(Porto, Portugal):
The town that gave the country (and port wine) its very name, Porto is Portugal’s second-largest metropolis after Lisbon. Sometimes called Oporto, it’s an age-old city that has one foot firmly in the industrial present. The old town, centered at Ribeira, was built on the hills overlooking the Douro River, and today is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
It’s all beautiful, of course. Good things: the historic squares, beautiful architecture, sunny beaches, metro/subway/bus system, nice people, the weather is perfect – breezy, no bugs, sunny. The escalator to the metro runs very very slowly until someone lands on the steps… then it speeds up. Great way to save energy, I think.
But I feel like such a tourist. Everything revolves around me: shopping, hotel comfort, food whenever I want it, people to answer my questions so I can survive. I get to turn my head and ignore the homeless people on the streets. I keep trying to make sense of the Portuguese language (is it more like English or Spanish or Russian?), but there are only a few words that seem similar. I have the privilege that almost everyone I run into understands English even if they do not speak it fluently. I wonder how I would communicate with someone in Portuguese in the US?