Porto: kinetic city
Porto is a kinetic city, a city brimming with the possibilities of movement and connectivity. When you aren’t walking with your feet, you walk with your eyes, across the dizzying spectacle of a city in motion.
You are on the banks of the Douro River, a gentle breeze calming the heat of the autumnal sun. Squinting slightly (your hat is at the wrong angle to block the light reflecting off the glinting, wrapping-paper sheen of the water) you lift your eyes up: up-river, and up at the Dom Luís I Bridge, an arching lattice of girders, a bristling statement of grand, nineteenth-century intent. Cars jostle impatiently across its lower deck, gradually nudging their way across. Pedestrians scurry down its narrow walkways, rushing in single-file, no room or time to stop because there’s a stream of fellow walkers behind them.
More appealing is the upper deck, where there is more space, so you climb the stony staircase near the cathedral, or perhaps take the funicular railway from near the mouth of the lower tier. Here you have room to breathe, room to perambulate and lean over the railings to enjoy the view like a passenger on a luxurious cruise ship, only occasionally being mindful to slip out of the path of the electric trains that rhythmically surge from one side to the other, or being alert to the careless swish of a selfie-stick.
When up here, on the top level of the bridge, you might look back downriver, the water curving teasingly away to the right, behind the hills and down to the Atlantic. Your attention could also be caught by the disparate fleet of ships on its surface. Fishing boats pass the cross-river ferry, which brushes alongside tourist vessels. An enthusiastic, ship-bound tour guide, just visible in a broad-brimmed hat, gesticulates excitedly towards the bobbing barges advertising the various port distilleries on the western bank. Graham’s, Taylor’s, Ramos Pinto, Offley: friendly, informal names that suit this breezy, bustling city.
Where are these tourists going, you wonder? Perhaps just out to the river mouth, to contemplate the husks of long-abandoned forts, testament to the bellicosity of a previous age. Or perhaps they are going a bit further out, up the coast to the north, to the port of Matosinhos, where they will disembark to stroll down Rua Heróis de França, sitting in whatever fish restaurant takes their fancy, flocks of pigeons ominous spectators to open-flame grills, where sweet green wine washes down white flakes of the freshest catch.
But these are half-memories; half-imagined, half-lived. And your attention is needed back on the bridge. You are coming to the west bank - you kept on pacing in your reverie - and here new opportunities present themselves. First, you head up to the monastery Serra do Pilar and then force your body to be static, to rotate and take in the newly-won view, back across river to pastel shopfronts and proud, baroque spires, to the crammed knot of city folded out for your gaze, building facades stretched like towels on a beach, catching what they can of this ripe sun. Then, your appetite for the city still not sated, you walk the short distance to a cable car that will lead you down to the riverfront, queuing with a fidgety excitement, paying the fare and entering the chamber where the cars loop back to descend again. There is something sacral about this space, a meeting point of parallel lines, enacting the infinite.
Stepping into the gondola, you lurch forward with the movement, needing a moment to adjust to the shifts occurring underfoot. Finding your balance, then your seat, you look out across the river again. The city becomes myriorama, new buildings revealing themselves before seeming to rearrange, a constant tectonic-urban realignment. The sun pours in through perspex, and you realise that your centre is not at all where you thought it was, that the sweat on your brow runs a little more thickly, that the city spins now, myriorama turned kaleidoscope, that you need to cool down, that any moment your body might sag to the floor, your mind absenting itself and floating across the river and into the city, seeking a balcony for landing, the waft of fresh custard tarts enticing it further on, consciousness swimming in the fullness of everything, the heat ...
Then, mercifully, you reach the bottom, and spill out into the throng of an evening of determined relaxation in the port bars of the east bank.
Time for a quick rest, a glass of water, or of wine, or maybe some port, and then you are off again. This city does not invite you to be static, or allow you to keep still and feel content. It always provides new angles, new vectors, new chances of hopping into a vehicle and being swept away down the imaginations of city planners, architects and engineers.
So here, after recuperating from the exertions of the cable car, you spy the boarding point for the same cross-river ferry you saw from the top of the bridge earlier. Why not, you think? You have travelled on earth, floated down on air. Now to pass across water, a fording that seems steeped in celtic significance. The Romans made a cult here, to Durius, the river turned God, the creator of this city. You make the crossing in greater comfort that your ancient forebears, though: the vessel has smart brass railings, elegant wooden seats. You prefer, of course, to stand up just outside the main cabin, where you can lean over the side and feel the spray of riverine vitality, slake yourself in its reassurance, its surface coruscating with light. The passage, though transformational, is all too brief, and after what seems like a breath, a single inhale then exhale, you are back on the west bank, deposited like so much silt.
No time to feel chagrined. A choice to be made. Do you hop on one of the antiquated, single-carriage trams, I wonder? They shuttle around their restricted routes, living heritage pieces that in any other city would have been excavated, deposited for scrap or hermetically sealed in sterilised museums, but here are cherished and left ready for you to clank down cobbled streets, happily jolted by the clamour of electrics on iron.
Or do you head up into the centre, hauling your tired limbs past the concatenation of baroque, art-deco, Pombaline, finding your way to São Bento station, on pilgrimage to this city’s main temple to travel, a space that sanctifies departure times, ticket inspectors, the resting hum of a train engine? Soft light floods the vestibuled entrance, illuminating azulejo displays cover the walls, a blue wash of historical vignettes. A multi-colour frieze runs around the whole circumference of the room overhead, where you can make out small painted scenes, lively paintings of carriages, horse-carts, a steam train. An odd, calming peace settles over you, despite the crowd of people around you, taking photos or fighting their way through to the ticket office. Yes, this is the last route you take, and in this shrine of movement maybe you can finally be still, finally let the movement happen around you, dizzying, and breathe in this city of motion and lines.