Tourism

We've had a fine day today visiting old favourites and places we missed in our first brief visit.  We started with the stock exchange palace, an extraordinary granite pile near the river.  The selling point of the tour (I got in on a half-price old-geezer ticket) is the Arabian ballroom, which is dripping with fancy gilt stucco.  I was immeasurably more taken with the wood inlay floors and the intricately carved granite on the grand staircase - unsurprising that it took decades to complete.  By the way, some of the portraits of former presidents of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry are pretty good.  Others, as a colleague once said of a certain technician's sick leave record, are little short of dire.

From there we legged it sweatily up to the celebrated Lello Brothers' bookshop.  You have to queue for an entry voucher (€3), then queue again to get in.  The voucher can be redeemed against a book purchase, so I suggest you go on a wet day in February when you've decided on a book you want.  The shop is pretty spectacular, I grant you, with its logic defying crimson staircase and Art Deco stucco, but fly not hither unless you have other reasons.

Thence a search for a bus that would take us to the Majestic Café for lunch.  Before we found one, we found an astonishingly old-fashioned linen shop, the Armazéns Cunhas.  The frontage is pretty pure Art Deco, bearing the legend 'We sell more cheaply' (em Português, of course).  The window displays are of old-fashioned bedspreads, chefs' tunics and toques etc, and on entering, you meet a long counter.  It took me back close to 60 years to the times when, on entering a shop, you went to the counter and asked for what you wanted, and were served.

We soon spotted a bus that was heading for the Bolhão market, so hopped on, knowing that it wasn't far thence to the Majestic.  Tooled leather seats, bevelled windows and mirrors, impeccably dressed and courteous serving staff, and a damn' good lunch.  A good steak for Himself, and a magret in a port sauce for me.  Then pudding.

We managed somehow to waddle up to the metro, and to change for the trip across one of Mr Eiffel's bridges to Gaia.   We walked back across the same to São Bento, encountering quite a lot of black-clad students on the way, one in each group carrying a huge wooden spoon or wooden club (and in one instance, an enamel chamber pot).  The best explanation we could get was that the wooden implements were symbols of the University of Porto.  One student reminded us that J K Rowling based the Hogwarts outfits on the Portuguese university garb.  And muckle guid may the kennin' thereof dae ye.  (But the local press is reporting violent initiation ceremonies for new students, and the University refuses to tackle anything that happens off-campus).

The plan from there on northward included a trip to the tram museum.  We duly alighted at the corresponding bus stop to find the place en travaux.  Something must have happened on the 500 bus route in the meantime, because we'd over half an hour's wait for a bus which, when it finally appeared, was packed like a jar of anchovies.  Home, tea, shower and a modified Weltanschauung later, we strolled along the prom for half an hour or so, enjoying the sea air.

Quite a pretty sunset tonight: the images on the Lumix seem far better than those on the iPad, but you'll have to wait for either.