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I was oddly reluctant to go to Portugal. In South America, I’d only spent three days in Brazil, confused by the way Portuguese looked quite similar to Spanish but sounded incredibly different. I felt like I should have been able to understand it, but I couldn’t. So although I’d been to Iberia many times, I’d never been to the Portuguese bit before.

And my trip started with confusion. I had slept at Stansted, which is always a horrific experience, so I was probably too tired to work out the metro system properly. I managed to buy a ticket that wouldn’t take me all the way into the city, so I got off at Fonte de Cuco. The ticket machine there wouldn’t take my notes, and so I walked through the suburbs in the hot sun to Senhora da Hora.

Once I’d made it into town I walked down to the river, where the red roofed bairro of Ribeira climbed up the hills on the Porto side. The buildings looked crumbling and poor here, and there were a lot of beggars around, and yet the streets were characterful. Underneath Eiffel’s massive Ponte Dom Luis, I walked up a street down which smelly water was running. Small grubby children were playing and I felt like I was in a poor part of Latin America. On top of the hill was another story – shiny new metro trains rumbled by, and grand buildings lined the streets.

I crossed over the Douro to Vila Nova de Gaia, home of the port industry. Some sort of parade was taking place, and bands were marching by. I sat down and watched them going by, eventually falling asleep, exhausted by my night at Stansted. It was the third time I’d done that, and I hoped it would be the last.