Porto, my city, has June as the highlight of the most famous, traditional and colored festivities of the year. Every 24 June Porto citizens celebrate the birthday of St. John the Baptist. This municipal holiday had celebrated this year its centenary.
Porto gets dressed up with joy, lights, sound and a lot of frenzy. Everyone jumps to the streets, to celebrate this patron saint, which is a mixture of pagan festivities with religious celebrations. There is place for all kind of tastes and different activities.
Some of them come out onto the streets to launch the traditional St. John paper balloons into the sky providing hundreds of points of light, and to fill up the banks of the Douro River to watch the fireworks. Almost the Porto streets have music and crowds of people dancing, too.
By my side, I had jumped to join the traditional St. John Race. Just around 1900 people crossed the line. It was a good race to improve and test my shape! 9.4 miles nonstop!
Orlando Monteiro da Silva 