We be Touristas!

We had just set off (admittedly close to midday) when the rain came down and so, it was a rush to find the funicular – the map was getting very soggy and so we were scanning for street names with increasing verve, when I spotted a lift with 'furnicular' written on it – so our first surprise of the day was that the furnicular started underground (they might want to state that in the guidebook). Our second challenge was to get our heads round the metro ticket system – it purportedly had an English version, but as so often here, our English was lacking. What seemed to say 2 titles for 24 hour card (which we wrongly interpreted as 2 people) was in fact a 48 hour card for 1 person, as explained by the kindly metro employee who showed up when we tried to get 2 people through the barrier on one ticket. To add to the confusion, you buy tickets for zones (Z1, Z2 etc) but the map has zones marked as C1 & S8 etc marked right next to each other with no obvious explanation – we took Z2 as per the employee's advice and thankfully the ticket inspectors don't seem to stop tourists.... so far so good.

Going down... view from the funicular carriage

The furnicular added to our transport experience, which today came on in leaps and bounds having also hit the metro. It was like a slow rollercoaster ride down to the Ribeira quayside which made me thankful we had avoided a whole load of steps. We then proceeded to take photos in true British fashion in the rain of Gustav Eiffel's bridge and the pretty and characterful townhouses which adorned the quay before admitting defeat and having a hot chocolate to warm up. After some souvenir shopping (some nativity scenes were indeed purchased in May) and the recognition that our Euros may not go so far in Porto itself down to the shopping opportunities (K sighed shoooooes on more than one occasion plus handbags are in plentiful supply and we have already indulged in scarves to fit in with the locals and I am more than happy with the homeware selection on offer....), we headed back to the metro.

Just behind the riverside, winding alleyways and steep steps

It is strange how certain experiences convince you that you are indeed in a foreign land. The weather was doing its best to bring on childhood regression to UK based holidays for both of us but the metro lifted us out of such confusion and centred us once again happily into holiday mode. We made our way to Casa de Musica, an architechtonic, asymmetrical white concrete wonder with metal staircases that would make a fine Dr Who filmset, with the intention of trying to be cultured and obtain tickets for a musical extravaganza (as long as such did not include Annie or anything in the genre of Andrew Lloyd Weber). We decided against an Austro Hungarian sex comedy and plumped for a piano recital and tickets duly purchased (we weren't even allowed the liberty of practising our favourite but admittedly appalling Portuguese phrase (doysh billetas) to gain these), we then took on the challenge of our first self service restaurant. Now, you may think that self service should be a piece of cake but no, in this case we were firmly told cake was not on the menu -you must choose from jelly or fruit or what we think was blancmange, even though cake was clearly sitting there just to trip you up – and also, managed to offend the Portuguese serving ladies further not by asking for the vegetarian special (yes there was actually a veggie dish on the menu) but by refusing the included in the price soup (it was pea) and also, by committing the cardinal sin of not following up our set menu with a coffee.

Piano recital posters

We emerged from our visit to another planet to find that the sun was trying to make an appearance and so wandered over to the nearby park to look at the war memorial topped with a lion killing an eagle or a griffin – it was hard to be sure and some googling will be required to determine the significance.

After a day of hard transport use and having actually seen some of the tourist highlights of Porto, we continued in our tourista vein, by having afternoon tea at the Majestic cafe. It seemed a little odd to be drinking tea and eating scones in Portugal, but we were assured that explorers first brought tea to England from Portugal and so, their tea drinking precedes ours, but the strangeness was exacerbated by the cheese grinning cherubs on the wood paneled walls and the intermittent camera flashes. However, this was nothing as then, the piano playing started. His first rendition of Abba's Winner Takes It All did seem a touch out of place for an eighteenth century cafe, but he soon topped this with Cliff's We're all Going on a Summer Holiday – I went into complete meltdown having an immediate flashback to hours of being stuck in a car feeling travel sick with a choice of Cliff's greatest hits (from my mother) and Radio 4 (from my father), whilst K started singing along much to my surprise and that of the other cafe patrons – this was her family's onset of a journey song and therefore held much fonder memories for her – it definitely loses its appeal after several repetitions with no journey's end in sight. This time, despite some elongated tinkling at the end to give it a flourish it did only last 5 minutes and so, we all survived relatively unscathed.

Especially for E's mum

Touristed out, we got the metro across the bridge to Gaia and spent some time in the park there enjoying the views in the early evening sunshine (yes – we even took our jackets off for the first time to take some snaps actually looking like we were on holiday a la Dolans in the 80s.)

The sun did come out... eventually

Porto had thus far borne little resemblance to Weymouth (Weymouth had balmy sunshine and calm seas to paddle in) but we were to find a weird similarity this evening – just like Weymouth, Porto shuts down at 8pm – if you haven't got your dinner by this time, you need to find a proper stay open late restaurant – as we only needed a snack having had the menu at lunch, we were forced to buy what were described as tuna sandwiches from the one supermarket open until 8.30pm – though we discovered today that the metro has a fine array of vending machines if we find ourselves in this position again.

Thus fortified, we went to the hotel bar mainly for the internet and also, tried to get some tea. K eventually managed to get some of the heated variety minus milk after handing the phrasebook to the barman, who still looked confused, despite having a pristine coffee machine that spewed out hot water fine and a selection of teabags. I decided to make things simple and have Ice Tea but was denied all glasses (hi-ball and tumblers obviously were not appropriate) and was given a wine glass but at this point was past wondering why. We settled in front of the TV which demonstrated Portugal's priorities – coverage on the news alternating between Papa Bento's visit to Lisbon and the football and when K discovered Cameron had been made PM, I decided the wisest course was to go off to bed and leave her to drink the bar dry in despair (if she could actually manage to order a drink and get it in a glass of course!)