Portuguese   We’ve discussed the Italic languages in general, including the many similarities between them. We’ve gone into some detail about Spanish recently, largely because I’m surprised to find that it’s a total of five Spanish-speaking countries that I’ve visited within the space of only seven months: the Dominican Republic in October, Chile and Argentina in November, Mexico in January, and now Spain in May.

While in Iberia, I’m also visiting Portugal for the first time in twenty years, and Portuguese is a very interesting language that I really like. As with Spanish, we won’t go into vocabulary or grammar, but the pronunciation of Portuguese is something that is handy to have when visiting Portugal, or otherwise wanting to pronounce Portuguese place names or foods. I think two smaller issues, then two major ones, are worth discussing.

Final O   I remember someone once saying that it’s best to know a bit of Spanish before learning Portuguese, since it’s a stepping stone that makes it easier. Knowing what I now know, I fully agree. Take for example the word “amigo”, which is the same—so to speak—in both languages. The Spanish pronunciation corresponds to the spelling, for a perfect sound-symbol correspondence. But in Portuguese “amigo” is pronounced “amigu”. Generally speaking a final O goes to U. [This may ring a bell from last summer, as Swedish does the same thing, but with O in many positions, not just final.] So if you go to the south coast of Portugal the Algarve, where the main city is Faro, remember: Faru. If you want to hear fado singing, remember: fadu. When I take people to dinner at my Portuguese restaurant in Greenwich Village, Alfama, I always show them how to say thank you: obrigado for a man, obrigada for a woman. It’s easy to remember if you realize you’re literally saying “obligated” when thanking a person. But the man has to remember to pronounce his version as obrigadu.

One should always be sure to enjoy a glass of port after dinner, especially a Portuguese one, so when asking for porto, remember to say portu. And that brings to mind Portugal’s second city after Lisbon, Porto or Oporto (one word) in English, but O Porto (two words) in Portuguese—or also, just Porto. If you inspect the word, you should not be shocked when it’s pointed out that O Porto actually means The Port, which is why Portuguese writes it as two words. The grapes that grow port (and other wine grapes) are produced in the Douro valley (remember Mateus), for which O Porto is, well, The Port. Therefore, when you drink a glass of port, it literally means wine that has passed through O Porto.

So Douro is pronounced doh.ru (for OU, mentally cancel out the U, since OU always represents a clear OH sound; and musician John Phillip Sousa in the original would be SOH.za). And O Porto is U Portu. And when you need a subway ride in Lisbon, ask for o metro (u ME.tru).

[This takes me off on one of my little digressions. I recently pointed out that words for “the” in Italic languages “usually” include an L: FRN le/la; ITL il/la; SPN el/la; CAT el/la (except for Balearic es/sa). I cautiously said “usually” because I knew the discussion of Portuguese was coming up. The Portuguese words for “the” are o/a, totally devoid of L. In the plural, corresponding to Spanish los/las (as in Los Angeles, Las Vegas), is simply os/as. I find a pleasant parallel between o/a and os/as. But as for pronunciation, we have u/a and ush/ash (rhyme with oo!, ha!, louche, posh). And nary an L in sight.]

Disappearing E (and O)   Some languages have nice, strong vowels. Take the word for “week”. In SPN: semana, and you say each vowel loud and clear. The same with ITL: settimana. With FRN, however, you have the wishy-washy “E muet”, which is a schwa, a mumbled vowel like at the beginning and end of “aroma” uh.RO.muh. FRN: semaine is pronounced, at best, when the word stands alone, suh.MEN. But say “la semaine” and it comes out las.MEN, and the “lazy E” goes to sleep, losing its syllable and turning over its responsibility to carry the burden of the S to the previous A.

In this manner, PRT works like FRN. PRT writes “semana” just like SPN, but it’s pronounced suh.MA.na, and “a semana” comes out as.MA.na.

E’s also disappear at the end, similar to French. (They might return in very slow, careful speech.) The famous beach resort area on the south coast, the Algarve, comes out al.GARV. The last E in Cabo de São Vicente is not there, and “de” is mumbled as duh. Cabo is of course ca.bu. I’ll get to how to pronounce the rest in a moment under “nasals”.

In endings, -es and also –os tend to lose their vowels in normal speech, although, again, they can return in slow, deliberate speech. “Senhores” is se.NYORSH. The names that in SPN are Gómez and López are in PRT Gomes and Lopes, pronounced GOMSH and LOPSH. Another example is “Estados Unidos”, which means “United States” both in SPN and PRT. The SPN pronunciation is straightforward, pretty much as written. In PRT, though, although in slow speech it’s: ish.TA.duz u.NI.dush, at normal pace it’s pronounced: ish.TADZ u.NIDSH, with both O’s disappearing. You can understand how someone knowing Spanish could “fake” reading a PRT newspaper with some accuracy, but could not follow a conversation without study.

Shushing   The two previous sections are to me just curiosities. But shushing and nasal vowels are to me what makes PRT so very distinctive and endearing.

You will assume that “shushing” is not a scientific term, and you will be right. It’s the term that Beverly and I made up and always used when talking about this distinctive trait, which I’m sure you’ve already noticed in the examples given above in other matters. I let those examples go by without commenting on all the shushing, which sounds either like a leaky steam pipe or like someone trying to get people to quiet down. I love it; Beverly didn’t care for it at all (“You mean you really LIKE that?”). It’s one of the very few things in life we disagreed on.

I’m going to explain how shushing works. I think its intricacy is fascinating, like watching lace being made. I do not expect anyone to memorize what happens, but it will explain the pronunciations I give throughout this essay.

I just need to digress first for some necessary information, which to me is interesting in its own right. Most speakers are unaware of paired consonants, because they are unaware of voicing.

All vowels and many consonants are voiced. Say “no” and feel your throat and you’ll feel the vibrations of voice for both the N and the O. But some consonants are whispered, and have no voice. Say just a P, and you will feel no voice, because P is voiceless.

The next step is to say “pin”, and then deliberately add voice to the P. You will end up saying “bin”. We now come to the fist twinned pair: P/B. Devoice the beginning of “bill” and you’ll get “pill”. Welcome to the world of voiceless consonants, and twinned pairs of consonants. [Note: not all consonants appear as married pairs. Confirmed bachelors are M, N, NG, R, L, and others.]

You can play around with this with these common pairs: P/B, T/D, K/G, F/V, S/Z, SH/ZH, CH/J.

Now for the shushing. Remember what we’ve said about spelling as opposed to reality. PRT, what is spelled an S can be in reality: S, Z, SH, ZH, as follows.

S is S: INITIALLY in a word: Sintra, São Paulo; or, in the middle, when DOUBLED: Rossio.

S is Z: BETWEEN VOWELS. Talking about a rose and a house, both look alike in SPN, PRT, and ITL. But in SPN, rosa is rosssa; casa is casssa. In PRT (and ITL) rosa is roza; casa is caza.

S is SH: in FINAL POSITION: amigos (a.MI.gush); casas (KA.zash); or BEFORE A VOICELESS CONSONANT (think of the logic—voiceless SH before another voiceless consonant): vista (VISH.ta); castelo (cash.TE.lu); marisco (ma.RISH.cu); Espanha (ish.PA.nya).

S is ZH: BEFORE A VOICED CONSONANT. So Lisbon, Lisboa. is lizh.BO.a.

That’s it on the shushing, but there is one caution: all this also applies BETWEEN WORDS. So, let’s take the word for three: três.

Alone, três is tresh (final S is SH).
“Three friends”, três amigos, is trez a.MI.gush (between vowels, S is Z).
“Three houses”, três casas, is tresh KA.zash (before a voiceless consonant, S is SH).
“Three dollars”, três dólares, is trezh DO.larsh (before a voiced consonant, S is ZH).

Take a look again at some of the pronunciations earlier, especially for “United States” to try to follow how this works. In a similar manner, a man is a Português (-esh), but a woman is a Portuguesa (-eza).

There are two attractive and well-known seaside resort towns a half-hour to the west of Lisbon on either side of a bay. The train gets you first to the east side to Estoril, with its casino. This is ish.to.RIL. Four minutes later the train reaches its last stop, on the west side of the bay, at the pretty town that I think has the second prettiest place name in Portugal (I’ll mention #1 later): Cascais. It just shushes off the tongue: kash.KAISH (AI as in aisle).

I cannot leave this subject without a favorite anecdote. I’ve mentioned in the past the occasional first encounter with language, the French example (...avec ou sans filtre) coming to mind (Reflections 2004, Series 24). I also have one for Portuguese. It was on that very first 1965 trip to Iberia, where Lisbon was our first stop. We got along well enough, not knowing anything about Portuguese, but then one day we wanted to take the streetcar out to the western part of town at Belém a bit to see the monuments. How to ask for Belém, which means Bethlehem, was a job in itself, and I’ll discuss its pronunciation later, but boarding the streetcar we had to pay our fare. This story taking place in Ancient Times, there are a number of quaint differences. Instead of just flashing your prepaid, machine-bought travel card before a sensor in any tram, bus, or metro station, there was actually a conductor selling tickets. Also, this being a pre-euro time, the Portuguese currency was still the escudo, and streetcar prices were very low, only two escudos per person, just as the hotel rates were low (Reflections 2007 Series 8).

When the conductor came up to us he said something that sounded pure gibberish. We held out some money and he took what he needed to sell us two tickets. However, we memorized the gibberish, and had great laughs reproducing it over the years, including after when we learned what that gibberish was. I now know he said:

Knowing what you now do, before you peek below, what was it that we heard?

Forty-two years later, I still smile at our very understandable lack of comprehension, especially when all that comes run together at fast speed. Who would have thought the escudos in our hand were shkudsh? But that pronunciation is still perfectly valid today. When on this trip I took the now sleek and modern streetcar back to Belém and flashed my electronic card in front of the sensor, you can be sure I remembered the shkudsh story.

It is my understanding that in Brazilian Portuguese there is no shushing. To my way of thinking, that’s the Brazilians’ loss.

Nasal Vowels   One should have no fear of nasal vowels as they appear in Portuguese and French. When they are explained correctly, they are easy to do. We have to start by making sure we continue to realize that we won’t confuse spelling with reality. In spelling, there are five vowels, plus variations perhaps with accent marks. In reality, there are dozens of vowels. English alone has about 14, depending on how you count them. We already have talked about ash (æ), the English vowel whose letter we’ve abandoned. Beyond the five vowel letters, we also have ü, ö, and others.

Certain consonants are nasal, the most common being N, M, NG. Any vowel can be nasalized as well, although it’s done only “accidentally” in most languages. For instance, in English, you cannot say “can” without nasalizing the A, since the A anticipates a nasal consonant after it. However, that nasal consonant is pronounced as well, so it isn’t obvious to the English speaker that the vowel is nasal.

But some languages have evolved over time, so that this anticipation of a following nasal consonant does nasalize the vowel—but then the consonant itself has disappeared over time. This will explain why the standard SPELLING of nasal vowels will show the following N or M that USED TO really be there, but now only hovers as a ghost, giving up its nasality, but no other sound. It serves just as a MARKER of nasality.

I need a symbol to show nasality. The International Phonetic Alphabet uses the tilde (~) over a vowel to show that it’s nasal: ã or õ, but this keyboard can’t reproduce the tilde that way over all possible vowels, so I’ll represent nasal vowels with the tilde following: a~ or o~. There is a visual-mental advantage to this, since the tilde now sits where that N or M would be sitting in the standard spelling, in other words the spelling ON for a nasal vowel would be written as O~, showing that the spelling device of having that N there in reality is just showing nasality. [Note: the tilde (TIL.di) is also used in Spanish for ny: ñ, but that has nothing to do with nasal vowels.]

All nasal vowels are very easy to produce. The five PRT nasal vowels are easier, because the reality of what you say follows the spelling exactly. Therefore, we’ll leave them to last, and work with FRN first, which has three (or four) nasal vowels, all different from the PRT ones. The (slight) difficulty with the FRN ones is to associate the nasal vowel with the corresponding spelling.

French   Of the three nasal consonants (N, M, NG), NG is easiest to practice with since it’s furthest back in the mouth. Regular vowels come just out of the mouth. Nasal vowels come out of both the mouth and the nose, at the same time. We can trick ourselves to do that. Say the English word “song”. Do realize that that O is not an O as in the alphabet (OH!), but is pronounced as AW. This is important, as you’ll see. So let’s spell it “sawng” instead. Say that word, then say it again with the NG not touching. Let’s write that saw~. You’ve just said the FRN word normally spelled “son”, which means his/her. Talking about a singer, if you want to mention “his good tone”, you’d say:

As with all nasal vowels, AW~ can be spelled ON as in non (NAW~) “no”, and can also be spelled OM: comte is KAW~t.

1) The FRN nasal vowel AW~ is spelled ON or OM.

[Important note for all nasal vowels. These spellings indicate nasal vowels if they appear at the end of a word (bon = baw~), or before a consonant (bonté = baw~.TE) but NEVER before a vowel: bonus (bo.NÜS).]

The second nasal in FRN is a bit of a surprise. I refer again to the vowel ash (æ) we discussed last year in reference to Germanic languages. It’s the vowel that is among the most frequent in English, but whose alphabet letter (æ, capitalized Æ) we’ve abandoned using. I can put it back in these English words: The fæt, ængry cæt sæt looking æt the mæd ræbbit.

FRN does not use ash (æ) normally, but it does use a nasal ash (æ~)! Say the English word fæng (fang), then loosen up on the NG. You’ve just said fæ~, which is the FRN word normally spelled “fin”. If you have 15 stamps and 20 wines you say:

Æ~ also appears in spellings of vowel combinations ending in IN such as pain (pæ~) or teint (tæ~).

2) The FRN nasal vowel Æ~ is spelled IN or IM.

Take ca(r). To CA temporarily add NG to help you, then just keep its nasality. You now have kah~, normally spelled quand. This nasal vowel AH~ logically corresponds to the “A” spellings AN/AM, but also represents the “E” spellings EN/EM:

3) The FRN nasal vowel AH~ is spelled AN/AM or EN/EM.

I will include the possible fourth FRN nasal vowel for completeness, although it is quickly disappearing from the language. We have to review the “kiss vowels” Ü and Ö. Say SKI and pucker up and you get SKÜ, and you can reproduce that Ü in a FRN word such as lune (LÜN) or une (ÜN). Say CAFE and pucker up and you get CAFÖ, and you can reproduce that Ö in peu (PÖ) or Europe (ö.ROP).

The last FRN nasal vowel is Ö~, the nasalized form of Ö. It is spelled, surprisingly, UN/UM, even though U usually represents the other kiss vowel, Ü. Take your Ö, add, then subtract NG, and try parfum (par.FÖ~), Verdun (ver.DÖ~), humble (Ö~bl). A contrast between plain Ö and nasal Ö~ appears in queue (KÖ) and qu’un (KÖ~). This is difficult for an outsider to learn, especially when something as common as the words for “one” or “a/an” are “un & une”. “Une” logically uses Ü (ÜN) but “un” uses instead the other kiss vowel (nasalized), Ö~. However, as it turns out, this nasal vowel is disappearing in FRN. It’s retained in careful, formal speech, but replaced in everyday conversation with Æ~, which therefore now represents not only IN/IM but also UN/UM. Here’s the situation if you want to order “a wine”. Traditionally, un vin is ö~ væ~. In everyday speech, the two words of un vin now rhyme as æ~ væ~.

[4) The FRN nasal vowel Ö~ is spelled UN/UM, but is being replaced by Æ~.]

[Note: FRN words with nasal vowels used in English tend to baffle English speakers. The most notorious example is “lingerie”. Aside from the fact that it doesn’t mean in FRN what English speakers have adopted it for, the standardized pronunciation in English has been cast in stone as lah~.zhe.RE (rhymes with cafe). Actually most English speakers reproduce a pretty good nasal “AH~” in this word. The only problem is, the FRN pronunciation is læ~.zhe.RI (rhymes with ski). Well, at least the middle syllable is authentic FRN. I also recall a French perfume advertised some years ago called Imprévu. Piece by piece, the word im-pré-vu means un-fore-seen. It was regularly advertised on radio and TV as being pronounced ahm.pre.VOO, with the M clearly pronounced, which hurt the ear, since FRN says æ~.pre.VÜ. Oh, well. At least once again the middle syllable was authentic.]

Portuguese   Now, after delving through the maze of FRN nasals, PRT nasals are a piece o’ cake. They are based on A (trA-lA-lA), E (cafE), I (skI), O (nO), U (rUle), and the pronunciation always follows the spelling. They are A~, E~, I~, O~, U~. They are different vowels from the FRN ones, and the simplicity and perfection of the system boggles the mind.

Most related languages say yes with si. So does PRT, but it’s nasal, so use the NG trick to say si~. Now: don’t be startled to see the standard spelling: sim. You know better than to try to pronounce that M. Actually, note that, while FRN uses N more frequently than M to show a nasal vowel, PRT is just the opposite, showing M more often than N (But note: Sintra (SI~.tra). Try saying this very contrived sentence:

You may guess that it means “Yes, it’s the garden of Martin from Berlin”, but note that the nasal vowel I~ is regularly spelled, quite sensibly, IM (or IN). The corresponding sentence in French would be:

Note how different the FRN nasal is from the I spelling, while the PRT nasal is simply the nasal form of I.

Also note these numbers: 5: FRN cinq (SÆ~k), PRT cinco (SI~.ku); 15: FRN quinze (KÆ~Z), PRT quinze (KI~Z); 20: FRN vingt (VÆ~), PRT vinte (VI~T).

1) The PRT nasal vowel I~ is spelled IM/IN.

Say OH and use the NG trick to make it nasal. You have O~ as in ombro (O~.bru); onda (O~.da); onde (O~D); bom (BO~).

Note the striking difference between saying “good” in FRN bon (BAW~) and PRT bom (BO~), and it has nothing to do with the N spelling in bon or the M spelling in bom. Here are two familiar greetings:

2) The PRT nasal vowel O~ is spelled OM/ON—or also Õ (see below).

Take “(tra-la-)la”, add, then subtract, NG. You have A~ as in Francisco (fra~.SIS.cu) or Atlántico (at.LA~.ti.ku). Do note that this PRT nasal vowel is closer to its FRN counterpart than others, but not the same. I hope you perceive a difference between the “yawn” A in fA.ther and the “smile” A in trA-lA-lA. PRT uses a nasalized “smile” A, while FRN uses a nasalized “yawn” A: François (frah~.SWA); Atlantique (at.lah~.TIK).

3) The PRT nasal vowel A~ is spelled AM/AN—or also à (see below).

Take the E in cafe and nasalize it: E~. Say cento (SE~.tu); temperatura (te~.per.a.TU.ra); quarenta (kwa.RE~.ta).

4) The PRT nasal vowel E~ is spelled EM/EN.

Take the U in rule and nasalize it: U~: segunda (se.GU~.da); comum (ko.MU~). This is particularly common (comum) since the words for “one” and “a/an” are um/uma. The latter is of course U.ma, but the former is U~. Also note this contrast: when saying “the” and “a”, what is spelled o/um is pronounced u/u~. The only actual difference in these two very basic words is that one is nasal.

5) The PRT nasal vowel U~ is spelled UM/UN.

Here’s all five in one sentence. Try it before looking at the answer. Talking about wines, if I asked you if you wanted a good white one, you might say:

That would be:

Incidentally, you might have noticed how PRT likes an R where you’d otherwise expect an L: branco (SPN blanco; English blank), obrigado (obgligated; for thanking, you actually say you’re obligated), praça [ç=s] (SPN plaza, FRN place), a beach is a praia (SPN playa).

[Note: All the languages discussed recently have two words for “one”, and it should be noted that you count differently, depending if you’re counting men or women. In ITL counting men: uno, due, tre; counting women: una, due, tre. In FRN it’s un, deux, trois, or une, deux, trois. In SPN it’s uno, dos, tres or una, dos tres. PRT does the same thing, but goes one step further. It has two words for “two” as well, so counting men it’s um, dois, três, and counting women it’s uma, duas, três.]

I’ve noted above that sometimes O~ and A~ can actually be spelled in PRT with the tilde above them: Õ and Ã. This is the reason why the International Phonetic Alphabet has adopted the tilde as a sign for the nasality of a vowel, but also why a keyboard can produce the tilde above just these two vowels, and not, for instance, I~. The word for sister (like SPN hermana) is irmã (ir.MA~), and the word for tomorrow (like SPN mañana) is amanhã (a.ma.NYA~). But, unlike FRN, PRT has nasal diphthongs, and the spelling à also appears there, further discussed below: mãe (mother). As far as I can tell, the spelling Õ appears only in diphthongs.

There are a number of regular diphthongs; for instance EI is always as in “EIght”, so primeiro (first) is pri.MEI.ru; Madeira is ma.DEI.ra; Rio de Janeiro is RI.u duh zha.NEI.ru. But three regular diphthongs also have nasal counterparts. The regular forms are:

In nasalized form, these three are spelled:

It is understood that BOTH vowels in the diphthong are nasalized, and that the second one is pronounced as indicated. I’ll transcribe them as shown on the right above.

So we have the famous Portuguese poet Camões (ka.MÕISH); mother is mãe (MÃI); and the biggest city in Brazil is São Paulo (sãu PAU.lu). This last name is curious for having first the nasal, then the regular AU. Also, “no” is não (nãu).

So now we can finally give the full pronunciation of Cabo de São Vicente: KA.bu duh sãu vi.SE~T.

There is one last very quirky spelling (please don’t tear your hair out): both appear only at the end of a word: -AM and –EM.

-AM is the less common, and seems to mainly appear in verb endings (third person plural). Believe it or not, it’s pronounced like âo, in other words ãu.

-EM, on the other hand, is pronounced like ãe, in other words, ãi. It also appears in various verb endings:

but also in many other words:

Imagine that when we took that streetcar with the shkudsh incident, the conductor assured us it was indeed going to BLÃI! We had been convinced it was pronounced, well, differently than that.

I said that at the end, once we knew how to pronounce it, I’d tell what my favorite place name in Portugal was, Cascais being second. In the north-east corner of Portugal, landlocked and surrounded by Spain, is the province whose name means Beyond-the-Mountains. I’ve never been there, but that dreamy name alone is attractive. And I love the pronunciation of its name, Trás-os-Montes. Before you peek below, try to pronounce it. Hint: there’s one nasal vowel, one dropped vowel, and three kinds of shushing. See how well you do on this, your final exam:

Portugal   That’s the language side of the story; now for the travel. I took the subway to Penn Station and the New Jersey Transit Airtrain service three stops to Newark Airport and TAP Portuguese Airlines. Flying is the least comfortable part of the trip and I’m glad I got it over with at the very beginning. We’ve always followed the philosophy that you take the airline of the country you’re going to, in order to start steeping yourselves in the culture immediately, such as hearing all announcements in Portuguese and English, and picking up a Portuguese newspaper. Although the plane was pretty full, I again lucked out and had no one next to me in my two-across, so I could raise the center armrest and lie on two pillows on the left armrest with my knees jammed against the right armrest. This is 21C “comfort” travel. At least I didn’t have to sit up all night.

The route follows the sea route, up past New England and the Maritime Provinces, including Newfoundland, then across o Atlántico. Do realize that Europe is much further north than the US, so arriving at that angle you reach Portugal much sooner than you reach London or Paris, much farther north. This makes for a faster flight—and less sleep time (so to speak). The flight was scheduled at 6h50. Add the five hour time difference and it looks like roughly half a day, 6:15 PM to 6:30 AM. But they build a lot of fat into that: we taxied at Newark for an hour, and were still on schedule. After dinner and reviewing what I wanted to do on arrival, I bit the bullet and took the time change on my watch, so 10 PM suddenly became 3 AM, allowing two hours “sleep” before being awakened for a 5 AM breakfast. So much for air “travel”.

Lisboa   I had checked online in advance and knew about the express bus service into town. It went down a central route, including Avenida da Liberdade, where my Sofitel Lisboa was. The only express bus stop on the Avenida was just a block’s walk from the Sofitel. Sofitel is the same hotel chain (part of Accor hotels) that I use in Minneapolis, and where I had Beverly’s memorial dinner. I settled in, rested a bit, and off I went for a busy first day.

You can look at the center of Lisboa as starting in a short north-south valley between two ridges to the west and east. This valley is called Baixa (BAI.sha, AI as in aisle). Like the SPN word Baja, as in Baja California, it means “low” or “lower”, maybe even “down below”. It’s an appropriate name for this low area between two ridges.

Before going any further, you have to talk about the earthquake, just like you can’t talk about Hiroshima without mentioning the atomic bombing. But the Lisbon earthquake didn’t happen recently, or even in the 20C. It was in 1755, on November 1 to be exact. The entire center of the city, including Baixa, was devastated. To this day, at the edge of the western ridge, the Igreja do Carmo (i.GRE.zha du KAR.mu), the Carmelite Church, still stands in ruins as an archeological museum, the bare stone arches that used to support a roof reaching out above it.

The earthquake changed the look of the city. It was not rebuilt with the same narrow, winding medieval streets so typical of older cities (although such streets still exist on the two ridges). The king’s minister, the Marquês (Marquis) de Pombal (mar.KESH duh po~.BAL) was in charge of the rebuilding and laid out modern streets, even by today’s standards, straight, parallel and perpendicular. Baixa, a commercial district, today shows this Manhattan-like grid.

Just south of Baixa and extending to the river (the Tagus, o Tejo [u TE.zhu]) is the large Praça do Comércio (Commerce Square). The side facing o Tejo is open, but the other three sides have attractive, matching classical buildings. These buildings wouldn’t have formed the uniform entity that they do if they hadn’t been part of the rebuilding plan of o Marquês. Also, the common name of the square is still Terreiro do Paço, or Palace Grounds. Where’s the palace? Long since gone with the earthquake.

Just north of Baixa is this sequence in a long row, all the result of the reconstruction by o Marquês: Rossio, Restauradores, Avenida, Pombal, Parque. First is the Rossio, the main square, and off the northwest corner of the Rossio is a connection leading to Praça dos Restauradores. The “Restorers” honored here are those that regained the independence of Portugal after the sixty years of being taken over by Spain (1580-1640), which I referred to earlier as being the time that Castilla dominated all of Iberia. Breaking out of Spanish domination remains important, and the date in 1640 that it happened, December 1, is still seen in street names.

[Talking about dates, the Salazar dictatorship was overthrown in 1974, in what was known as the Revolução dos Cravos/Carnation Revolution, on April 25, and that date is not only seen in street names, it’s also the name of the main bridge over o Tejo, a Ponte 25 de Abril.]

After Restauradores is the main tree-lined boulevard of Lisboa, Avenida da Liberdade, ending in a big circle, the Praça do Marquês de Pombal, with a tall column with his statue at the top (this is the extent to which he’s revered). Dramatically behind this statue and crowning the Avenida is the slope of Parque Eduardo VII. The Edward VII referred to was the king of England who visited in 1902. I think naming the whole park after him an unusually big honor just because he visited.

So, my first day back in Lisboa, with just two hours of restless sleep behind me, I did another of my seven-hour marathon walks around town, just as in Copenhagen last summer and Mexico City in January. From the Sofitel I first walked up the Avenida along one of the two attractive, heavily treed park strips up to the Marquês, then retraced my steps and walked the entire length of the Avenida da Liberdade down to Restauradores.

There are three street funiculars in Lisboa. You really have to let the concept of a street funicular register. A funicular is like two mittens hanging on a cord around your neck. Pull one down, and the other goes up. They run in the same track, except where they meet, where the tracks split into two. I rode a modern one in Bergen last summer and two in Pittsburgh last fall. But they all had their own right-of-way.

The Lisboa funiculars are in the middle of steeply sloped streets. No traffic runs on two of those streets, but on the third there is cross traffic, plus a few cars for local service, and all three have pedestrian traffic. I think the concept of building a funicular in the middle of the street, just like a streetcar, is highly unusual.

Two of them are right near Restauradores, one going up the slope to the east ridge, and the other up the west ridge. I took the Lavra Funicular up the east ridge. It was the first street funicular in the world (1884). It has a 25% gradient and rises 180 meters/yards.

Almost across the way is the Glória Funicular of 1885, but it’s temporarily out of service because of a tunneling project underground. It’s gradient is only 18%, but it goes up 265 meters/yards when operating.

Right on the Rossio is the Estação do Rossio, the Rossio railroad station of 1887. It’s being restored at the moment, but it was built in a revival of the Manueline style, which is worth discussing, since Manueline architecture is so very typical of Portugal, and it’s a breathtaking style. The Manueline Period, named after King Manuel I, was only thirty years long, 1490-1520, and was transitional from Gothic to Renaissance. But as short as the period was, it’s originality made it a major force in Portuguese architecture, to the extent that they copied it in this station. There are graceful gothic arches, twisted columns, dual-arched windows, and it’s often in white stone, even marble. The twin entrances to the Rossio station are two huge horseshoe arches. You cannot walk down an older street in Portugal and not see at the very least a graceful Manueline doorway.

From the Rossio I walked the length of Baixa to Terreiro do Paço and the river. At this point I had walked the full length of the interesting north-south itinerary of central Lisboa, but of course, that was not enough.

The ridge to the east of Baixa is the famous quaint old part of town called the Alfama, after which the restaurant in New York is named. The Alfama was not devastated by the earthquake, and its narrow winding streets are still there. Some streets suddenly become staircases as you climb up the hill, past the Cathedral, and park-like viewpoints to the top. The top of the Alfama is o Castelo de São Jorge (u kash.TE.lu duh sãu ZHORZH), or St George’s Castle. There was an admission charge, but they had a great senior rate: free. The remains of the castle itself were not as interesting as the view of everything. Just as the castle is very visible from below, from the wall around its park you could see the river, T. do Paço, Baixa, Rossio, Restauradores, Avenida, Pombal, Parque, all in a row, the same row I’d walked. Coming downhill again through the Alfama was a maze of staircase after staircase, little alleys and lanes. I went down to Santa Apolónia railroad station there to do some business. The first rail line arrived here in 1856.

But this marathon day wasn’t over. In Beverly’s diary she’d mentioned we liked a certain restaurant enough to go to it twice. I didn’t remember it, or where it was, but I had bumped into it earlier in the day right next to the Rossio station. It was the Leão d’Ouro (le.ÃU DOH.ru), the Golden Lion. Not only that, but their sign said they had fado Wednesday nights at 8—and it was a Wednesday, so I made a reservation. When I got there, they had set up two single tables directly facing the show, so that she was singing at the other side of my and the next guy’s tables. It couldn’t have been better. First the players of the Portuguese (lute-like) and Spanish guitars performed, then the singer came out and did several fados.

Between numbers she “worked the room”, and when she came up to me and the other guy at the adjoining single table, we all talked in English. Afterward it turned out that he was from Paris, so I deliberately flipped the conversation into French, and had an enjoyable evening practicing it. By the way, I had ordered a bottle of Mateus, just for old times’ sake.

That was only the first of two busy days. The first thing I did next day was go down into o metro at the Avenida stop right outside my hotel and buy a five-day pass. Everything is done by machine, and then at the turnstile, you wave the piece of cardboard over the sensor and go. Even if you buy a single-trip ticket, it’s by card. You also have to wave the card on exiting.

I immediately noticed one confusing thing. In Britain, since you drive on the left, when standing at the curb on a two-way street, you expect traffic to come from the RIGHT. This is also true on British railroad and Underground platforms. Where you drive on the right, you expect just the opposite, traffic coming from the LEFT, and this goes for trains, too. Well, as soon as I bought my pass, and wanted to enter, the signs indicating the direction I wanted seemed to indicate the wrong platform, and when I got there, sure enough the train came from the right. In Portugal, you drive on the right, but the trains run on the left. This might sound not all that confusing, but when you have a good sense of direction, it throws you off.

I had to use three lines to go to the Estação do Oriente (ish.ta.SA~U du o.ri.E~T; I'm using a tilde to indicate the previous vowel is nasal), in the north-east of the city. Sure enough, as I came out of o metro, knowing from my map which side the station should be on, I first took a couple of steps in the wrong direction based on the metro platform I had exited from. It took some getting used to. I think Spanish trains will be the same.

Since I had more to do downtown, you may wonder why I came out to East Station. The secondary reason was that I was going to be taking several trips from there and wanted to be sure of my metro connections and be familiar with the station, but the primary reason was that it’s located at the site where Lisboa celebrated Expo 98, and a number of buildings built then remain, right along the river. Most notably is the huge arena known as the Pavilhão Atlántico (pa.vi.LYÃU at.LA~.ti.cu), which seats 16,000 and for which there were ads for upcoming shows by Julio Iglesias, Plácido Domingo, and Beyoncé.

But the gem left over from Expo 98 was Oriente. It’s just five minutes northeast of Estação de Santa Apolónia, but located instead on main routes. Some trains connect with both stations, but many only with Oriente. Much of the station hugging the rail lines is of modest concrete construction, but its roof is what makes it an architectural masterpiece. When you go up—yes, up—to the platforms, you see the glass roof above you, and no walls in any direction. The roof is 25 meters/yards high, and on tree-like supports. The upper part of each support blossoms out connecting with the other “trees”, and supporting the undulating glass roof. You seem to be standing in a sunny glass-and-steel forest. It is of significance that Oriente was built by the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, who seems to specialize in railroad stations. It’s Calatrava who will be building the new transit center at Ground Zero in New York where PATH lines and subway lines will merge. I understand his design there is to be two bird-like wings. If Oriente is a preview, it should be very interesting.

O metro then brought me back downtown to Baixa, since I wanted to go to the western ridge above town on this day, and the most fun way to do it was to use o Elevador de Santa Justa. This is a structure on the west side of Baixa near the ridge, built in 1901 by a Portuguese architect influenced by Eiffel. It’s a free-standing elevator decorated with wrought-iron curlicues that goes up 45 meters/yards. There’s a viewing area at the top where you can look back down on Baixa, over to the Rossio on the left, and across to Castelo de São Jorge above Alfama. But then there’s a walkway connecting the top of the elevator to the ridge, so while a funicular would take you at an angle up a slope, this takes you straight up, and you walk over on a bridge. At the end of the walkway is that church I mentioned earlier that was ruined in the earthquake.

You are then in the neighborhood called Chiado (SHYA.du), which connects with the nearby Bairro Alto. A short distance from the elevator is the square, Largo do Chiado, that gives the neighborhood its name, somewhat like how “Times Square” indicates a large region surrounding the actual square itself. While the Alfama area gives a medieval feeling, the Chiado is more contemporary, with shopping areas and outdoor cafés. Just north of the Chiado is the Bairro Alto (BAI.rru AL.tu) “High Neighborhood”, as in SPN “barrio”, a working-class area with a number of casas do fado.

The Bica Funicular (1892) descends from this ridge not back to Baixa, but south toward the river instead. It descends 245 meters/yards down Rua da Bica at an average gradient of 20%, but is MUCH steeper at the bottom (believe me). PRT rua might remind you of FRN rue. I believe a saw a sign saying that all three funiculars and the elevator have been declared national monuments.

Near the river I caught a much more sleek and modern version of that streetcar to ride about 20 minutes out to Belém (BLÃI) as we had done on earlier trips. Here is the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos and the Igreja de Santa Maria. Both the (former) monestary and church date from 1502 and were built by King Dom Manuel, and are absolute jewels of Manueline art. You see nothing but white stonework in the sunlight, intricately carved.

A bit downriver is the Torre de Belém (1515-1519), a gorgeous (white, intricately carved) Manueline tower on the river’s edge, which is often used as the symbol of Lisboa. It had been built in the middle of the river to defend the monestary. Why is it now attached to the north shore? It’s the earthquake again, which altered the river’s course to flow only to the south of the tower.

But right across the park from the monestary, right on the water’s edge, is the Padrão dos Descobrimentos, the Monument of Discoveries. It’s a modern statue, built in 1960, and was almost brand-new when we first saw it in 1965. It shows O Infante Dom Henrique at the prow of a ship, and behind him are standing historical characters, including King Dom Manuel and the poet Camões.

Now you may wonder just who O Infante Dom Henrique (u i~.FA~T do~ e~.RIK) might be. The word “infante (for a woman infanta)” is used both in SPN and PRT as an alternate word for prince. We are talking here about the highly revered person known in English as Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460). This monument was erected in 1960 to commemorate 500 years since his death.

Henry turned the world around, just about literally. Up until then, sailors had been navigating by the seat of their pants. Henry retired to the Sagres (SA.gresh) promontory in the southwest of Portugal, adjoining Cabo de São Vicente, where he founded the Sagres School of Navigation to scientifically study both navigation techniques and potential routes around the world. Shortly thereafter, Portuguese navigators entered the history books. Vasco (VASH.ku) da Gama sailed eastward around the Cape of Good Hope in Africa to India in 1497-1498. Fernão de Magalhães (fer.NÃU duh ma.ga.LYÃISH) instead sailed westward around South America through the Straits of Magellan [hint] in 1519 to India. Although Magalhães himself was killed by natives in the Philippines, one of his vessels ended up continuing on past India to return, sailing around Africa, to Portugal, so Magalhães—or his expedition--is credited with being the first to circumnavigate the world in 1522. In English we of course know Magalhães as Magellan.

Hence the Monument of Discoveries shows O Infante Dom Henrique leading the way.

Isn’t it odd that Portugal and the Netherlands, two very small countries on the west coast of the European continent, have contributed much more than their fair share to seafaring?

Évora   In planning this trip, I set certain parameters. I wanted to see Lisboa again, thought I’d skip Porto (but see below), and wanted to go to try the Pousadas, the government-run inns (since 1942) that are similar to the Spanish Paradores in that they recycle interesting old palaces, convents, monasteries, manor houses, mansions. But there are a lot of Pousadas (poh.ZA.dash), and, since I didn’t want to drive this time, I limited my list to those that can be reached by rail, and then further limited them to those that are not on the edge of town, but absolutely in the historic center. Not only is the historic center more interesting to me, but also, I didn’t want to take a taxi to the edge of town somewhere, but wanted to walk from the station. This whole trip, after the necessary evil of the flight, was to be entirely by rail and on foot, plus two water crossings. That, to me, is how travelers (not tourists, not vacationers) travel.

All three pousadas I found were rated by Michelin “three-roof, red”. Red symbols instead of black indicate “particularly pleasant”. The roof symbols that Michelin uses go from one to five, and I’ve stayed at all five types. One and two-roof establishments are very nice, although not necessarily particularly memorable. Fours and fives are very, very nice, but then you’re getting into having doormen bow and scrape to you and such, which can be too la-de-da unless you live in a palace yourself at home. Three is a very happy medium, as you’ll see by the below descriptions.

My first choice was Évora (stress the first syllable), two hours by IC (InterCidade, or InterCity) express, and about 2/3 of the way to Spain, so narrow is Portugal. The return connections (to Lisbon, then north) were not good, so I had arranged to spend another night in the Sofitel Lisboa afterward. This allowed me to leave my big bag at the Sofitel and live out of a little carrier for two days. By the way, I had bought a Spain & Portugal Eurailpass for the exact number of days I’d need one.

The IC left from Oriente (only), and I knew I had a treat in store right away. In recent years they’ve built a new road bridge to the east of Lisbon (Ponte Vasco da Gama—are you surprised?), but the bridge in the very center of town is the one I remember. When we were there in 1965, this first bridge ever across o Tejo was still under construction (completed 1966). We saw the towers with cables hanging—but no roadway yet. On our later visit, it was fun to drive over it.

But from the beginning, a second level below the roadway had been allowed for rail. This was finally opened to rail traffic in 1999, and we were headed there. You should also not be surprised that this all-important bridge has been named Ponte 25 de Abril. The train rose high to cross the bridge, and the view back to Lisboa was spectacular, from São Jorge in the east and everything else in the middle out to A Torre de Belém in the west.

Évora is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It’s been around since Roman times, with monuments from all succeeding eras. From the station it was about a 15-minute walk to the garden area where the city wall used to be, and on my way, I just began the Michelin walking tour, stopping in a church here, and a square there.

I arrived at my destination, an open area surrounded by old palaces, the cathedral, a Roman temple, a tiny park with a view (I’d been climbing uphill in town)—and A Pousada dos Lóios (dush LOI.ush). This was built in the 1500’s (!!) as a convent. There is an attached church whose façade had been remodeled—once again, because of the 1755 earthquake. The public rooms in the Pousada were high-ceilinged and lush, and there was a wide stone staircase leading upstairs to the sober, long corridors. The ceramic plaque with each room number had the word Cela, with Cell below it, so you knew it was authentic. The rooms were traditional, and-not surprisingly—smallish, but with a plasma TV on the wall and wi-fi internet connections. I would have to guess that every second cell must have been divided in two to provide the bathrooms to the adjoining rooms.

In the center was a cloister. From the upper level you could see the orange trees growing in the center, and the restaurant around the main level of the cloister. The archways of the cloister were glassed in, and there was a beautiful Manueline door on one side. Staying here was a beautiful marriage between THEN and NOW.

The next day I walked around some narrow streets with old mansions, and stopped at A Universidade de Évora, whose courtyard was very attractive. As you walked around the arcade around the courtyard, you could peek into ongoing classes. The walls around the arcade were covered with azulejos, which is an architectural feature worth discussing.

The word azulejos is both SPN (a.thu.LE.khos) and PRT (a.zu.LE.zhush). An azulejo is a ceramic tile, usually in blue-and-white, but often multicolored. More often than not, each tile shows only part of a picture, an entire one of which can take up a large part of a wall. They have been made since the 15C and are a distinctive feature everywhere in Iberia, in churches, palaces, buildings along the street—and here in the courtyard.

So much in Évora is centered in a period of about 500 years ago that it startles to see O Templo Romano not thirty steps outside the front door of the Pousada. It was probably dedicated to Diana and dates from the 2C, about four times older than everything else around it. How does such a thing survive right in the middle of town?

Purely by accident. In earlier centuries, people were just as ready to tear down something out-of-date as many people are today. As it turns out, though, the Temple was converted into a fortress in the Middle Ages, and was excavated only about a century ago. It survives only because it served as the inner structure to a building that was considered more valuable at the time.

For a temple, it’s a relatively petite building. The attractive foundation has marble-and-granite columns only on the narrow end, five along the end itself, with about 4-5 columns surviving along each side. At night, when all the surroundings are illuminated, the temple is particularly attractive.

Cascais & Estoril   Back in Lisboa after the return train ride with a half-day and a still-valid-for-the-day railpass, and with only my small bag over my shoulder, I connected to the rail station at Cais do Sodré and went to the last stop, one-half hour to the west, Cascais. It’s a very pleasant seaside resort town, with parks and sea views. I just walked around for a while, then got back on the train towards Lisboa for four minutes to get off at Estoril, on the other side of the bay, with its casino and palm trees, and then back to Lisboa.

Still having to go out to dinner, I thought I’d try to hear some more fado. I had done some online research in Évora and all the well-known places seemed very touristy, which concerned me, but how bad could it be? (Ha!) The Adega do Machado in the Bairro Alto seemed the best of the lot, and I checked with the concierge as I checked back into the Sofitel, and he agreed, and made me a reservation.

Getting there was easy, and I like the clever thing the metro builders have done (that I had read about in advance), considering that Lisboa has needed all its funiculars and elevators over the years. It was just two metro stops Avenida, Restauradores, Baixa-Chiado. This last station is a major one, where lines converge. But if Baixa is down here, and Chiado is up there, how to they get to call it Baixa-Chiado? Well, exiting the station eastward, there’s an escalator that sets you in Baixa, which I had done earlier. But exiting the station westward you get on one long escalator, then a second, third, and fourth. These end up bringing you all the way up the hillside—underground—and end up putting you at the far side of the Largo do Chiado. Clever, these Portuguese.

A Adega do Machado dates from 1937 and therefore bills itself as “a casa de fado mais antiga de Lisboa”. The food was OK, they tossed in some folk dancing (all right, but did I really need that?), and several men and women sang some decent fado. But there was a constant hubbub going on from the long tables of tourists. Two guys near me were discussing sports during the singing. All in all, the lack of respect was disgusting. There had also been some chatter during the fado at the Leão d’Ouro, but nothing like this.

Back at the hotel, I discussed the situation with the concierge, who was sympathetic. I told him, quite honestly, that I think the best place to hear fado was in New York (which he had visited) at the Alfama Portuguese Restaurant (which had not—yet). When they have their Wednesday night fado, who comes? Fado enthusiasts, not only Portuguese but others, and all who like good food. They treat the evening like going to a concert, not like having background music to idle chatter. In Lisbon, who comes? The noisy tourists, since they know fado is a “must”, whether they like it or not. Note again the distinction between travelers and tourists (or vacationers).

There is a standard line often used, that he also knew of, and that I reminded him of:

Yet I’ve never really heard that line used when needed. In a casa de fado in Lisbon, Portuguese would know the line and the tradition behind it; tourists, even if they were told what the line meant, would after a while resume their idle chatter.

But in New York, where I first learned “Silencio, que se vai cantar o fado!”, it’s never been really needed.

Porto   I left Lisboa from Oriente on the Alfa Pendular. I think that last word refers to the fact that it’s a tilt-train, one that leans into curves and allows faster speeds on standard track. It’s a very nice train, but not a French TGV. It comes up from Faro on the south coast and ends in Porto. An indicator showed we usually did 140kph/87mph, but after we lost some time, I did see it go up to 161/100. It was only a couple of hours to Porto, where I’d make a one-hour local connection to my next stop.

We had quickly visited Porto the last time, but took just a quick look at the town. My best memory was taking a tour of one of the wine lodges on the south bank of the river in Vila Nova de Gaia, essentially warehouses where you can get a free tasting of port. This time, I was going to (foolishly) skip Porto. Then, almost at the last minute, I realized I should take a later connection and spend several hours in Porto, and I’m glad I did.

There is a very interesting “language-type” story here. The river, flowing east to west, is the Douro (DOH.ru), down which the port (fortified) wine is shipped. Porto is on the north bank, and Vila Nova de Gaia is on the south bank. Although the wine is called port, it comes from Gaia. Go figure.

Today there are lots of bridges, road and rail, over the Douro, but in Roman times the river was a considerable obstacle, which is why a city developed on each side. The romans named the one on the north bank Portus (note the letter U) since it was a port. The one on the south bank was named Cale.

Note how in Hungary, the twin cities of Buda on one side of the Danube and Pest on the other have combined their names to form Budapest. This happened here as well. The twin cities of Portus and Cale across the river were referred to as Portucale (that U is still there).

During the reconquest if Iberia from the moors, Portucale was one of the main springs of support. Just as in Mexico, where in Spanish, no distinction is made between the name of the country and Mexico City, in other words, Mexico is the capital of Mexico, the name Portucale also became associated with the entire country, and developed into the name Portugal. That U is still there, the E is lost from the end, and the K (spelled C) became voiced as a G.

It’s curious that, once the name became associated with the country (and Porto was never the capital, by the way) Portus and Cale reverted to their individual names. Portus developed into Porto, which is the normal development for Latin words ending in –us (amicus --> amigo, also with voicing to a G). Apparently, Cale also underwent voicing to a G, and, with some other changes, is now Gaia. Just why it’s called New Town of Gaia (Vila Nova de Gaia) I do not know.

When you consider the story, should there be any doubt that PORT comes from PORTo in PORTugal? And considering that we’re talking about ports and harbors here, is it surprising that PORTugal has traditionally been a seafaring nation?

Porto also has two major rail stations, a suburban one in Campanhã (ka~.pa.NYÃ), and, five minutes into town, at São Bento (sãu BE~.tu). Coming from the south, the train crossed the Douro on the bridge built by Eiffel (he must have been very active in Portugal) and arrived at its last stop, Campanhã. My later connection would stop at both stations, so I took the next incoming train to São Bento.

I’m glad I had changed my mind, because I had a wonderful afternoon. São Bento is right in the middle of everything. There was a beautiful Beaux-Arts Praça da Liberdade right around the corner. I climbed up to the area of the cathedral, and through the old city. Approaching the waterfront, I stopped at the Praça do Infante Dom Henrique (they like him here, too), and passed the nearby house where he was born. But the nicest part was along the river, in Porto, in Gaia, and going across the bridge--twice.

I had been coming downhill, and the view from the river back to the red roofs of Porto on the hillside was impressive. There were cafés along the river, and there were views of all the wine lodges with their signs in across in Gaia: Sandeman, Ferreira, Cálem, Ramos Pinto, and many others.

Connecting the two riverbanks is a most unusual two-level bridge, the Ponte Dom Luís I. Below a large arch is a roadway (cars and pedestrians) connecting the lower levels of both towns, so I walked five minutes over to Gaia to look back. But way above, on top of that arch, is a roadway connecting the upper levels of both towns, which is now used for o metro—and pedestrians. I was wondering how I was going to avoid walking uphill again back to São Bento, but back on the Porto side of the bridge there was a sleek, new funicular back to the top. This gave me the excuse of then walking along the upper level of the bridge back to Gaia again, with the magnificent high-level views of the red roofs on the Porto side and the lodges and antique boats in the river on the Gaia side, boats that used to transport wine. I then had an excuse to take the metro (above ground in Gaia) back across the bridge just one stop into a tunnel underneath São Bento, where I made my rail connection to my next stop.

Guimarães   My last stops in Portugal were in the north, to the north of Porto. Guimarães (ghi.ma.RÃISH) goes back to the 10C and was the “cradle of Portugal”. It started with a monastery and a defensive tower, and grew. Now it’s expanded considerably beyond the Velha Cidade.

Guimarães is the last stop on the connection from Porto. Again, I had about a 10-minute walk up to where the Old City started, surrounded by beautiful gardens, often where the medieval wall had once been. At one point there were long rows of yellow, then blue pansies. There was one tree that had small blossoms, alternately blue than white. But here, on entering the Velha Cidade, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, I was immediately at my destination, within a few steps.

The monastery was gone, leaving now only a church and cloisters, Nossa Senhora da Oliveira (o.li.VEI.ra) Our Lady of the Olive Tree. Legend has it that when the monastery was being built, a dead olive tree suddenly sprung leaves, hence the name. The cozy little square was the Largo da Oliveira, which appropriately had one oliveira growing in the center. Next came also the old council house, with gothic arches at street level you could walk through to a covered area, then out the other side to the adjoining square, the Praça de São Tiago (= Santiago, Saint James). I assume that this arched area was at one time a market. The next thing back on the first square was A Pousada de Nossa Senhora da Oliveira, where I was headed.

Its location in an old town house was cozy. Aside from the two squares it was on, one side street next to it would allow maybe three people to pass abreast, the more main one maybe five. You were right in the middle of things, in a medieval town. The public rooms were cozy, my room upstairs, which had a wooden ceiling, just looked out on the adjoining red roof. It was very different from the Pousada in Évora; this was a seignorial townhouse.

The next day I walked around the tiny old city, then uphill to Castle Hill. Remember to distinguish between a palace (a royal residence) and a castle (a fortress, which also may have been a royal residence). Because of their nature, castles are usually from an earlier period. On Castle Hill, you first come to the Paço dos Duques de Bragança, a palace dating from the 15C. A bit further was the simple, yet beautiful Igreja de São Miguel du Castelo, St Michael’s Castle Church. It was very small, a simple 12C Romanesque building. The walls were very thick, the windows just vertical slits. I assume the windows had once been for shooting through. And just above that came O Castelo (u cash.TE.lu).

That original protective tower was now the castle keep in the center, since large walls with protective towers had been built around it, leaving a small inside yard area. You could climb from that yard area up steep, ancient steps to the wall, then walk around the entire perimeter, occasionally going up and down more steps to viewpoints. There were absolutely no railings, not on the steps, not on the walkway above. Beverly’s diary had said we’d walked around the perimeter years ago, so I did it again. It was of interest to think of the original tower up here in the 10C, and the original monastery further down in the town.

Then my millennium thoughts were interrupted by the 21C. Three groups of elementary school kids burst into the yard, distinguished by cap color. There were maybe thirty (or thirty million) yellow caps, then red caps, then blue caps. There were signs warning that children must be accompanied by an adult. If I were bringing a child to this castle, I think I’d put a leash on him, to make sure he stayed close when climbing. But these teachers seemed more fearless than the kids. It looked like Pigpen and friends from the Peanuts comic strip, a dust cloud of yellow caps going up the ancient steps, a dust cloud of red caps along the walkway, a dust cloud of blue caps coming down. Perhaps Americans are paranoid as to falling. I’ve driven along many European mountain roads with no railings where for sure there would have been railings if the road had been in the US. Anyway, after my sitting in the shade for a while, the 10C peacefully returned.

There was a very interesting plaque on a boulder outside the castle. Given that Guimarães was the cradle of the Portuguese nation and its early capital, my philosophy of leaving no plaque unread served me well. It was put up only in 1988. First, some background.

People usually recognize what country is meant in the prefixes Franco-American, Russo-Japanese, Italo-French. Some are less obvious; just last summer we mentioned the fact that Sino- refers to China, as in my Sino-Norwegian sweater. Another one hard to recognize is that Luso- refers to Portugal, as in Luso-Brazilian affairs. It’s based on the old Roman province of Lusitania, which included Portugal; that’s also the name of the Cunard ship that was torpedoed and got the US into WWI. Also note that the Portuguese name for Galicia is Galiza, the adjective apparently being Galaica. “To the” is à, a contraction of a + a. The plaque started out:

I had wondered about Portuguese feelings of a bond with Galicia, to the north in Spain, and for the first time, I saw an example of it. Then they quoted someone who said:

And then quoted someone else, who said:

There seem to be stronger bonds between Portugal and Galicia/Galiza than I had thought.

Viana do Castelo   Two trains brought me to my last stop in Portugal, but the train stopped in Barcelos on the way, and therein lies a story, about O Gallo de Barcelos (u GA.lu duh bar.SE.lush), The Barcelos Rooster. On our last trip, we bought a ceramic rooster, which is for sale all over. It’s rather flat, with a floral design almost covering a black background, including a huge fantail. Also huge is the red cockscomb above the head. O Gallo de Barcelos represents innocence, and comes with this story.

A pilgrim was headed from Portugal up to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, and in Barcelos, was accused of a theft, and condemned to death in spite of his protests of innocence to a judge, who was eating a meal. Since Santiago is Saint James, the pilgrim asked Saint James to intervene, then told the judge that to prove his innocence, Saint James would have the rooster that the judge was dining on stand up and crow, which, as the story goes, supposedly happened. In any case, on that basis, O Gallo de Barcelos remains the symbol of innocence.

The train then arrived at Viana do Castelo (VYA.na du kash.TE.lu), the last major coastal town in Portugal before Spain. It’s called that because there’s more than one Viana. Although there was a Pousada here, it was up on a mountain, but I’d instead found a charming estalagem (ish.ta.LA.zhãi) here, a privately owned inn, listed in Michelin and in guides of pleasant places to stay. It was the Estalegem Casa Melo Alvim (ME.lu al.VI~), the Melo Alvim House Inn, named after an old family. It was built in 1509 and renovated in 1990 by the present owners. It’s back was right opposite the station, in a pleasant neighborhood. A main feature was a broad stone staircase, with stone balustrade leading upstairs. My high-ceilinged room had sort of a domed ceiling with carved dark brown wooden beams, and Manueline windows outside.

I walked around the old central square, and the next day, took the modern funicular up Santa Luzia hill to the church at the top, where you had a view—everywhere. To the south you could see the entire river and town below, and to the west, look far out into the Atlantic.

I had said I’d never crossed between Portugal and Spain before this trip, and there’s an interesting point about Portugal’s feistiness connected with the border. Britain is on Greenwich Mean Time, now called Universal Time (five hours later than New York), but much of Central Europe is in the next time zone over, Central European Time (six hours later). Lots of countries bend over backwards to fit into this common time zone, but not Portugal. It steadfastly remains as the only country on the western end of the continent that’s in the same zone as Britain. There are no formalities crossing between Portugal and Spain as there would have been years ago, since both are in the União Europeia/ Unión Europea, but on the rail schedule it admits that you are entering HE (Hora Europeia), but steadfastly says that what you’re leaving is—not Greenwich Mean Time, not Universal Time, but HP—Hora Portuguesa.

Crossing the river into Spain, the train went over the 1884 Gustave Eiffel rail bridge. That man was really active in Iberia.

As a last note on Portugal, heading for Spain, let me point this out. At a bookstore in Viana I came across a Portuguese version of Dom Quixote, which I assume is pronounced do~ ki.SHOTT. I copied down the beginning of the famous first paragraph, and offer below both the Spanish and Portuguese versions for reflection and study.

En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme, no ha mucho tiempo que vivía un hidalgo ...
Num lugar da Mancha, de cujo nome não quero lembrar-me, não há muito tempo vivia um fidalgo ...