Porto

We caught an early bus from Coimbra to Porto this morning to arrive here before lunch. After checking into the hotel we stayed at years ago (still looks good and the view from the 17th floor is great) we went off in the Yellow Bus to explore the city.

This bridge is made of poured concrete (how do they do that?)

It is a great city built on lots of hills around a river on the edge of the ocean. There are heaps of lovely old buildings in the old area and interesting new buildings in the suburbs. I was thrilled to see an installation by Janet Echelman as we drove by. She is a finalist in the Powerhouse Museum´s Love Lace award that I have been helping with for the past couple of years. One of her pieces is going to be installed outside the Sydney town hall in September. It will look amazing.

As we were driven around the heavenly aroma of grilling sardines convinced us that we needed lunch. They were as good as they smelled and the vinho verdo was so fresh it almost jumped out of the glass. We really didn´t mind that we had to wait one and a half hours for the bus to come around again.

We overshot our stop and had to catch a tram back to where we started from. They haven´t changed a bit since I caught them in Brisbane in the 50´s and 60`s.

Tonight we ticked another of Jim´s culinary desires: tripe. The locals are called »triperos» because the sent all the good meat off with some soldiers centuries ago and were left with the offal to eat.