Finishing Portugal, on to Spain

We're in Madrid, with a reliable Internet connection. Tomorrow we move on to Granada. But I have a lot of rumination about Portugal to complete.

The southwest was a highlight for me. Here was where the Portuguese prepared themselves to explore the world, using Chinese data gathered by a Genoese. In Prince Henry's fortress at Sagres explorers planned their journeys to the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean. They Portuguese were settled in the western hemisphere before Columbus set out to "discover" it, and they got around the Cape of Good Hope before the rest of the world even realized it was a good idea. When Columbus asked the Portuguese to support his expedition to China by sailing west they laughed at him because they knew it was closer by the eastern route. And all their knowledge was gained here, in this think tank.

But we could spend only a day here, and then we headed north. We drove to Lisbon using the excellent superhighway built using European Union money. It was a great road, and we really appreciated the excellent signs that made our navigation easier.

We tried to drop our car off at the railway station we'd picked it up at - but it was 1:30! You don't try to do business in Portugal between noon and 2 p.m. They take their siesta seriously. So Ron found a safe place to park the car, we had a nice lunch at a pleasant buffet in the station, and when 2 p.m. came he got the car returned. Meanwhile I discovered what my mobile phone number is (I bought the European SIM card in Italy last fall but never knew the number). If you need to call us while we're in Europe you can reach us at 00393466711056 (I found that out by going to a phone shop and calling their number).


So finally we caught the 3 p.m. train to Porto, Portugal's second-biggest city. We got there after dark on one of the amazing super-fast trains - for much of the time we were going over 200 km/h and not feeling like it was more than 80. It was a shame we arrived so late, because our first impression of the city was dark and dirty. We never really warmed up to it, probably because it's so much older than Lisbon, which was destroyed by an earthquake in 1755. A very competent Prime Minister, the Marquis de Pombal, planned the new Lisbon on an open and modern grid system with some lovely parks and monuments. Porto is built on solid granite and wasn't rattled by the earthquake, unfortunately. It has lots of narrow, dark, dirty streets - even some old Roman pavements left behind. I found myself liking it a little more after a tour that showed us some of the newer parts and the Atlantic Ocean beaches. The tour ended with a port wine tasting, which put us in a much more accepting frame of mind.

The best part of our stay in Porto was a train trip along the Douro river inland into the wine country. The grapes that produce port wine grow in a geologically unique area (very similar to the East Kootenays, actually) where the bedrock is schist. The soil is terribly rocky - no problem for grapes - but these rocks absorb moisture and measure it back out to the soil and plants gradually during the dry summer. The cool mountain weather suits these grapes, and the results are spectacular.

So was the train trip. We took a normal train to a large riverside town, then got into a single narrow-gauge car to go up to the mountainside town of Vila Real. We thought it would be a small village, but it was really a substantial and quite new city - mostly built after a new superhighway arrived, I think. We explored the remaining old city on foot, then caught a taxi to Casa Mateus, the building that adorns the label of the wine we drank too much in our youth. The grounds were closed for siesta (of course), so we consumed some more Mateus while eating lunch at a snack bar across the road.

As we were eating, we browsed the local map we'd found in a bookstore in town. It talked about a Roman sanctuary of Serapis at Panoias, a little way down the road. So after we'd walked around the lovely gardens we had the ticket-taker call a taxi for us and convinced the surprised driver to take us to Panoias. He had the time of his life. Why should he spend the time waiting in his taxi for us do to the tour? He came along, and saw something he'd never seen before. Apparently a Roman official who came from southern Anatolia brought his worship of the Egyptian god Serapis to Portugal when he was appointed governer there. That's what the inscriptions say, but I find it puzzling. The sanctuary was set up for the sacrifice of animals to purify adherents of the rite, culminating in the ritual burial and resurrection of the devotee and a sacrifice of a bull. One odd thing is that I can't find any references to Serapis being a god of death and resurrection. Mithras was, and the sacrifice of a bull was important in Mithraism as the Romans practised it. Another odd thing is that this sanctuary was oriented towards the setting sun on the winter solstice - the day the Mithraists celebrated as the rebirth day of their god. And it looked a lot older than Roman. I think more research is needed.

Anyway, we clambered around the rocks, and so did our taxi driver, and then he showed us around a couple of lovely churches in town (which led to an entry in my other blog). And then we headed back down the mountainside in the little train car. This time we were on the downhill side of the car and could appreciate how steep the drop was from the edge of the tracks. Great scenery!