The day unfolded as a restless, rain-flecked wander through Porto—beginning with an early escape to the tide pools and a spellbinding conversation about octopuses and the ocean, followed by an impulsive train ride into the city in search of reclaimed tiles and small treasures that mostly stayed just out of reach. It became a long, uphill ramble marked by coughing fits, missed shops, narrow alleys, sudden beauty, and the quiet pleasure of getting lost, ducking into galleries, weighing gifts, and thinking of everyone back home. As evening settled in, rain returned, wine waited at home, health worries hovered, and the city glowed with holiday lights—leaving the day feeling like Porto itself: generous, disorienting, a little exhausting. A place full of moments of feeling more than for what was accomplished.
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[waves crashing] Oh, my God. This is a beautiful place. I escaped my captors.
Most everyone was still asleep, though Laurie was wide awake. She’d fallen in love with the ocean, and it was easy to see why. She’s intelligent, curious, and loves to talk, especially about the tide pools. She showed videos for nearly twenty minutes of the octopuses she finds there — strange, beautiful little creatures shifting color and texture as they move.
I went out that morning around 8:30 because the tide was low, hoping to see some for myself, but I didn’t find any. Laurie had seen one that was apparently enormous, though she said most of them are tiny, only a couple of inches long. Even secondhand, it was fascinating. Inches? I don’t know. There’s, uh... It’s hard for me to tell, ‘cause I didn’t take the video. I don’t know what the scale of these things is, but they were just incredible. Watching... [clears throat] Sorry, I got to [coughs] catch a cough. [coughs] Watching them change, uh, change colors, you know, and textures. They change textures. Ah, just incredible. Portuguese octopuses are amazing. So these sea slugs and she had all this stuff about the... I mean, this lady is right in anyone’s wheelhouse who craves going deep on subjects. [laughs] I was fascinated. I really enjoyed the conversation. I had a good time. I’m not gonna, I don’t mean to denigrate Laurie. She’s a really fine sister.
Uh, she loves Jehovah. She loves the truth. She loves people. She’s so broken up about her friends in, uh, in India. Uh, not the Germans. Those get to go home. But her friends, her Indian friends, ‘cause they are gonna go to jail for a long time. Um,
I jumped on the train and rushed into the city, trying to reach a shop I’d heard about. It specializes in reclaimed materials from old buildings — tiles, bricks, textiles, furniture, and other architectural pieces that would otherwise be thrown away. Instead, they clean and resell them, which makes the place useful for anyone restoring an old property or trying to match missing details from an existing building.
I was especially interested in the tiles. In a city like Porto, where so many buildings are covered in beautiful tilework, the idea of a place preserving those fragments felt worth seeing.
Unfortunately, I got there just before closing, and they had already locked up early. Maybe it was because it was Saturday. Either way, there was no getting in. No amount of wanting it was going to change that.
There were a few charming little things tucked into the shopfronts, enough to make me stop and look more closely. I paused to take a picture, thinking I might have found a small gift idea, but after a second look it didn’t quite feel right.
I kept walking, half-following the route and half-letting the city choose for me. At one point I had to decide whether to turn left or keep going straight, and I went straight. The street opened into one of those scenes that makes you want to stop everything, pull out a sketchbook, and paint it before the light changes.
I lost my train of thought for a moment, probably because I was still running on the energy of the city. I had jumped on the train and hurried down to reach the place before it closed at five, but even though I arrived around 4:30, it was already locked up tight. I had thought it was a shop, but from the outside it looked more like a museum, so it may not have worked out anyway.
The whole walk from Bento Station had been uphill, and I had pushed harder than I should have. By the time I got there, my lungs were reminding me that running two and a half kilometers uphill is not exactly ideal for sport-induced asthma. So I turned around and started the slower walk back down, coughing a little and laughing at the fact that my next best option was apparently right back near the train station where I started.
but I turned and found this gorgeous picturesque street. THIS is a European street: narrow, old, and full of texture.
I tried to take a picture, but I didn’t like the way it was coming out. So I turned around and, lo and behold, there they were: beautiful tiny little shops. The street wasn’t even eight feet wide. It was basically an alley.
Blurry. Of course.
So I tried again. Maybe that one worked. But then I looked at it and thought, oh, that looks fake. Wild. It looked like a composite — I was so well lit and the alley behind me was so dark.
Then it started raining again. Someone had loaned me a raincoat, which was exactly what I should have had to begin with. It didn’t breathe at all, so I got warm pretty fast. I checked my route again, trying to figure out whether I was still headed the right way.
I was still on the right route. Good.
I just needed to get to the bottom of the hill, and then I probably needed to buy an umbrella. Honestly, I should have bought one right then. I should have brought one with me in the first place, but I didn’t.
I figured I’d be out in the open soon enough and could buy one for probably twenty euros.
On a sunny day, it would have cost me two.
Supply and demand, baby. Supply and demand.
Anyway, it was Saturday night, our last night in Porto. Tomorrow night would be somewhere else, and I still had three bottles of wine to either drink or give away. Robert and Lori were probably going to inherit them.
We thought we’d drink more during the week, but we didn’t. Mostly because I was working and Angie had been getting sick. Which was a shame, because the sparkling brut was delicious. Delicious. And it was only five dollars a bottle.
I still couldn’t get over how cheap the wine was there. Even the bottle of red we bought — delivered through Uber Eats, no less — was only about eleven dollars. Pretty crazy. Back in the States, that easily would have felt like a hundred dollars’ worth of wine.
So it’s not the end of the world, you know, if you don’t get to drink it, other than I would really have [laughs] enjoyed drinking it, [clears throat], especially that brut. It’s so good. I think I’m gonna drink a bottle of that tonight.
I kept thinking I should buy an umbrella. Why wasn’t I buying an umbrella? I had already walked past two umbrella stands and somehow managed not to buy one at either.
Don’t be a fool, McLean.
So I decided I’d go to the little store first and then decide about the umbrella. I crossed the street and worked my way past the tourist area, where everything started to look vaguely familiar and completely confusing at the same time. I was pretty sure I’d been to most of those places already. We had covered a lot of ground.
Then I got lost again, naturally.
The recording kept stopping every time I checked the map, so whole chunks of my wandering disappeared. One of the missing bits was a small diatribe on gold. I had stopped at a little gold shop and just marveled at the prices. Beautiful stuff, incredible craftsmanship, but everything seemed to start around two thousand euros and climb from there. They say filigree is a uniquely Portuguese gift, and I could see why. It was delicate, intricate, and gorgeous.
Also wildly out of budget.
That was the thing about gold: beautiful, but not exactly built for broke poets. If I had been a wealthier man, I probably wouldn’t have stayed one for long. I would have blown it all on pretty things, because that is apparently what I do.
Then I came across an art store — or maybe a gallery. It had these beautiful black-and-white prints in the window, the kind of thing that makes you stop even when you’re supposed to be going somewhere else. The store name was bold, to put it mildly: “I’m The F’ing Artist,” except they were considerably more frank about the word “F.”
I laughed when I realized they signed everything, “I’m The F*&#@g Artist.” Good for them, honestly. It was a bold statement, and definitely not something anyone would forget.
The gallery had sketchbooks too, including one with that same brash artist name printed on the front. It would have been funny, maybe even useful, except not exactly ideal for carrying around with my particular crowd. They were fifteen euros, which felt suspiciously like thirty dollars once my brain got involved. Besides, I had already bought a sketchbook, so I passed.
Then I saw the scarves.
Ooh. Scarves.
Pintura paintings. Pintura original acrylic paint on canvas, €1,000. Scarves, €23. Hm, textiles are a good gift. Maybe a scarf.
Hm, they have such pretty ones. They have orange, orange. Hm.
I should just get a magnet.
I’ve already stopped twice. I seem unable to reach my destination.
Ooh, there was a great sticker. I wanted to see if I could get that one.
Nope. It had already been peeled and failed. But I’m a professional sticker remover, so I wanted to see if I could succeed where others had failed.
Could the artist succeed?
He was succeeding so far.
When peeling stickers off round cylinders, it could be tough because the angles were strange. You had to get a straight side peeled off vertically and then peel across, because if you tried to peel from top to bottom, it tore every single time.
I was totally lost there. I think I was supposed to turn back there.
I got my mom a rock from the sidewalk, so she’d really like that.
And then I was going home, which was by Marino. I smelled marijuana.
They smoked marijuana there?
Mm.
Those kids.
[sniffs] [sighs]
Back at Robert and Laurie’s place, there was a huge painting in the guest room where we were staying. I hadn’t looked at it closely, but it was all gray-blue and oceanic, a massive moody thing that probably cost five or eight thousand dollars. Laurie’s had told me the story of how they got it, which seemed to involve the natural social orbit of expats. They run around together, these little crews of transplanted people, finding each other in foreign cities and collecting stories along the way.
It’s funny because I don’t think Laurie wants us to leave, I think Angie wants to leave. I think she wants to go relax in a hotel, have her own space and sleep until noon, which I don’t blame her. We’ll see. They’ll work it out.
That was the thing about not having an opinion: I was fine either way. Angie had an opinion, so I let the girls work it out. They could duke it out between themselves.
I didn’t know. He had a stomach bug, and Angie had sinus trouble. I didn’t think they were related. I thought she was just worried he was going to catch her sinus infection. I hoped we didn’t end up having to cut the trip short.
Traffic was light that night. There weren’t a ton of people out over there. The trees were still wrapped for the holidays. Obviously Christmas wasn’t until—what was it? Wednesday or Thursday or something.
It was just very beautiful. Lots of lights.
It had rained a little bit, but I was wearing someone’s raincoat that they had loaned me, so I stayed dry that time, except for my hair, which was extremely absorbent.
I didn’t know if you’ve been to Portugal reader, or France, or London, or Switzerland, or Italy. but you should DEF go to Portugal.
As I’m reflecting on my advice, good readers, I notice I have been lazy and ignored the crosswalk. it occurred to me what a scofflaw I am/was. A bad man.
I hoped the trip would give me an opportunity to see enough of Europe to adjust my viewpoint. Joy Division had talked about choosing self-preservation against people who were really only worried about themselves, and I could identify with that. I could identify with a lot of what was in those songs.
Music and travel have an effect on the soul. It’s uncomfortable in the best possible way and it changes us in ways that our life switches directions for decades following.