We decided to find out if Porto’s large Parque da Cidade was a wild or tame park, groomed or natural, shady or sunny. Some pictures we saw online made it look a little boring and dried out. So since it had seemed so appealing when we were planning our trip, we had to find out.
We got on the 502 bus shortly after 9am and headed west toward Matosinhos and the Atlantic shore. We got to the eastern entrance in about 20 minutes. We got a little more breakfast with fresh orange juice in a cafe across the street before we went in.
Parque da Cidade
The park was beautiful! Wide paths lined with big old trees provided a shady walk. We found a lawn leading down to the large pond. Farther in, we found playing fields and groups of kids.
Lots of birds! There was a lovely variety of garden birds here, with some we hadn’t seen yet in Portugal. The Merlin app did a good job of identifying the ones that wouldn’t show themselves. (I thought it was accurate if the same ID kept coming up for similar bird song.) Some of the local birds are very loud, with unpredictably varied songs (how does Merlin tell them apart!) I am starting to get a sense of the pitch ranges and the various textures — buzzy, pure tone, liquid slurs, rapid staccato notes. Surprisingly, the Song Thrush sounded a lot like a North American mockingbird with its 3-times-repeated short phrases, each set different.
Singers included Blackbird (like our American robin in behavior), Blackcap, Serin. We found these birds in all the city parks. We saw European Moorhens all over the lawn and in the water. Near the pond shore, there was a family of Egyptian geese.
After a couple of hours, we made it through the lovely park from east to west, detouring around some construction. On the west side, we exited the park in view of the Atlantic and near the Castelo de Queijo. We got lunch at the first cafe we found, then dashed to get the bus at the circle in front of the castle. Buses seem to come regularly, stopping at posted stopping points, so it’s been really easy to use the bus system.
Fado concert
On the weekend, we reserved 6pm tickets to a traditional Fado concert for today, Monday. The concert was in Porto’s historic district a few minutes walk downhill from our apartment. It was near Igreja dos Clergies and the Livraria Lello, which is famous as the bookstore that helped inspire the Harry Potter stories.
The Ideale Clube do Fado is a group of professional performers who avoid the tourist version of Fado. The musicians were brilliant. The instruments were the Portuguese guitar and the Spanish guitar, both strung with 12 strings. The Portuguese guitar is the higher, melodic instrument. It was played in a virtuoso style by the 82-year-old performer. A younger guy played the bass part on the larger Spanish guitar.
The star of the performance was the singer and host, in a purple gown. She gave the intro talk in multiple languages. People label Fado as being sad and about nostalgia, but she showed how each song was about an emotion — sad, jealous, vengeful, happy. It was not a “sad” experience, contrary to what I had read. A male singer also sang songs that sound even more traditional, with repeated verses. It was an excellent introduction to the art.
Our host introduced everybody by name, but I didn’t make any notes. Find out more at Ideale Clube do Fado.
The venue was also fascinating. It was an old bar, filled with memorabilia, with wood darkened from many hands. A chandelier looked like herald trumpets welded together at odd angles. A 4-foot Sylvester cat with Tweetybird on his arm sat on the bar. The walls had banks of curio cabinets with collectibles. The glass-fronted display boxes held small collections of mid-20th-century objects — dolls, cameras, toys, household products, you name it. It rivaled an antique shop that we saw recently in Havre de Grace, Maryland whose owner obsessively collected Pez dispensers and many other categories of things.
After the concert, we wandered in the lovely park with many olive trees across from Torre dos Clerigos. Then we found dinner at a Poke Bowl place a block from the Lello bookstore.