{"id":1780,"date":"2018-05-18T11:56:32","date_gmt":"2018-05-18T18:56:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/?p=1780"},"modified":"2018-06-20T16:43:24","modified_gmt":"2018-06-20T23:43:24","slug":"porto-the-worst-tour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/porto-the-worst-tour\/","title":{"rendered":"Porto \u2013 The WORST Tour"},"content":{"rendered":"

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So, we broke down and did the touristo thing.\u00a0 We took a walking tour of Porto on our last day.\u00a0 Just what we needed right?\u00a0 More walking? \u00a0The WORST tour started at a park filled with homeless people and went downhill from there.<\/p>\n

OK, so now that we have your attention, it was, in all honesty, a GREAT walking tour!\u00a0 It\u2019s just called Worst Tours.\u00a0 Weird name, so here\u2019s the deal, verbatim from their brochure.<\/p>\n

Three architects facing sudden economic destruction refuse leaving town and imagine the least likely walking tours.\u00a0 Porto, the big picture, good and bad architecture, \u2018Tascas\u2019, politics, alleys, tiny associations, abandoned buildings, and great discussions on very partial points of view.<\/strong> <\/em><\/p>\n

You can check them out here:\u00a0 http:\/\/theworsttours.weebly.com<\/a><\/p>\n

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The cost of the tour is by donation.\u00a0 They have several variants and we got the \u2018Islands\u2019 in Porto.\u00a0 It was a fun afternoon with a small group of people (the 4 Irish guys who started with us just wanted to drink so we lost them early on), led by a very passionate woman named Gui, which is short for some longer version like Gui<something>-Margerita.\u00a0 We\u2019ll stick with Gui.\u00a0 In the 3+ hours, we got introduced to more than a few abandoned homes and commercial buildings, a graffiti squatter-art concrete wasteland surrounded by very impressive art workshops, and Porto\u2019s islands.\u00a0 Along the way, we learned about why Porto\u2019s architecture is the way it is, why they have all these abandoned buildings, and the destruction that\u2019s happening to a lot of Portos\u2019 cultural uniqueness due to politics, optics, economic resurgence, and massive tourist\/foreign buyer influx.\u00a0 The empty homes stay that way, sometimes for decades, while the family owners wait for improved economic times.\u00a0 There\u2019s frustration happening in that the populace wants these places freed up, so people have a place to live.\u00a0 Private owners have a long history of rights and there\u2019s a whole bunch of politics in the middle.\u00a0\u00a0 Can you spell empty homes tax?<\/p>\n

We stopped for a few beers as well. \u00a0Our kind of tour!<\/p>\n

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Abandoned houses in Porto<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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some remains of Porto’s factory row housing<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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It\u2019s a side of Porto that most people don\u2019t see, and we found it very interesting.\u00a0 One of the unique things here are the islands that came out of the 19th<\/sup> century industrial era when Porto was expanding, and factories were cropping up.\u00a0 During that time, a factory owner, having need of labour, would purchase a home or two on the street front. The homes look like one solid building from the outside but the \u2018door\u2019 in the middle is an entrance to a very narrow corridor that is lined with small single-story row houses 4 or 5 on each side.\u00a0 These would house the workers.\u00a0 When the factories went out of business or moved on, the homes with the row houses sat empty for many decades.\u00a0 They eventually became cheap rental housing when new owners bought the homes and turned the row houses into nicer mini-apartments.\u00a0 Today, if you are lucky, you can catch a glimpse of these narrow communities when a gate is open.\u00a0 They house lower income families, maybe 5 to 10, and they become a larger social group isolated from the main street outside.\u00a0 Hence, islands.\u00a0 People, our tour guide included, are trying to save these communities as they are in danger of being turned into short term rentals like airBnBs.<\/p>\n

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Porto’s islands<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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The graffiti-art area was also interesting and some of it quite gorgeous.\u00a0 One of the pieces there in this concrete wasteland is an early work done by a guy named Vhils, before he became famous as one of Portugals\u2019 top artists.<\/p>\n

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Early work by Vhils<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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There were some \u2018comments\u2019 by our guide about nationalism and racism etc.\u00a0 I did say she was passionate.\u00a0 While it\u2019s not as obvious in Portugal as in some of the other European countries (and we certainly didn\u2019t see any indication of this), Gui pointed out a ceramic frog in one of the store windows as we passed by.\u00a0 Apparently, this is to ward off the gypsies and keep them out of the store.\u00a0 She said there is still an undercurrent of dislike for the Romany folk that is very entrenched here.\u00a0 We found it quite hilarious that the frog was in a Chinese goods store.<\/p>\n

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Check out the green frog (lower right corner of window) – used to ward off gypsies<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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So, there you have it, as the brochure said, the good, bad, and the ugly, at least in the core part of Porto.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t get to the outer areas, which look very nice, the Douro Valley, or even the Atlantic unfortunately.\u00a0 The coastline looks fabulous and it would have been nice to do a walk out there.\u00a0 We did do a long walk along the river, over The Ponte Luis I to Gaia and back over the Ponte da Arrabida to Porto, from which you can see the Atlantic and the coast.\u00a0 On the way back, we stopped at the Crystal Palace on the south slopes of the city; beautiful gardens and walks overlooking the Douro River.<\/p>\n

And lastly, we passed by the Harry Potter bookstore.\u00a0 Not that they specifically sell HP books (but probably do) but the architecture inside was used by J.K. Rowling for the HP movies.\u00a0 The Lonely Planet travel site rated it as the 3rd<\/sup> most beautiful bookstore in the world.\u00a0 There are so many people wanting to see this, that they charge to get in and look.\u00a0 There is no refund, but you can use the entrance fee towards a book.\u00a0 And that\u2019s ok, if you are fluent in Portuguese.\u00a0 You can check it out here:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.localporto.com\/bookstore-world-porto-lello-irmao\/<\/a><\/p>\n

A nice bottle of Grahams LBV was purchased as well.\u00a0 We will definitely be back!<\/p>\n

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more work by Vhils, courtesy of google images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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This 2012 Vhils mural can be seen in Lisbon – Alfama, R. de S\u00e3o Miguel.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    So, we broke down and did the touristo thing.\u00a0 We took a walking tour of Porto on our last day.\u00a0 Just what we needed right?\u00a0 More walking? \u00a0The WORST tour started at a park filled with homeless people and went downhill from there. OK, so now that we have your attention, it was, in all honesty, a GREAT walking tour!\u00a0 It\u2019s just called Worst Tours.\u00a0 Weird name, so here\u2019s the deal, verbatim from their brochure. Three architects facing sudden economic destruction refuse leaving town and imagine the least likely walking tours.\u00a0 Porto, the big picture, good and bad architecture, \u2018Tascas\u2019, politics, alleys, tiny associations, abandoned buildings, and great…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1795,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1780"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1780"}],"version-history":[{"count":35,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1780\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3015,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1780\/revisions\/3015"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}