On the road again

Here I am, traveling by myself once more. Haven't done that in a while. I have that old "I am an intrepid explorer of the old world" feeling again. I also have that "my god, my legs are screaming in pain" feeling again. Medieval european cities are steep, yo. I gotta get my head back in the tourist mindset and pace myself. Just because it's only 1/2 mile away doesn't mean ya should rush right over there, cause it's probably actually 1 mile total, 1/2 horizontal and 1/2 vertical.

I'm in Porto, Portugal, where they make... sherry? Vodka? No, of course it's port. They invented it. And then they named the city after it. And then they named the country after the city. Can you imagine if you lived in the city of Beero in the country of Beeristan, where you worked all day proudly selling authentic, made-just-like-it-used-to-be Beer to tourists? How weird would that be?

I have a lot of deep thoughts [tm Jack Handy] about the poverty here and how it's not quaint old world poverty like I usually see when I'm touristing around but more like new world poverty. But those will be for my paper travel journal. I need something to write while I'm sitting in picturesque cafes, resting my aching feet. So instead I'll tell ya about my morning encounter with James Bond. Pictures will be added when I get back -- can't do it from here.

So I headed uphill this morning (everything's uphill here) in the drizzle (it's always drizzling here -- Northern Portugal is the Seattle of Europe) to see this church, the Igreja dos Clérigos. In Portuguese you pronounce the j like a j, unlike Spanish, and the final s always gets an "ish" sound. So say eegrayjah dosh clereegosh just to get in the mood (or go get drunk and come back -- the effect on pronunciation is the same). It's got this tower, the Torre dos Clérigos -- the highest point in Porto. Baroque architecture. Heading up the street you see the church from the back, it looked like a church. You could just see a piece of the famous tower peeking over the top (see below). Ya know, no matter how dutiful a tourist you are, after a few years you can't really recapture the excitement of your first few churches.


I came around to the front and instead of a baroque bell tower, there stood a 200-foot-tall Pierce Brosnan, wearing a tux, holding a beer and smiling sexily down at me (or perhaps the sexy look was because he was squinting, since his head was 15 stories above the ground).


It seems as if the exterior of the church is being renovated, and (this is just a guess, mind you, but I'm betting it's a good guess) apparently the local brewery is paying for the renovations, with a marketing assist from James Bond and his tux. Swear to god, the entire exterior façade of the church and the entire front of the famous tower is covered in a gigantic beer ad that makes the billboards in Times Square look like Post-it notes. It was awesome. Nothin' in the guidebooks about that, for sure. I laughed and laughed. And I took way more pictures than I would have if you'd actually been able to see the church. Had to get Pierce from every angle, you understand. And they say Americans are tacky and materialistic. Can you imagine if Budweiser sponsored the renovations of some historic building and wrapped the whole shebang in a giant Budweiser ad while it was going on? Let alone a Catholic Church? Obviously Americans aren't tacky and materialistic enough. We gotta get going on this, the bar has been set pretty high for us. But then I guess if you manufacture beer in a city named for port, you have to resort to some pretty extreme advertising.