PORTO

 

From across the Rio Douro at sunset, romantic Porto, the country’s second-largest city, looks like a pop-up town. A colourful tumbledown dream with medieval relics, soaring bell towers, extravagant baroque churches and stately beaux-arts buildings piled on top of one another, illuminated by streaming shafts of sun. If you squint you might be able to make out the open windows, the narrow lanes and staircases zigzagging to nowhere.

Porto’s historic centre is the Ribeira district, a Unesco World Heritage Site where tripeiros (Porto residents) mingle before old storefronts, on village-style plazas and in the old houses of commerce where Roman ruins lurk beneath the foundations. On the downside, here and in other parts of the city centre stand many dilapidated early-20th-century town houses, left to crumble as the young and moneyed flee to the sprawling suburbs by the sea.

Yet despite signs of decay, in the last two decades Porto has undergone a remarkable renaissance – expressed in the hum of its efficient metro system and the gleam of Álvaro Siza Vieira’s Museu de Arte Contemporânea and Rem Koolhaas’ Casa da Música. More recently, the arrival of low-cost airlines has turned Porto into a popular weekend getaway; hence the boom in tourism.

Culturally, Porto holds its own against much larger global cities. The birthplace of port, it’s a long-running mecca for wine aficionados. Riverside wine caves jockey for attention in nearby Vila Nova de Gaia, with scores of cellars open for tastings. With tasty new kitchens springing up regularly, its palate is slowly growing more cosmopolitan. And thanks to a number of superb venues, Porto residents dance to many of the world’s top rock, jazz and electronic artists. On warm summer nights many a plaza can feel like one enormous block party.

Of course, you’ll be forgiven if what you remember most are the quiet moments: the slosh of the Douro against the docks; the snap of laundry lines drying in river winds; the shuffle of a widow’s feet against cobblestone; the sound of wine glasses clinking under a full moon; the sight of young lovers discreetly tangled under a landmark bridge, on the rim of a park fountain, in the crumbling notch of a graffiti-bombed wall…

(taken from the Lonely Planet website)

 

 

SAINT JOHN PARTY

 

Every year, on the night of 23 June, the city of Porto, in the north of Portugal, becomes lively and seemingly crazy. Thousands of people come to the city centre and to the most traditional neighborhoods to pay a tribute to Saint John the Baptist, in a party that mixes sacred and profane traditions.

The festivities have been held in the city for more than six centuries, yet it was during the 19th century that Saint John's day became impregnated in the city's culture and assumed the status of the city's most important festival. An interesting tradition among the people of Porto during the 'Festa de São João', with roots in pagan courtship rituals, is to hit each other either with garlic flowers or soft plastic hammers.

In June 2004, a journalist from The Guardian commented that "Porto's Festa de São João is one of Europe's liveliest street festivals, yet it is relatively unknown outside the country".

In fact, the party starts early in the afternoon of 23 June and usually lasts until the morning of 24 June. The traditional attractions of the night include street concerts, popular dancing parties, jumping over flames, eating barbecued sardines and meat, drinking wine and releasing illuminated flame-propelled balloons over Porto's summer sky.

At midnight, the partygoers make a short break to look at the sky at Saint John's firework spectacle. The show is increasingly sophisticated with the fireworks being associated with themes and multimedia shows. The party has sacred roots but is also mixed with pagan traditions, with the fireworks embodying the spirit of tribute to the Sun.

One could expect the firework to be the climax and mark the end of the festivities. Yet, it is quite common for citizens of Porto, with all ages, to keep celebrating until 3 or 4 in the morning, and younger people take it even a step further until the first hours in the morning. They walk from Porto's riverside core - Ribeira (for instance the parish of São Nicolau (Porto)- up to the seaside in Foz (parishes of Foz do Douro and Nevogilde (Porto)) or in the nearby suburb of Matosinhos where they wait for the sunrise near the sea, and sometimes, take a bath in the ocean.

(taken from the wikipedia website)