Our Porto Adventure: Day Three

Since we spent our first two days exploring central Porto, we decided to venture further west today, into some of the newer suburbs where many of the city's wealthier residents live. Last night we looked up the route of the only tram we hadn't yet taken, and since it went in the direction of today's explorations, we decided to catch the tram at its eastern terminus, near the Ribeira. Bob had a look at the map (that's always his job) and after studying the streets for a bit, he picked an interesting route from our hotel to the tram stop, and off we went. As if I were being led by a professional tour guide, our first stop in the walk was at the edge of a hill that gave us a wonderful westward view of where we'd soon be heading by tram:

From here, Bob's route led us down through a series of typically narrow, winding streets

which led to a beacon of red patio chairs that signalled our arrival at the waterfront,

mere steps from the tram's starting point. After a few minutes' wait, we boarded the tram, and enjoyed views of the river as we made our way west.

We were so engrossed in the views that we didn't notice we'd reached the end of the line, and the driver called out "Término!" to let the four of us still on the tram know that we'd arrived at Foz do Douro ("mouth of the Douro"), one of Porto's wealthiest suburbs, filled with open spaces, fancy homes, pretty beaches, and a feeling of being very far removed from the city centre.

Some people were trying their luck fishing today, and they'd either found or made the perfect holders for their rods in the pavement crevices.

We said hello to the Atlantic

and walked for a bit through the beachfront neighbourhood

before waiting for a bus to take us further inland, to our next destination.

When we got off the bus, we felt like we were in some sort of parallel-reality Vancouver: the wide boulevards, pleasant greenery, and large detached houses made us feel like we were in the west side of Vancouver, instead of Porto.

The primary interests of the Fundação Serralves are contemporary art and landscape design, and both areas are rather wonderfully addressed in their contemporary art museum and the 18-hectare park in which it's situated. We started at the museum, designed by Portuguese architect Alvaro Siza, recipient of the 1992 Pritzker Prize.

The museum doesn't contain a permanent collection, and funnily enough, the main temporary exhibition currently filling much of the museum was one that showed at Tate Modern last year, but which we didn't catch in London. Juan Muñoz's sculptures and other works "place the figure in architectural environments. He described himself as a storyteller, and often arranged his figures and objects in carefully staged configurations that hint at unsettling and ambiguous scenarios. The way a viewer encounters a work of art was important for Muñoz. He was fascinated by the tension between the illusory and the real, using tricks of scale and perspective to choreograph the viewer's experience." A trio of iron balconies nicely introduced ideas of seeing and being seen:

The faces in Many Times (1999) are based on the features of a ceramic bust Muñoz once saw in a hotel; the same face is repeated throughout the crowd of sculptures, and Muñoz has said that this sense of majority creates an environment where "the spectator becomes very much like the object to be looked at, and perhaps the viewer had become the one who is on view."

(Bob tried to eavesdrop on one of the conversations, but his stature didn't exactly blend in with the crowd.) We walked down the middle of Opposite Balconies (1991) and First Banister (1987), the latter of which contains "an open switchblade, hidden from view and waiting to slice the hand of anyone who hold the rail for support" (talk about museum security),

to get to Listening Figure (1991), which creates an almost uncontrollable urge to join in.

One Figure (2000) is a self-portrait, one whose posture makes it impossible to see the figure's facial expression, even with the help of the mirror. Rather refreshingly for a museum, the sculpture wasn't roped off in any way, allowing viewers to get up-close in their efforts to find a whole where there are only parts.

This next one was one of my favourites:

Ventriloquist Looking at a Double Interior (1988-2001) features a ventriloquist's dummy seated in front of an odd pair of images depicting the same scene in reverse views. Apparently the dummy's mouth is supposed to open and close repeatedly, but it wasn't doing so when we walked through this room.

The piece sits in a large gallery filled with some of the forty-odd pieces in the Raincoat Drawings series, which consists of images of sparsely furnished rooms without human figures, done in white chalk on a black, raincoat-like fabric. According to Muñoz, "If the drawings succeed in conveying an emotion, it’s because they might give the sense that something has happened or is going to happen. Either you’re too early or too late. It’s always the wrong moment." The pieces also have a biographical element, as Muñoz has also talked about the dislocation he felt as a child, growing up with a mother prone to compulsively rearranging the household furniture, "so he often returned from school to find his home transformed." The mouth of the leaning figure in Shadow and Mouth (1996) is also supposed to move continuously, but although a nearby sign noted this, it also noted that the movement wouldn't be happening (today or for the duration of the exhibition?), which took away from the effect somewhat.

Other pieces I liked included The Wasteland (1986),

Back Drawing (1990),

Towards the Shadow (1998),

and Seated Figures with Five Drums (1999).

The magic of the next piece is the most difficult to convey on these silent, two-dimensional pages: Stuttering Piece (1993) contains two tiny, doll-sized figures, spot-lit along a wall at the far end of a dark room (and this time a rope ensures viewers cannot get close to the figures) while a soundtrack of their conversation loops:
"What did you say?"
"I didn't say anything."
"You never say anything."
"No. But you keep coming back to it."

Beckett would be proud. I'll show you three more Muñoz pieces before I move on: Conversation Piece (1996),

Two Seated on the Wall (2001),

and Hanging Figures (1997).

While the other three temporary exhibits were less interesting to us, the museum is definitely a great space in which to see art, and we were reminded of the surrounding park grounds as greenery peeked through the windows of the white galleries.

After about an hour in the museum, we headed out into the park.

The expansive grounds contain a number of installations

as well as the Casa de Serralves, a pink Art Deco mansion that is sometimes (but not today) open to the public.

The park contains formal gardens, wooded forests, water features, and even livestock grazing on open fields, making it the perfect outdoor destination, whatever your tastes.

After we left the park, we caught a crowded bus to our next destination, passing quite a few mansions along the way. Another Pritzker-winning architect, Rem Koolhaas, designed the Casa da Música, which opened in 2005. Apparently, the appearance of the building and the displaced waves of land that surround it are meant to evoke a scene of an enormous meteorite left as-is after striking the earth. Located on a plaza of its own at the juncture between the old and new parts of Porto, the concert hall is a startling sight which Koolhaas's firm has described as "both clear and mysterious."

We decided to take a guided tour (in English) of the building, and wandered around a bit before the tour started, taking in some areas on our own.

Bob was a bit munchy, so we went downstairs so he could have a quick snack.

Our multilingual guide (fluent in Portuguese, Spanish, French, English, and German!) led us around the building, pointing out interesting facts along the way, and taking us into areas that we would have felt strange wandering into on our own.

The main auditorium is surrounded with cutouts of multi-functional corrugated glass that not only look nice, but also enhance the room's acoustics and provide natural light.

You can also see Bob and our tour guide in the photo above--you may be wondering where the other members of our tour are, and the answer is that I was busy taking the picture. Yes, the group tour became a private tour when we were the only ones who showed up this afternoon!

Interestingly, as part of the concert hall's policy of fair access, all seats are priced the same, without any distinction between sections. The seats themselves also enhance the concert experience, aesthetically (with their lucite armrests which contain lighting) and sound-wise (the seats are designed to mimic the presence of a human body so that even if the hall isn't at capacity during a given performance, the acoustics won't suffer).

Here's the view of the main auditorium through one of the corrugated windows:

Other areas in the building provide additional spaces for rehearsing, performing, and relaxing. This room is equipped with computers which run customized music-creation software that allows the public to play at creating their own music during their visit.

Another room contains a sound installation that visitors can "play" by moving their bodies at different speeds and in different ways in front of the four sensors hanging on one wall.

Bob slowly walked in front of the sensors, moving one arm, but it was our guide who really got the sounds going crazy by running in front of them and flailing around!

This room overlooks the main auditorium and is often used for children's activities, including babysitting during performances. (The steps are rather soft and spongy in order to make the room more child-friendly.)

Since the kids can look into the main auditorium from the babysitting room,

our guide said that they enjoy trying to see their parents down below. In addition, during performances, the music is broadcast in the purple room (as it's called) so the kids can share in the experience that their parents are having. The last stop on the tour was in the VIP room. While such a designation may seem to go against the building's emphasis on fair access, our guide pointed out that this isn't a VIP room in any sense other than name: everyone can access it, there isn't any special treatment given in the room, and it's more of a scenic gathering place than a place for one class of people to get away from the majority. It's kind of an anti-VIP room! The walls and ceiling of the room are covered with tiles that reproduce scenes found in Portuguese and Dutch tiles, thus incorporating the countries of the building's location and the architect's heritage, respectively.

The views from here were pretty great.

Our tour ended up being longer than the advertised one hour, mostly because our guide was so friendly and chatty, and we thanked her for the great tour, said our goodbyes, and headed back into the older part of the city for a late-afternoon wander.

With so many places in which to enjoy coffee and cake, Porto always provides the perfect excuse for a break. We chose a large place on one of the main boulevards because it was full of three levels of people enjoying tempting-looking drinks and eats.

Although we thought it was perhaps cheesecake at first, this monster of a square ended up being some form of egg-white-based concoction that was almost comically difficult to eat without toppling. The light sweetness made the perfect accompaniment to another round of almost annoyingly perfect coffee. ("It's not fair!" Bob proclaimed after his first sip. "Coffee's so good everywhere here.")

In spite of the café's location on one of Porto's posher streets, the comfy seating, and the incredible size of our wobbly tower of cake, the bill still came to less than €3. Re-energized after our break, we made our way toward the riverfront.

A sign in front of one building we passed dated it to the 14th century,

and mentioned that an adjacent building retained its Gothic ground-floor windows and doors.

We reached the water just as the sun was setting,

and strolled along the river, as if in a postcard.

Since the funicular was still running, we decided to take the lazy way back up the hill,

with the bonus of lovely views along the way.

We'd see the inside of this church tomorrow, but it was more striking from the outside, at night:

For dinner, we shared an order of bacalhau (salt-dried cod, a popular ingredient in Porto) casserole, filled with shredded pieces of fish, egg, and potato--extremely rich and tasty.

Tonight would be our last after-dinner stroll in Porto, so we once again walked a roundabout way back to the hotel, taking in buildings that either stood out for their perfection

or their ramshackle state,

stopping in front of a few to try to imagine what they must have looked like in their heyday.

Our neighbourhood's main shopping street was very quiet at 9:00 P.M., and the church tower we climbed yesterday kept watch from the end of the street.

From the main shopping street, one particularly dark street

leads to a hidden site of pilgrimage for cake lovers. Casa Margaridense is apparently one of the oldest bakeries in the country, and it's known for making the country's best pão de ló, a rich sponge cake that people trek here to buy.

Although the bakery is mostly known for this cake, they also serve up other snacks and drinks in stylish surroundings--customers can even buy a short story to accompany their tea or coffee.

We were too full for another round of cake, but still had a peek inside

before continuing on our way.

It seems that Santa likes Porto too, because he's still here in February!

Two more stencils caught our attention before we made it back to the hotel: a watchful bird

and a Mona Lisa of sorts, standing guard over this door along with her bikini-clad friend.