When you begin it all seems so simple, you have bought a
ticket and you ask the train station staff, “Where do you catch the train down
the coast?” The representative of CP
(the Portuguese rail system) tells you that although you bought the ticket
there at the fancier than heaven Sao Bento station you must leave from a
different station. He tells you to get
on the next train south and change two stations down the line.
With trust you follow his direction. Sure enough, there is a train that has the
name of the end point of the local you want, but it is coming in six minutes
early. You are unsure so you waiver for
a second and then jump on. The train’s
door closes, and the cars picks up speed.
Very quickly you discover something is amiss. You have downloaded the stops for the train
you want, and this train is blowing right past them. Zoom, zip there is a station you should have
stopped at and the trains just flies by.
You pull up the app on your phone and you see the train is going toward
a seaside town about 10 miles south of where you want to be.
Hells bells, you better get off at that next stop and figure
out when the next local coming north will swing by. (By this point you figured it out. You wanted a local. The train person gave you directions to get
on the regional line which makes fewer stops.)
When the train pulls into Espinho you get off.
Unlike the 8 days you spent in Lisboa and Coimbra, all at 90
F or hotter, Porto the city you came from today has been hovering about 68-70
F. The whole coast is fogged in with a
grey clammy mist. As you get off the
train you walk down the seaside promenade.
You look left and see nothing.
(This is funny because there is a big casino there, but the fog has
obscured it). Then you look right, and
you see some fishing boats pulled up on the beach. There are nets drying
Small boats on the sand, this is the stuff you have been
looking for.
Grab out the iPhone and start snapping the photos. Your wife goes for the arty shots. She is really good at composition, hell, she
took a course in it once. You just shoot
whatever trying to get a contrast of colors. After about fifteen minutes of
this you suggest walking through the town.
You are barely two blocks away from the beach and you start
to smell it. These is the distinct odor
of seafood grilling. You start to
salivate. It is a smell from your youth
spent in the tidewater of the eastern U.S.
The smell grows stronger and then you turn a corner and see a gentleman
over some coals turning an octopus, some sardines and some filleted white fish
on the grill. The smell is sooooo inviting,
so alluring.
The place appears to be an old house converted into a restaurant. The line is short, so you queue up. Pretty quickly you get seated and with a
smattering back and forth of broken English/broken Portuguese your order a ½ liter
of wine, a small beer, some octopus, a seafood stew and a white fish of some
unknown variety.
And the seafood stew is delightful. It tastes light, warm and golden and there
are mussels in it and shredded fish too. The wine is delicious, and the beer is
cold. And then the octopus so delicate
with the texture of a scallop is served.
And the white fish (sorry I can’t tell you what kind) is flaky and
mild. The smells, the textures, the
experience is just a serendipitous delight.
Sometimes you just must take a wrong train to find the right
place.
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