August 2018
We had only arrived in Portugal the night before and I was reminded again why I enjoyed it so much last year.
Porto is such a laid back and charming city with a great feel to it, yet we barely explored it. I think it's the elegance of the buildings and the tiles everywhere covering the buildings which I really love, along with the relaxed feeling about the people.
We picked up a load of the delicious tinned fish as presents and for ourselves and browsed a few ceramics shops for azulejo tiles. Dinner the night before was at Pregas, consisting of tapas style dishes: cod carpaccio with onions and potatoes, corn chips and guacamole. But the star was the steak sandwiches: medium rare, tender, perfectly seasoned and with a little cheese, they're the greatest steak sandwiches we'd tasted and one of the best meals we've ever had. We ordered one and when we signalled the waiter he knew we were ordering another one - they know how good they are!
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| Pregas steak sandwich. Beautiful |
The next day was our Douro Valley food and wine tour. There was a group of six of us and we were driven about an hour away to the Douro Valley.
The area was stunning, with terraces of vines planted up really steep hills along the river as far as the eye could see. It has its own microclimate, around 8 degrees hotter than Porto in summer, which combined with the soil makes for grapes with an extremely high sugar content. There are 20,000 growers in the area and 19,000 are tiny - only a few hectares. One vineyard we went to said he makes 4,300 litres of wine per hectare. (As you can see, I took notes at the time.) The vines are largely inaccessible to machinery so are harvested by hand, and are crushed by foot by workers to ensure the skins are not bruised and bashed up too much. After that the fermentation begins. If port is being made, the fermentation is stopped by adding a neutral grape brandy/grappa to kill the microbes driving the fermentation. Ruby port is aged less than 5 years, while tawny is anything aged longer than that. The entire industry is highly regulated - only the government can provide grappa and each grower may only produce a certain amount of port. Wine is also assessed each year on a scoring system and only those above 75/100 can be marketed as reserve wines. I can see that it's at times frustrating for growers but as a consumer I know now what some of the best things are to look out for to ensure quality: DOC designation, reserve, and tawny aging years.
Dinner this evening (yes we had a little space after eating all that!) Was at Taverna Folias do Bravo, again a few small plates with some delicious wine. The stand outs were the exquisite salami/cured meat, and the torrada (bread topped with either beetroot, goats cheese and apple, or cheese, rocket, and tomato.
All in all, a pretty damn good 29th birthday!
The next day was spent exploring Porto itself. The azulejo tiles were probably the single most interesting thing about Porto. Tiles adorn buildings everywhere - from simple repeating pattern tiles on shops and apartment buildings, through to the large, intricate blue and white painted tiles depicting art and historical scenes on the side of churches. They're beautiful and a highlight of both visits to Portugal so far. Every walk I have been spending much of my time and attention admiring the intricacy and design of azulejos in the buildings.
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| Just your regular train station azulejo |
Keeping with the architectural theme, Porto is also generally a very pretty city, but especially when viewed from Villa Nova de Gaia on the south side of the Douro. The city spills down the hill to the river in a glory of red terracotta roofs, yellow blue and orange buildings and overlooked by major monuments and buildings. Unfortunately Porto was cloudy virtually all day so we couldn't see the city in all its sunny splendour but it was still a sight. The Luis I bridge lends an impressive weight and contrast to the view of the city, and looking up at both the bridge and the city from the Gaia river bank is a wonderful sight.
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| View from Villa Nova de Gaia |
The city is very steep and winding, particularly down by the river. We walked all day, criss-crossing the city as hunted out ceramic souvenirs and presents and tasty food.
We may have committed tourist heresy in Porto because we didn't visit:
- a port lodge: the port is made and bottled at wineries (quintas) now and the lodges are purely tourist experiences. We got the real thing in the Douro Valley when we visited Quinta de Marrocos!
- Livraia Lello: this beautiful bookshop inspired JK Rowling when she lived in Porto. However the queue for tickets was insane and the store looked crammed full once inside so we gave it a miss. The ambience would be ruined with all of the other people there.
We actually found queues to be the most frustrating and unexpected thing about Porto. Not just for attractions like Lello or Imperial Cafe. Many restaurants are small and so people queued outside. After the Palermo queuing for dinner experience I have no patience for such things.
On the food front, we managed to squeeze in a couple pasteis de nata with morning coffee. We also tried the famous Francesinha sandwich: chicken, chorizo, and cheese In a toasted sandwich topped with more cheese and a beer sauce. It was surprisingly not bad, but not something to rave about.
We also had another outstanding dinner of small plate dishes of olives, boiled potatoes and exquisite cod and egg pastries. The latter were the star, with the pastry resembling spring roll wrappers. We had one of each of the above with some wine and called for the bill - before having second thoughts and ordering three servings of the cod to the amusement of our waiter. They were really that good. Thank you Tasca Caseira!
Again Porto delivered on the food, and the beauty and feel of the city are so great. That was experienced on a cloudy couple of days so I can imagine in the sun that Porto is even more enchanting!
A note on wine: I enjoyed Portuguese wine but I couldn't remember or keep track of what I drank. The grape varieties are so numerous and specific to Portugal it would take a while to begin to understand them in the way I understand Italian wine: superficially but enough to have a rough idea of what I like.
The next day we posted some presents home (however, they never made it, being lost in transit!). Then we travelled to our next stop, Obidos by train to Lisbon, then an hour bus from there. Our hostel was tiny and run by a Portuguese woman who spoke little English but was very funny and helpful. We had our 3 person dorm to ourselves thankfully.
(Sidenote: we had one of the best ever pastel de nata ever at the most unexpected place - a random cafe across the road from Porto Campanha station. Creamy flavoursome custard and soft pastry - a delight for only 1 euro!)
We spent the late afternoon and evening exploring the small charming town of Obidos. It is full of tourists - largely day trippers from Lisbon and Portuguese but it was full for a reason. The town is charming, encircled by intact medieval walls, and is full of whitewashed houses painted around the bottom and sides in blue or yellow, cobbled streets, narrow alleys, and is overlooked by a castle.
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| Obidos |
Dinner was at the odd and enjoyable Bar ibn Erik Rex - chourizo sausage browned at the table in an alcohol fuelled barbecue flame, alongside cheese and bread and a small bottle of wine for a handy 22 euros.
We had a couple of relatively relaxed days in Obidos. One day we hired bikes and cycled out to Obidos lagoon. It was a little uncomfortable to ride out there, and very uncomfortable to bike back. Our bikes seemed to have very low handlebars (leading to sore backs) which I compensated with by riding resting on my wrists (sore wrists) and hard seats (sore bums). We had a delicious packed lunch out there though - a bottle of Douro wine, olives, baguette, Serrano ham and a soft white cheese.
The ride there and back was through rural agricultural areas, and the lagoon was quiet and full of wildlife, which was a nice change after several days in built up areas.
We wandered again around Obidos town and dinner was probably one of our most disappointing meals of the trip - average to bad quality. It was rescued by pastel de nata from the local pastelaria thankfully along with a glass of wine in our room.
The final day in Obidos, as the weather improved, was our beach day. We got a bus to nearby Caldas da Rainha and wandered around the city while we waited for our connecting bus to Sao Martinho do Porto. An espresso was only 60 cents and a pastel de nata only 1 euro!
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| Sao Martinho do Porto |
Sao Martinho is a resort town that seemingly only Portugese people know about. It's set in a half circle shaped bay in from the ocean so is relatively sheltered. And for a resort town it's remarkably relaxed and chilled. We relaxed on the beach a couple of hours, lulled into security by the constant but low level wind into thinking the sun was not that strong. Lunch was a pizza, beer and olives nearby before we returned to the beach for the afternoon. The locals must have known the wind would die down as the beach was twice to three times as busy by the late afternoon. You only realise after a beach day just how relaxed and happy you feel for doing nothing more than reading and enjoying the sun (the water was bracingly cold after swimming the Mediterranean!).
Dinner that evening was at Jamon Jamon of whole grilled mackerel, beef cheek, stuffed mushrooms and bread, butter and olives. It more than made up for the previous night's disappointing fare! We also finished with pastel de nata from the bakery - but (unfortunately for Rach) we tasted a hint of lemon in the custard so I was given the tough task of finishing Rach's one. Every single day in Portugal included at least one pastel de nata!
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| Unusual hidden artwork! |
After a bus trip and dropping our bags at luggage storage, our final day in Portugal was spent in Lisbon.
It was very interesting to see the city again in the sunshine and after having seen Porto. Lisbon is much more cheerful and lively in the sun, and it was good to see the familiar sights from last year. However It was also strange to walk around a city you've already visited - the main sights are already done so it can be difficult to find other things to do. Lisbon also had a different feel to Porto - slightly more run down and probably less pretty. Where Porto has street art and bright azulejos, Lisbon has more graffiti and less, grimier azulejos.
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| Back in Lisbon |
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| Savouring our last pasteis de nata in Portugal |
We walked up to Bairro Alto and started with an early lunch of a tasty burger from a Cultura do Hamburger. We then walked down the picturesque Run Bica du Duarte Belo towards the waterfront and around to the front of the grand Praca Commercio.
Then it was up near Rossio and through the winding streets in the neighbourhood of Mouraria that we visited on our food tour last year. Then up to the main miradouro at the top of the hill, around to the Pantheon and down into Alfama. We spent a couple of hours having a glass or two of wine in one of the smaller streets, accompanied by the sounds of an old lady calling out "Ginja" to all passersby every 20 seconds, and a parrot in one of the upstairs apartments squawking almost as frequently. Dinner was at the tasty and cheap Tasca Mastai of wine, olives, feta and fish.
We were catching an overnight train to Madrid and it was a bit of an experience. Rach and I were in separate carriages, each in a tiny single sex cabin with three others. Our two person cabin on the Bar-
-Bari ferry was bigger than these! The train was surpisingly noisy and jolting at times, but we slept well enough on board. We had picked up a few pastel de nata as we walked around Lisbon - from Manteigeria (my favourite) and Fabrica de Nata (a hiny of saltiness in the custard and Rach's favourite. We had a couple in the dining cabin for a quick dessert then retired to our cabins for the evening.
And so we bade farewell to Portugal on the night train to Madrid!
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