Viana do Castelo

After leaving Porto I stayed overnight in this small town up the coast near the border with Galicia, Spain. I wanted a break between two medium sized cities (Porto and Vigo), and the description said that it was a nice place to chill out and watch the sunset. As it turned out, it was a bit overcast in the evening after having been warm all day so there was no sunset to see. Nonetheless it's a charming little town which even in the shoulder season shows signs of being a resort town: e.g. foreign newspapers at the newsagents, an abundance of restaurants. It has old, narrow streets and ancient buildings all over. A sign proclaimed that the town had been in existence for 750 years as of 2008.

Nonetheless, like so many Portuguese towns, it is showing signs of the flight of the young towards the cities and ageing of the population. Some buildings were boarded up, awaiting new business that may not come.

I had wondered before if, in order to counter rural depopulation, similar to the story I once read about a Spanish village offering a new home to hispanophones or even speakers of related romance languages, in that case Romanian, Portugal was offering settlement to lusophones. I saw this shop selling specialties from Brazil and wondered again.

In my search for dinner, I failed to find any restaurant that looked plausible. They all looked so gloomy, empty and forlorn. Probably due to the end of season. The idea of being the only person in a lugubrious restaurant watched over by the waiter/owner while his wife cooked the doubtlessly tasty regional specialty was more than I could bear. Besides I wasn't that hungry. So I went back to the shopping centre attached to the train station to the same food court I ate lunch in, and had a fairly good prawn tagliatelle. And that where most of the other townspeople and visitors turned out to be. It's hard to beat a bright and cheerful ambiance, even if the food is mostly fast and mass produced. As a bonus I treated myself to a gelato cone afterwards.

The youth hostel I stayed at was good, but also quiet. I had all of a 4 bunk room to myself and I only saw a handful of other hostellers at breakfast the next morning. I didn't mind that. It was a welcome change from having to step over other people's belongings back at the Yellow House. When the season is over, it's over.