The Porto experience

Porto is a city that smiles rather than laughs out loud.

Its historic building impress without intimidating. It is a collage of old and new, shabby and smart, funky and stately. The people are friendly and helpful, despite our lack of Portuguese, and the streets feel safe to walk.

It rained hard for most of the day today, which provided an ideal opportunity to visit one of the city's many museums/galleries. We spent the morning at the Museu Nacional Soares dos Reis, which houses rich sculpture and painting collections and short-term exhibitions. We started with an exhibition which focused on the role of light in art, and offered some opportunities to look at 3-d installations using glasses with one lens red & one blue, changing them round to see how our brains process and perceive when filtered through the different colours. The exhibition was introduced by a poem by a Portuguese poet, Antonio Gedeao, not previously known to me.

There were some real highlights but the stand-out work was the sculpture by Antonio Soares dos Reis, particularly the marble sculpture of a young girl, which I swear I could see moving and breathing as I looked at it. It freaked me out that I imagined if I stood in front of her for long enough she would eventually have to move and come to life in front of my eyes.

There were also some interesting pieces of modern art from Sao Paulo.

Between leaving the gallery and finding a decent bar to park ourselves in with some food and a bottled of Douro wine, we got well and truly soaked, even a few minutes under the hotel hairdryer didn't dry our socks out completely. We had a similar experience when we came to Lisbon about 3 years ago - forget the rain in Spain, the rain in Portugal is extremely wet! Home tomorrow evening, so we hope to fit in a few more Porto experiences before we hit the airport tomorrow.