And you are?
Came across this wall in all its faded glory on the south side of the River Douro in Porto, northern Portugal just after, or was it before, going on a port tasting tour. I like the two men talking together on the street, the faded lettering on the wall and the wonderfully crooked hotel sign with just a glimpse of Porto across the river under a cloudless sky. There is also just visible a mirrored reflection in the street of the hotel lettering.
The title of this mini holiday blog comes from the pompous tour guide, “Hello, my name is Bruno, I speak Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and English. And you are and what languages do you speak?” Bruno was just too much, he was almost a parody of himself, we ended up sampling much port of all kinds under the supercilious nose of Bruno and couldn’t wait to get away from him.
This was my first trip to Portugal since about 1970 when as a youngster I landed in Lisbon for a couple of days when it was still in the fairly tight grip of the post Salazar regime, long before the coup d’etat of 74. Having had a couple of childhood holidays in Mozambique I was familiar with the Portuguese colonial approach, which was to extract much and not put much back. Unsurprisingly the people took up arms against their colonial masters…
Citizen Cane picks up his camera 