ALMOST OVER

I have one more day here in Porto. Can’t believe how fast this week has gone by. All the other international guests left yesterday. I’m the only one left, so I got a good chance to visit the school yesterday morning and attend a few classes. Headmaster Horácio gave me another tour of the school he is very proud of. Now I got a good idea of all the subjects they specialize in. And I was impressed about all the facilities the school owns.

They have their own printing company. Obviously all the art students can take excellent advantage of that. They offered me a very nice etch (gravura) which I will frame and hang in the classroom back home. It’s a numbered limited edition, so very special.
Every year the school presents a printed work of art as a gift for colleague institutions and companies.

In the animation class they were working on making a set of 10 drawings showing a character jumping off a diving board. Then the images were transferred to the computer via camera and combined in an animation software programme, in order to get an idea of what the final result would be. Then afterwards the images in between would have to be finished.

In Graphic Design the students were working on Adobe Photoshop, combining various images provided by the teacher. Some planes had to be inserted in an image of Gondolas in Venice.

I was the rest of the afternoon off, so spent some time cruising through Old Porto, enjoying the many narrow streets, and the beautiful facades of the old houses, many of which are richly decorated with very pretty ceramic tiles. This apparently used to be a tradition in the city. Horacio tells me that the tiles are there because Porto is very humid as a protection for the walls. I took quite a few shots of different tiles and will add a special post about those here later. Walked along the Douro river and on one of the terraces I enjoyed a nice glass of Sandeman Porto. I remember my mom used to love Sandeman Jerez (sherry) when I was a young kid. Maybe I should bring her a bottle of Sandeman…

I crossed the bridge – designed by Gustav Eiffel – to Gaia and visited some of the Porto houses/cellars there (Kupke, Calem, Sandeman). I couldn’t resist trying their Portos either. Had a variety of Ruby and Tawny. No white for me thanks!
Back in Porto I took the Funicular up. You might know Porto is very hilly. It reminds me of Paris where we usually take a trip on the Funiculaire also when we’re in Montmartre and don’t feel like climbing the steep “butte”.

Another quick stop at the school, where I saw students in a drama class prepare for the Winter Festival. I also copied some Mozambique music onto my laptop from Celia. Very danceable music and also good stuff to listen to and fall asleep to in bed late in the evening (and so I did last night).

Didn’t get to do much shopping these days, so last night was a good opportunity. I took a local bus to Gaia and went to the Arrábida Shopping Mall, an American style mall so you bet I liked that one! And the best news…. Shops were open till midnight!!! Can you believe it?

I surely took my time to go through most of the shops. Didn’t really buy much (yes,… I was strong!), but had a good time. Back in Porto the place seemed dead. Not much of nightlife in the city unfortunately.

Enjoy,

HK