| WHY GO |
| 'Deliciously backward' was the way one Barcelona-based writer described Porto. Spain is clearly now so up-to-the-minute it can afford to think of its neighbour as behind the times. This says something about the relationship between the two countries. But it also happens to be true: the pleasure of Porto lies partly in its obstinate clinging to a slightly dog-eared way of life that would have been taken to the jumble sale long ago by a more impatient society. Few of Europe's cities remain so unreconstructed, both literally and metaphorically. To wander the old-town neighbourhoods of Vitoria, Ribeira and Miragaia is to enter a time tunnel in which clog-makers jostle with tin-beaters, sewing-machine repairmen and other practitioners of long-forgotten trades. Porto is not a city of palaces or grand civic buildings - the Palácio da Bolsa and the 13th-century cathedral are the exceptions that prove the rule. There is nothing really spectacular to admire, unless you have a yen for baroque churches to which gold appears to have been applied with a trowel. Yet, with its new restaurants, bars and trendy home-grown designer shops, there is a personality and a flavour to Porto that have all but disappeared from the homogenised Euro-town. |
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