In which Sid and Doris visit the world champion of kitsch and four marvels of civil engineering.
The Bom Jesus church is a most astonishing religious campus apparently built for day trip pilgrims. Of course when the first pilgrimage church was built on the mount in 1629 it took a long time just to get the ten kilometres from Braga. Somehow we do not think of them in Lycra running shorts making it in rather under an hour. Or shorts of any sort.
Anyway, that site was augmented with a lavish staircase, some fountains and new chapels on the way up. You can see it is all getting a bit out of hand.
So what they needed in 1784 was a new Neo-classical church at the top, with some more ornamented staircases in black and white. The pictures will tell the story. They knocked down the old church. It took a while to build the new one with its startling int dec and the whole device was consecrated in 1834. Just have a look at this altar piece with the Roman soldiers. Kitsch or what? Maybe that’s what swung the UNESCO listing.
And this unexplained cabinet of toy angels and windmills. (No, the different figures do not move) (Yes, we did have a jolly good look to check) Sid thinks there may be Smurfs and Wombles in that cabinet somewhere in amongst the cork cliffs. If you click on any of these photos you should be able to zoom in and see some of the detail.
In 1882 to take some of the penitential effort out they built a water balance funicular railway, the first in the Iberian peninsular. The first of our several engineering marvels of the day.
Sid particularly enjoyed the tiles outside the shoppe. At the top you see INRI, the sponge of vinegar put up to Jesus’ lips and the spear that put him out of his pain. Just under that the advertising for stamps and postcards. A most thoughtful juxtaposition.
Finally, to check if you might have had one ice cream too many we have these Avery scales from Birmingham, England. At 72kg, Sid is not yet bulgy enough to be a putti. The keen-eyed Doris spotted the Normal Weight table mounted near the top of the machine and worked out that Sid at 1.75m tall is still apparently 35 years old. Those of our reader(s) with a manic eye for detail may also appreciate how mediterranean women are allowed to fill out more generously than their male counterparts.
While you are working out your own height/age/sex from that table, we take a last fascinated look at a gratuitous grotto before getting back into Hermann and heading onwards and downwards to another engineering -est..
Assisted by some direction signage which seemed to prioritise quantity over information delivery, we zig-zagged our way towards the Carrapatelo Dam across the Douro river. Building started in 1964 so it is well in tune with our 1967 Mercedes 250SL. It is a big piece of work but what makes it so special for Sid and Doris is that includes a lock where the water level changes by 35 metres and can take wessels up to 83 metres long. Plus all that green (blue?) electricity.
These pictures show the lock facing downstream and then upstream. It really is very, very satisfyingly deep.
We drive on through rain and mountains to Porto where much Metro building makes for congestion around the centre and our Hotel Maison Albar Monumental (which is a very nice treat, the rooms feel like you are in a top quality old-fashioned liner without all that tiresome bobbing around).
Our next engineering marvels are Porto’s nineteenth century bridges. Theophile Seyrig’s Dom Luis 1st bridge was the longest of its type in the world when it opened in 1886.
The Maria Pia railway bridge which opened eight years earlier is attributed to Gustave Eiffel though he and Seyrig were partners. So we have bridges named for king Louis and his queen, Maria Pia of Savoy. The Sid and Doris bridges? Now where can we build those?
All of which left us standing under the bridge, looking up at the second funicular of the day which was sadly out of action. 200+ vertical steps later puff gasp and we were back at the hotel without much further rain. Unlike the trip out to dinner, which coincided with a filmic cloud burst and the narrowing of the restaurant choice to ‘that one there’, which was very close. Pork with clams, pickles and slightly wet feet can be recommended over many damper and more gastronomic alternatives.
PS We forgot to mention our detour to the extremely tiled railway station. You will probably get a bit tired of pictures of tiles in the next few days.
