Porto is such a beautiful city! It tumbles down towards the river from the high ground it’s grey grandeur is built upon. The closer to the river the city reaches the smaller and more colourful the houses become.
Adding to the coulourful nature of the city Porto is alive with hustle and bustle, it is no sleepy hollow, people are moving and on the go, queues of visitors to this town are milling looking at maps or waiting to visit an attraction. Sticking their elbows in Rosie’s face as we vie for the perfect photograph. There are noticeably…….a lot, of visitors and tourists to this town.
So, jumping right into the controversy Rosie cannot believe the state of the city! Every 5th building seems to be deserted, decrepit or abandoned looking. Roofs are collapsed, dust coats the windows, some windows are missing altogether and the weather blows straight into the shell. Grass grows out of the gutters and pigeons fly in and out of the holes in the facades.
This state isn’t isolated to a particular area…it is throughout the town, in the main square, on the waterfront and in areas you would expect to be prime real estate. Even the main monuments of Porto as a whole are crumbling and quite dilapidated which is also a surprise to Rosie considering how busy it was with tourists. Its is also a surprise considering its position in Europe, it is not surrounded by poor countries. This general neglected state is utterly endearing and intriguing. It shows a real, gritty, working city with a beating heart and heaps of character….plus an underlying story to tell. Rosie will get to the bottom of it.
Our passionate host in Porto, Antonio easily answered Rosie’s burning question…in his usual exuberant and flowery way. ‘Porto is like a phoenix rising from the ashes on the bank of the Douro River, it is slowly being reinvigorated and renovated after decades of decline following the global financial crisis where Portugal was hit very hard! Industry closed, there was mass unemployment, nobody had any extra money, including our fledgling government who was still finding its feet twenty years on from gaining democracy after a military dictatorship. There has been no extra money for development, restoration or renovation. Now fueled mainly by tourism and a cash injection from the Chinese government this beautiful city is only going to get better and busier’!
Pardon said Rosie, The Chinese Government? True! The Chinese have bought and own the Portuguese power grid and are making other major investments in Europe, especially in the countries hit so hard in the recession, said Antonio.
As we, back in the Pacific complain about foreign ownership of land and religious terrorism….you heard it here first from Rosie via Antonio who nodded sagely and said, ‘Yes, the bloodshed that is happening in the world at the moment is a distraction. The fingers of infiltration are quietly creeping worldwide, this silent, tactical war is what we should be worried about. One day we will all wake up and the world will belong to one nation’.
