Ponte de Lima is on the way back from Santiago de Compostela. It’s notable for being one of the oldest towns in Portugal (the bridge goes back to Roman times, for example) and also for being one of the flattest that I found. If you’re tired of having to walk up and down hills just to go to the supermarket, this might be a worthy base of operations. Here’s what it looks like from across the Roman/Medieval eponymous bridge:
The town is part of the coastal Camino from Porto to Santiago de Compostela:
It looks like one can walk (or maybe also bike?) about 70 km on a trail along the riverbank. I found a sign indicating that the north bank path abeam the town was at km 21 of an “ecovia”:
The town has a lot of the usual good stuff of a Portuguese town, including an attractive main square and what looked like a lot of good restaurants. They were running, across the river, an international garden festival, and there was some sort of celebration (on a Monday afternoon) that required a marching band in town.
Speaking of town festivals, we arrived in Braga, Portugal’s 7th largest city, for the end of the annual São João de Braga festival. This has been going on for about 900 years, ever since the establishment of a church dedicated to St. John the Baptist.
The town has a famous cathedral, inside which I found some of the statues that had been carried in processions:
Braga’s star attraction is a 15-minute drive from the center: Sanctuary of Bom Jesus do Monte (a UNESCO World Heritage Site). Maybe it is my Jewish heritage, but I can’t figure out why a place would be named for “Good Jesus”. There is no Catholic group that believes in a “Bad Jesus”, right? You’ll want to park at (or Uber to) the top and walk down the stairs, then take the water-counterbalance-driven funicular up.
Side chapels as you walk down the stairs depict events towards the end of Jesus’s life:
There is a beautiful garden above the sanctuary. Just walk uphill.
Braga is nice, but it wasn’t our favorite overnight stop. The pedestrian streets downtown would be great for meeting up with friends and hanging out, but we didn’t have any friends. Braga does have what I think is a private celebration of progressive causes, e.g., Interseccionalidade and Free Palestine:
After two nights in town, we drove out via a beautiful McDonald’s that was absolutely empty for breakfast (possibly just a single lady working). The Portuguese have yet to adopt American breakfast customs, apparently.
We returned out rental Mercedes at Sixt by the Porto airport (mournful saga) and Ubered to downtown. Maybe we’d been spoiled by our time in the Portuguese mountains, but the old town seemed absolutely overrun with tourists. Here’s the train station with its famous tile art:
Would you like to go to a bookstore that inspired J.K. Rowling? Here’s what Livraria Lello looks like inside (Wikipedia):
You’ll need to pay between 8 and 45 euros online, however, and then wait in line for a while before you can begin your shopping process. Here’s what the line looked at around noon on a weekday:
Note that the infamous TERF herself says that she never went to this bookstore, but is someone who denies the miracle of gender transformation a credible source on any subject?
There’s an important church nearby. Here’s the line to get into that one…
Keep in mind that we were there in June and the peak tourist season is July-August. Locals said that the crowds would get much much worse. We found a good escape in the Serralves Foundation, a huge hilly garden (walk down; elevator up) with a contemporary art museum in a residential area. Once you’re there, it is a 30-minute walk or quick Uber ride to the mouth of the Douro River. This is a high quality beach by European standards, though the water is much too rough and/or cold by Florida standards.
We finished our trip with the classic Francesinha dish:
We could have had a second one for breakfast at the airport (well, maybe they don’t serve it all day, despite the name):
I’ll give the Portuguese their historical due for their cuisine’s overreliance on cod and the tinned sardine, but I draw the line at the ‘Little Frenchie’. Disgusting concoction.
Go in October, it’s fabulous and almost no tourists. On our first morning we were at one of the local Catholic churches and decided to stay for Mass. One of the locals (lady) noticed a shirt our oldest child was wearing (of a club at the a the Jesuit HS he goes to) and struck up a conversation. She ended up inviting us to hang out with her family on the outskirts of Lisbon for the next 3 days. Great country, amazing food and fantastic people. What I didn’t like: all the guys trying to sell me hash and other drugs at every intersection.