster because it’s absurd but also our reality), and we’ve accumulated hundreds of thousands of points because he’s spent the last year and a half going back and forth from our home to a Holiday Inn. And so, this trip was funded almost exclusively by points and a few dollars. 

I hope the way I write about travel and my hunger to see more of the world is hospitable and generative. I don’t want to collect experiences. I want to expand my own world by seeing more of it. I want to write about it because it fuels my delight.

That’s what brought me here to this rickety train traveling through the early spring Portuguese countryside. Well that, and the fact that anytime Amy asks if I want to meet up with her somewhere I’ll inevitably say yes if I have the free time and the points to burn (insert all the winky faces).

Porto

I think my favorite thing in the world right now is writing on a train. The coach is so peacefully quiet. The passing hills are awash in the lime greens and vibrant yellows of early spring and all the houses we pass have red roofs.  

I didn’t book the correct train ticket. I got off the train across the river and realized I was uphill and at least a few miles away from the city. Of course, I’d intended to wander far on this trip but not necessarily while lugging my very heavy backpack. I could have taken a taxi but why waste the money when the city sprawled before me and there was more than enough daylight to make it to the hotel? I couldn’t stop smiling as I neared Porto. I nearly broke into a run moving down the cobblestone hills. I pushed through selfie sticks and travel influencers to find my own spot by the river lined with stunning old buildings and a castle wall on a hill. It wasn’t until I crossed the bridge that I realized what my little mistake would cost me. I don’t regret all the walking or the lugging. But there was a point I truly thought my heart would give out, that one more staircase would cause my lungs to burst wide open. Finally, I reached the top of Mount Everest and the streets evened out and more details unfolded before me: blue tiled churches and cozy book shops, cream tarts in windows and oranges stacked in crates, old men smoking cigarettes and sipping espresso and unsuspecting tourists eating overpriced authentic cuisine…and the sunset. God, the sunset! I saw more of it with every step I climbed. I paused a dozen times to catch my breath and the sun’s rays settling over the city, dazzling the Douro River with its dying essence.

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Recommends:

• If you’re ever at Oriente Station in Lisbon, the Nutella croissants and cafe e leite at Choupana Caffe are absolutely worth a stopover.