Part 1
Porto

We arrive by Ryan Air from England and ride into the UNESCO neighborhood of Porto by subway in the blast of a heat wave. Temperatures soar to 100 degrees and keep ascending. There isn’t a breeze lifting from the Douro River to cool us; seagulls don’t soar above the red-tiled roofs, and yet tourists like us keep coming. After all it’s August and people from everywhere are ready to fall in love with Portugal.  

Night View from our Airbnb in Porto

Our little Airbnb flat is 60 steps up from the street.  French doors open to an eyebrow of a balcony. Below, crowds stream up and down the cobblestone street in a never-ending parade. Their voices ring out.  Above, in buildings where families live cheek to jowl, laundry hangs on narrow spools from open windows.

While our flat, Branco, is charming, white and clean, there isn’t air conditioning.  Fans whir. Our charming hosts instruct us in the art of closing the windows and drawing the shades during the day.  They assure us, in this way, the flat will stay cool. They will be mistaken.  

We take to the streets and find a cool retreat, Puro 4050, which offers a cuisine that is a cross between Portuguese and Italian. Edwardo, our waiter, brings us chilled white wine from the vineyards of Douro Valley, a silken purse of burrata cheese surrounded by thinly sliced Parma ham, a platter of shaved zucchini drizzled with olive oil, smoked tomato sauce and basil, and roasted eggplant with pesto. We are hooked.  We cannot refuse the ricotta cake dabbed with pumpkin jam and sprinkled with roasted pumpkin seeds.  Edwardo offers a saying, “Dolce far niente.” This means, he says, the sweetness of doing nothing. Ah, pleasant idleness, I think.  Instantly, I know we have found a motto by which to live in Porto.  

Edwardo suggests we visit the Majestic Café and Portugal’s oldest bookstore, Livaria Lello, reputed to be the most beautiful bookstore in the world. J.K. Rowings taught English in Porto and the Lello was a muse for Harry Potter.  It’s pinnacled exterior is mid 19th Century Late Gothic.  Everyone must pay to enter and book lovers jam the aisles. The murmur of families, children and couples ripple in the warm wooded interior.  Immediately a book of Bukowski’s poems and Paul Auster’s “4321,” which I am obsessively reading on my IPad, jumps out at me. When we dine again, Edwardo’s brown eyes sparkle.  “You liked the Lello?”  I assure him that we did and I ask him if he knows Bukowski. He looks puzzled.  “No, but I love Tarantino!”

In the days that follow, we go to bed late, and sleep in late.  The heat is unrelenting.  Dolce Niente has entered our bones; we surrender. We witness the evidence that the Portuguese, fearless sailors ruling the seas as a naval juggernaut and establishing colonies and trading posts in Brazil and throughout Africa, are today a gentle, refined, culture who adore their children and live in harmony.  

One night, hiking up the lantern-lit street toward our atelier, fado music spills from a narrow door.  I see the neck of a guitar and hear the soulful voice of a singer.  I stop and peer in. Two guitar players and a songstress dressed in black block the view into a restaurant. A wiry, gray-haired gentleman pokes his head through the door and pops out into the street.  He motions toward a table and two chairs that tilt awkwardly down hill.  Please, he insists. How can we refuse?   He disappears and returns with two glasses of port and a kind of apple custard pie.  We sip the wine and sample the sweet pastry.  I sway in the seat, careful not to tip over.  The gentleman re-appears and gallantly offers me his hand. I hesitate.  But why, I wonder. Sailor Boy winks at me. I accept the gentleman’s hand and he gracefully guides me through the door, past the musicians and the singer.  Inside, tables line the stone walls. Diners look up, curious and smiling.  Candles glow lighting their faces. The gentleman firmly takes me into his arms.  The passion of fado throbs in my ears. Without delay, he nods and expertly twirls and twirls and twirls me in the aisle between the tables until I am infused with a dizzy happiness that lifts me higher and higher.  When he finally stops, the diners are laughing and clapping.  I bow to the gentleman, and to the crowd, I point to my chest, and proclaim, “San Francisco, California!” In Portuguese they shout, “Encore! Encore!”