In the seven years since I first visited Porto, the city has changed. Massive construction projects in the city have blocked dozens of roads, and the traffic is so bad in some areas that police work at every intersection. The abandoned warehouses lining the river that were the setting for some amazing photos have been replaced with new construction and bars. The coffee shop where I spent a few hours every day writing what would become a failed novel has become a Starbucks. And, ninety-nine years into its life, it’s possible The Majestic is decidedly less so today.
With all this change, I wondered for a moment on the first day of my return if I would have fallen as deeply in love as quickly with this version of Porto, but three nights in the city not only reaffirmed my love but deepened it.
It’s still the city I love most in the world, and that might just be because it’s a place where magic happens.
Maybe you don’t believe in magic, but I suspect you haven’t been outside the Cathedral of Porto on a day so foggy you can barely see in front of you only to be serenaded by a group of
college students dressed in all black, draped in the cloaks of their college. Perhaps you haven’t wandered along the Ribiero listening to musicians covering everything from Nirvana to Ella Fitzgerald. Maybe you haven’t, on a whim, wandered down by an Airbnb you stayed at six years ago only to be recognized as the “guy who was reading those Ferrante books” and warmly embraced by your host as he walked out of his door just as you walked by.
Maybe the radio in your cab wasn’t playing “I’ve Got you Under my Skin” as your heart broke just a bit in the best possible way on your way to the train station on your way out of the city you just didn’t want to leave.
Maybe you haven’t yet felt saudade.
I am acutely aware that I’ll never be able to bridge the gap between my love for Porto and the limits of my powers of language to describe it. Words have always failed me when I feel the most. I’ve always been better at cleverness than sincerity in my expression, and the fullness of my love for Porto is no exception.
I’m left with fragments—that Porto feels like a summer party where our cares slip away for a bit and no one has had too much to drink, that it welcomes wanderers and wine snobs equally warmly, that it feels like it’s handling the tension between history and our confusing post-modern future as well anywhere I’ve been, that it’s a city built to take your sorrows on its shoulders and remind you to live—but none of those offer anything close to expressing the lyricism and joy of this city.
There’s precious little magic left in our world; the institutions and corporations seem bent on standardizing it out of existence, so I hope you’ll have the chance to visit Porto, a place whose winding streets and joyful chaos offer powerful resistance to the forces that want to eliminate the wonder and terror of being just a little bit spellbound and a whole lot charmed.
A place where, if you permit, you might just feel the magic of getting lost again.
