Celebrating second cities

Good evening.
Visiting a capital city is often a thrill. The busyness, the culture, the crowds. But as our writer Zoe Williams discovers on a trip to Porto, second cities can be more welcoming and fun. She’s won over by the low-key waterfront restaurants, grand port houses and laidback people, who readily share tips on hidden highlights (including where to spot a white flamingo).
“This is charm number one of a nation’s second city: people talk to you,” writes Zoe. “How many times in Lisbon – or Berlin, Paris or London – have you had a sense that, welcome as you are, people have had enough of your tourist nonsense?”
Second cities, she argues, usually have fewer chains, a more idiosyncratic atmosphere in the bars and restaurants, and a less polished, more creative vibe. “Porto hasn’t been manicured down to the cuticles, and there is still room for dereliction, for artists in garrets.” And - whether it was just luck or not - she stumbles into one great restaurant after another. “Rip-off restaurants seem to be a late-stage evolution that only beset capital cities,” she concludes.
Elsewhere this week we travel to Istanbul. Crime writer Barbara Nadel, author of the Inspector Ikmen novels set in the city, takes us on an after-dark stroll. At night it’s a place thick with legends and ghosts, where “tendril by tendril, mist begins to roll across the city from the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara.” With no crowds, shuttered shops and silent coffee houses, it’s easy to let the imagination run wild among the mausoleums and historic sites, with just the city’s cats for company.