A Sidetrip to Porto. . .

During our vacation, we allocated a day to make the trip to Porto.  The train takes about three hours each way but if you go early, that still allows a good number of hours for exploring. However, the first thing to say about the city is that you definitely need more than one day to do it justice!

We started as usual, by climbing the highest point we could find - in this case the bell tower attached to the Clérigos Church, built in the 18th century.  While there are 200 steps, the path meanders through the building, taking you to several good spots to view the beautiful church as well.

And here is the view from the top of the tower.

Porto has a tile culture all its own.  I don't know when these were installed, but there definitely seemed to be a 1970s vibe on many of the buildings lining the main road leading from the train station into the more historic districts. 

Once in the city center, there are some magnificently tiled buildings.

A major must-see spot in town is the São Bento train station (not the one that you come into from Lisbon). The tiles here are just fantastic.

Like Lisbon, Porto is also a town of trams and pedestrian shopping streets.

With a lot of churches and a cathedral.

The sun came out in the late afternoon as we explored the Ribeira district, one of the oldest parts of the city, and walked along the river Douro which is spanned by six bridges.  If we'd had an extra day, no doubt we would have followed the river right out to the Atlantic coast.

My only disappointment of the day was not being able to visit this famous bookshop:

Unfortunately, due to its associations with Harry Potter, there was a huge queue to buy tickets (they have had to charge 5 euros, refundable with a book purchase) and then another one to actually enter the building (they can only let so many people in at one time).  With only a few hours before our train and so much still to see, I couldn't really justify spending that much time just waiting in line.

It just means that I'll have to go back some day.  Ironically, after we had booked our trip - many months ago -  I discovered that Porto was holding its first knitting festival, just three days after we left!  If they hold another, that will definitely be motivation to return.

Postcards from Portugal. . .

June has decidedly NOT been summery at all in the UK so it seems a fitting time to reminisce on our recent holiday to Portugal where it was very hot and sunny.

We went for a few days at the beginning of the month, spending most of our time in Lisbon, and as is our habit in a new city, we walked everywhere and climbed up to every viewpoint we could. We explored narrow side streets filled with small cafes and tiny shops, popped into every church we passed, marvelling at the ornate craftsmanship, and ate a lot of Portuguese custard tarts and ice cream.

This photo is taken from the gardens outside the Lisbon castle walls. It's impossible to sum up such a vibrant and historical city from a few photos and some touristy meandering, but here are some of the main visual impressions that stuck and inspired, starting with the terracotta tiled roofs that cover almost every building.

Tiles are ubiquitous of course in this city,  adorning everything from the pavements to the facades of buildings and underpasses too.  So much colour and pattern inspiration.

There are big public squares.

And vibrant jacaranda trees everywhere.

One day we walked to Belém,  to visit the Padrão dos Descobrimentos, the monument to Portuguese explorers/colonizers.  You can take an elevator up to the top.

It offers a good view of the  Hieronymites Monastery which was our next stop. We had to queue for quite some time to get into the cloisters but it was worth it - stunning stonework.

The area is a mixture of the old as in this early 16th century tower:

And the new.  We also popped into MAAT: Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology which was hosting a fascinating exhibit of how digital photography has played with and manipulated images of architecture.

Another highlight, at the other end of town, was the Museu Nacional do Azulejo housed in a former convent; the building is as unique as the historical and modern tiles displayed within. It also has a lovely cafe in the courtyard.

This is the church attached to the convent and tiled all along the bottom walls. 

While there were many murals, it was the repetitive tiled patterns that I was drawn to, both historical. . .

. . . and modern.

We walked through parks.

And along aqueducts.

And only on the last day did we buy an all-day pass for public transport, riding the famous Tram 28 route in its entirety all through the city.

We also used the underground metro, which is very efficient (it's definitely the best way to get to the airport), and also beautifully tiled.  I loved these giant rabbits.

We ate very well too - Portuguese pastries are pretty amazing, not just their traditional tarts but their cakes and other baked goods too, particularly if you like almonds (I do!).  A great place to sample a lot of different types of food is the Time Out Market, which was packed every time we visited.

But we did get to try the national dish of Bacalhau which was absolutely delicious and something I'm definitely going to try to replicate at home.  It looks like pasta, but it's codfish with fried matchstick potatoes (which gives it a lovely texture and crunch) onions and garlic, all held together with beaten egg which has to be stirred in quickly to avoid scrambling, and then topped with parsley and olive dust.  We loved it so much we had it twice.

We made a day trip to Porto as well, but I'll save that for a post of its own.  A woolly pilgrimage is also coming up.

A Brief Detour to Carnforth . . .

Hope everyone had a lovely Easter weekend.  Here in the UK, we had glorious, sunny weather.  I travelled up to Lancaster for two days to meet up with some knitting friends.  I really like Lancaster - it's a small, completely walkable city with a lot of history, beautiful architecture and lots of independent shops and cafes, including two yarn shops!  Both Northern Yarn, which has a wonderful selection of British yarns as well as wool from local Lancashire farms, and Ethel & Em, which stocks a lot of Rowan yarns as well as some fun chunky cotton yarns perfect for crocheting baskets, are delightful places to visit and just kitty corner from each other.

The next time I visit the city, I really need to take some photos and do a proper post, but being with friends and doing a lot of chatting and knitting, I didn't take out my phone as often as I usually do.  However, on the Saturday, as three of the knitters headed off to London, I travelled one stop with them on the train and got off at this iconic station.

Yes, Brief Encounter is probably my favourite movie of all time and parts of it were shot at this station. There's a little museum with a tiny cinema where the film is constantly running.

You can also see various memorabilia, such as a copy of the script.

There's was also a room with a tribute to David Lean films and plenty of history about the station and historical steam trains.

And of course the famous refreshment room where so much of the film is shot.  In reality, it was a film set, but possibly based on the real one in Carnforth.

The Banbury buns have been replaced by lemon drizzle cake and there was no sugar in the spoon that accompanied my latte.  No Rachmaninoff playing in the background either.   But I think it was still worth the pilgrimage.

I've always loved travelling by train and I think there's something especially poignant and even sexy about films set either on trains or in stations. They are such public, noisy spaces and yet can be strangely intimate at the same time; one can run the gamut of every emotion available depending on why you are there, who you are with, where you are going and why.  A number of years ago on another blog, I wrote a post listing my top ten train films. I've just revisited it, and I think the list still stands.  Here it is if you are up for some celluloid train spotting:

1. Brief Encounter (1945).  My favourite movie of all time. Has any train station ever tried piping Rachmaninoff over its speakers? Or would that only work if they could also clone Trevor Howard? That firm, farewell touch on the shoulder gets me every time. My favourite scene is the one where Celia Johnson is travelling back to her mundane home,  looking out of carriage window into the dark night and fantasising about how different her life could be with Howard.

2. Before Sunrise (1995).  Because that's the ultimate fantasy isn't it?  You meet your French soul mate on a train and spontaneously decide to spend the next twelve hours traipsing around Vienna getting to know each other.  If I was doing a list of my top ten walking movies, the sequel - Before Sunset - would definitely be on it. 

3. Caught on a Train (1980).  This TV movie was originally made by the BBC and it stars one of my favourite actors - Michael Kitchen. He plays an impatient man on his way across Europe to attend a book fair in Linz, and finds to his horror that he's seated for the duration of the trip in the same carriage as the indomitable Peggy Ashcroft. One of the pitfalls of travelling is not being able to choose your companions, but it's also sometimes one of the best things about travelling too. The acting in this is superb. 

4. Tokyo Story (1953).   The great Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu used trains in many of his films to express the emotional as well as physical distances between his characters. In Tokyo Story there's a very poignant scene where a woman is travelling home after her mother-in-law's funeral and she takes out a pocket watch that was given to her. It says everything about time's own sad journey. In an interview I watched with one of Ozu's camera assistants, he said the director always shot his train scenes in an actual train - no studio could  ever re-create the actual bumps and jostles of the real thing. 

5. Murder on the Orient Express (1974). Was there ever a finer set of actors stuck together on a train going nowhere and with Hercule Poirot to deal with?

6. Strangers on a Train (1951)  Hitchcock was another director who liked to set scenes on trains. This is a terrific thriller. 

7. Closely Watched Trains (1966). Based on the novel by  Bohumil Hrabal, this film won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film.  Set during WWII in occupied Czechoslovakia, it's about a young teenager who is more concerned with losing his virginity than resisting the Germans. You'll never look at stamps the same way again (the ones you ink, not the ones you lick).

8. Terminal Station (1953). This movie is also sometimes known as Indiscretion of an American Wife but if you get a hold of the Criterion edition, you'll find both movies on it.  Watch Terminal Station, directed by Vittorio De Sica first, and then for a laugh, see what happened to the movie when David O. Selznick got his hands on it. The plots remain the same, but the execution, style and focus are very, very different. In both cases, Jennifer Jones (married to Selznick at the time) and Montgomery Clift spend the entire movie trying to say goodbye to each other in Rome's train station after a summer affair. Watch it for De Sica's beautiful shots of the station's architecture, the numerous human stories swirling around the lovers, and for a reminder of how difficult it is to find a private place to have sex in a crowded train station. 

9. 2046 (2004) Our main character is a writer living in Hong Kong in the late 1960s. He has written a science fiction story set far in the future, where people live in train compartments, served by androids. These trains criss cross the world, and if you dare, you can visit 2046, a place where lost memories might be found. But can you ever return?  This is the sequel to Wong Kar Wai's In the Mood For Love but it works completely well as a stand-alone. Gorgeously filmed and with an awesome soundtrack. 

10. Love on the Run (1979). This is the final film in François Truffault's Antoine Doinel series that began with The 400 Blows. Antoine is trying to sort out his love life, both past and present. At a train station he sees a woman he was in love with as a young man, and impulsively boards her train. She happens to be reading a copy of his novel which thinly disguises his former relationship with her. It's funny. It's farcical. It's French. And I laugh every time. 

Do you have any favourites?