At 7am we hauled all of our heavy luggage as quietly as we could, down the narrow stairs of our hotel, and out into the cool morning air of Porto. In general, Porto seems to be a very busy city with lots of building going on, many tourists, and many people on the streets. The city was uncharastically quiet this morning as it was an early Sunday. We rolled ourselves down the cobbled street to the São Bento Train Station, giving myself a pat on the back for finding a hotel so close, and onto the platform. The São Bento Station is a local station, and we had to take a commuter train from there to the Campanha Station about a 5-minute ride away to catch the train to Vigo. We dragged our bags onto the local train, not knowing how long we would have to get ourselves and luggage off the train before it departed. Our readiness was for nothing as the train arrived and stayed put as we got all of our luggage off. But once off the train, we didn't know where to go.
Campanha is a large station with train lines on several levels. We asked one of the conductors in the best Portuguese we had, which is nonexistent, and, in his much better English, he indicated that we needed to go downstairs. Still confused once we got downstairs, we found a monitor with the train times and tracks and walked to our train. It didn't look like the fancy, new train we had taken from Lisbon to Porto, but more like a commuter train and it only had overhead luggage and no where obvious for our huge bags. Unsure of where to put our luggage, I found a conductor to ask and he said put it where we could without blocking doors. So we found some spots between the cars to put it. The next obstacle is that this train was configured differently than the one I had made online reservations and we were seated in different cars. We waited for someone to take the seats near us, and they kindly switched with us. We had arrived early enough that we were among the first on the train and it slowly filled up over the next 30 minutes while we snacked on the breakfast of fresh bread rolls, yogurt drinks, and fruit D had found. This train was not quite as luxurious as the one we had taken from Lisbon, but it was comfy and it was nice to see the countryside roll by, guessing at what plants were there (lots of corn and something that looks quite like sugar cane), enjoying the architecture, and more rural towns.
We passed several beautiful estuaries and finally over the border into Spain. Just a short ride later and we were passing through pretty Redondela, just east of Porto and where our friend, Teresa, spent some of her childhood. We met Teresa at Sierra Fiddle Camp before the pandemic, and we immediately clicked. Warm and open, she teaches music in a local school in Galicia and she has been an incredible help in planning all of this. We started seeing signs of the port, freight trains and cranes to lift the cargo boxes onto and off of the ships. Vigo is a major port and much of this can be seen along the waterfront. We arrived at the station, which is located near the water on the east side of the downtown area. We gave a group of conductors a laugh when we asked for immigration; the border is open so our stamp from Portugal is our stamp for Spain. This matters because we are meant to register with the police within 30 days of our arrival and we were already a week into our time there. And registering with the police is not as simple as it sounds. But more on that later.
It was around 10:30 am and we had to get to the apartment we were renting through August to meet the owner in about 30 minutes. None of the taxis looked like they could take our bags and us. D looked on maps and it said it was a 20 minute walk, so we decided to walk. Vigo was in the midst of a heat wave and, as I mentioned, we had a lot of stuff and we were at the waterfront. Vigo is much like San Francisco in that everything rises from the waterfront. So that 20 minute walk, in the warming weather, with tired children and parents, and all our luggage turned into a spectacle for the people who were out on that Sunday morning. A line of Americans with their huge bags, struggling up the hills, with the youngest understandably melting down. Just when L and I were going to wait on a corner for D and G to come back and get us after they met the apartment owner, a very kind man asked us where we were going and offered to show us the way and he dragged Larkin's bag up the hill. Once we arrived, he told us we had missed the escalator that takes you up the hills. Oops! But I wouldn't trade that escalator for the kindness of Miguel, what an introduction to the people of this city!
We settled into the apartment and rested for much of the day, going out to find some groceries, and the kids getting on computers to spend some time online with friends at home. My first impression is that it is a bigger city than I expected, taller buildings everywhere built of stone (where is it all quarried from?), clean, amazing playgrounds, and friendly people.
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