My town

I live in Porto - Gaia, a double city in Portugal on both sides of the Douro river, close to its mouth on the Atlantic Ocean. You can find a rather nice quality of life here, despite a little too much litter on the streets, rude talking and some very ugly buildings. Street crime is growing too.

But the old trading town center is attractive, there is quite a lot of nice cafés ( I mean, coffee houses: they mainly serve coffee), paved pedestrian streets with old houses and many many shops,some baroque churches and an old beautiful public garden.

The problem is that Porto - Gaia is off the circuit of the great cities of culture. It's a rather dead provincial town. Almost everything looks old and in decay. The only joyful area is by the sea - the sea promenades: North and South of the river , they are the best places to live.

There is absolutely no feeling of adventure here, no research teams, no explorers whatever, no dreams of Thule! Just a conventional and sad day-by-day, without horizons to look for except the sea.

That´s why I started this blog. I feel I am living elsewhere, in lands of mistery and unexpected thrills, of calm lonesome beauty waiting to be discovered and explored.

Images: Isabel Fiadeiro, Henrique Matos