Bido Lito!

Day 4 - final Porto of call

The final day of music at this year's Optimus Primavera Festival saw us descending on the beautiful confines of Porto's ancient streets. There has been a lot of love from the artists over the past four days for this city on the River Douro, and now that we've had a chance to get lost in the narrow passageways and sleepy corners we can attest to those observations as well. Although the amount of hills can get a bit testing on the calf muscles, it is highly recommended to come and get lost in the tiny streets and winding staircases, and take in the sleepily bustling culture down on the ribeira. The São João Festival at the end of June is meant to be a stunner of a city street festival, and the locals were gearing up for it on Sunday with some tradtional dancing in one of the main squares that made our shuffling exploits look positively balletic!

Two of Porto's more modern buildings took centre stage for the music on Sunday, showing how the city embraced its European Capital of Culture status (2001) to build on its already impressive wealth of gothic architecture. The Casa da Musica, a pentagonal slab of a structure, hosted performances from JEFF MANGUM (Neutral Milk Hotel) and OLIVIA TREMOR CONTROL, while the wonderfully-converted market building of HARD CLUB hosted late night shows by VERONICA FALLS and KINDNESS. There was a huge crush for the shows at the Casa da Musica auditorium, so much so that we couldn't get in to see any of the artists. We hear they were stunning (nice one - we had to make do with Trap's Green Army and Bilic's dodgy hat instead). Fortunately we got in to Hard Club later on (top venue by the way), and were smitten all over again by Veronica Falls in the much better suited smaller confines. There'd been too much caipirinha imbibed by the time Kindness got their funk on at 1am, wrapping up the festival on the top floor enjoying some vinho tinto and foccacia.

The nearly twenty thousand spectators who had been present over the previous three days in the park-based festival were funnelled in to these two venues for the final hurrah: that they had a combined capacity of around four thousand meant that many missed out, and as a result meant that the send off wasn't as joyous as it might have been.

This is a festival that will no doubt grow and evolve over the next few years, offering a calmer counterbalance to Primavera in Barcelona. But it would definitely be worth looking at the programme of the final night's activity in the future, to round off and bookend the festival by celebrating the city's natural charms. There's no taking away from it that it has been a well-programmed event, carried off with the panache that we've come to expect from Primavera events, and the backdrop of Porto is just as vital to that as the artists providing the noise. We are definite coverts, to both Optimus Primavera and to Porto, and we will most assuredly be back in the future. If they'll have us that is - we did apologise about the lamp...

We're off to take in some culture and watch Roy's Boys with the locals, but we don't really want to leave.

Muito obrigado Porto, até logo! x

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Catch up on Thursday, Friday and Saturday's blogs here: DAY ONE / DAY TWO / DAY THREE

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