A small country
Portugal is a small country. We hear that
everywhere. In a little antique shop, we look at some old keys. They are 18€
each. Denise remarks that she finds the price high, recalling that
they can be had in France for
as little as a euro or two. The antique dealer says, “Portugal is a small country, there aren’t
that many doors.”
Many
Portuguese tell us they know someone in
Canada, and for some odd reason, it’s
usually in Vancouver, thousands of miles from
the part of Canada nearest to Portugal. Barry says, “Canada is a very large country”.
“Yes, and
Portugal is a small
country.”
Portoogaish
For a small
country, the challenges are large. Firstly, the language … we do not speak it
and reading it is a challenge, too, as some of the spelling is dissimilar from
other romance languages. “Tem” (do
you have?) is pronounced like English “tang” except hold back a bit on the “g”.
“Pão” (bread) is “powng”, almost the
French “pain” but not quite.
Portuguese, or as they say, “Por-too-gaish”, when spoken slowly and well
enunciated, is very much like any other Romance language, quite similar to
Spanish (despite the protests of Portuguese people) and the communication is
easy. But when spoken quickly and with a regional accent, it might as well be
Polish to these English and French speakers, especially since all plurals end
with the “sh” sound.
We are
fortunate, however, that many people in
Portugal speak English. There is an
unexpected amount of French spoken, as well, especially among the middle aged
and older men. During the end of the Salazar dictatorship, in the 1960s, the
economy of Portugal had hit rock bottom, and many men
had gone elsewhere seeking work. France was one country where they were
admitted easily.
But English
is the lingua franca of tourism today. Our taxi driver from
Lisbon airport
claims to speak 5 languages; he
speaks to us in fluent English. We respond in French. His French is fluent as
well. The bellhop at the hotel speaks 3 but wants to learn another language. It
seems so easy for them. Certainly a little French or Spanish allow a minimum
level of communication when all else fails. Of course, a pencil and paper
can always be used for numbers, too.
Restaurant menus and
tourist information are readily available in English as well as other languages.
Sometimes, the translations leave something to the imagination, however. The old
walls of Évora have plaques describing the “old wales”. One restaurant in
Porto translates sopa caseira
(house soup) on their menu as home-made soap. Another boldly advertises “prick
on potatoes”. We suspect we should have the home-made soap with that. Or with
the “filthy pig” sandwich we see on another menu in Alcácer. Will the food
compensate for the linguistic gaffes?
Thursday, March
13
We had
not been
to Europe for two years. In 2007 we had our greatest adventure to date – we
opened a Bed and Breakfast in Westport, Ontario – but the word “vacation” was
absent from our vocabulary for 2 years, and we both needed one desperately.
After reading Frances Mayes’ “A Year in the World”, we decide to visit
Portugal in the southwest corner of
Europe.
We arrive in Lisbon
after a smooth flight
across the
Atlantic. Eager to begin our touring, we are confronted by a very long line
for non-Portuguese and non-European nationals at the immigration hall in
Lisbon Airport, and after a half-hour, we have
hardly advanced one third of the way. We notice that some American folks are in
the Portuguese line, and get served. So we jump the foreigners’ line and save
ourselves an estimated further 45 minute wait. But at least there has been
enough time for our luggage to have been unloaded, except Denise’s suitcase is
not there. This has never happened to us before; apparently the suitcase never
left Newark Airport. (In retrospect, this is just one
of a number of headaches experienced on this trip with Continental Airlines
travelling via Newark – any cost savings using this
airline and airport were not justified.) Well, the airport folks assure us we
will have it tomorrow, and we have other things to do. From our hotel, we try to
determine the insurance allowance on the luggage from our credit card company,
calling Canada collect as instructed, however, it
is difficult to communicate the concept of collect calls to the hotel operator
or to anyone they contacted. We do not let that hold us back. Denise,
jet-lagged, needs a change of clothes.
We haven’t
visited a city in a long time, and after spending nearly a year in
Westport, population 700,
Lisbon seems
enormous. At first glance its broad avenues
lined with large buildings appear to stretch endlessly in every direction. Like
any city it has places to shop, places to eat, places to wander, places to rest,
places to admire, places to worship, places to inspire awe. There will be much
to explore.
The sun is
warm and it is pleasant to stroll the streets without a jacket during this
winter (2007-8) which has blanketed Eastern
Canada with
more snow than most people can recall. Our hotel is near the north end of
Avenida de la Liberdade, the 19th century main
avenue through downtown Lisbon,
evocative of Paris’
Champs-Elysees, its trees starting to show yellow-green growth at the tips of
their branches, soon to provide shade for the hotels and shops along the
avenue’s sides. Up the side streets and in the parks we see swaths of purple
wisteria, cherry trees ablaze with purple-pink flowers, and hummingbirds
flitting around spring daisies and acacia trees. However, mid-March is still
officially winter in Portugal, and the Portuguese dress
accordingly. Men in business suits, mostly grey or black. Women in heavy coats,
or young girls in shorts with stockings or leotards and calf height
boots.
It doesn’t take long to notice that
tiles and mosaics are the definitive architectural elements in Portugal. It begins underfoot. The sidewalks
and plazas are all tiled in a traditional mosaic of grey and black stones. Everywhere we walk we see
old Moorish floral or geometric designs under our feet, some very traditional, some very
modern, almost all different from block to block, an urban landscape for
pedestrians, a visual delight wherever they decide to go walking. It turns out
that these mosaics are used in every city and town sidewalk throughout Portugal. That is only the beginning. Tilework
abounds on building facades. The famous blue tiles, the azulejos, are everywhere, framing
doorways and windows as decorative motifs or as complete wall coverings. Upon
closer inspection, shimmering blue walls reveal their true nature as complex
geometric patterns of tiles, as do wall paintings and other decorations. The
tiles will tell many stories of centuries of Portuguese decorative
art.
Our stroll
takes us past Rossio
Station, the monumental train station with horseshoe-shaped entry
arches lined with concrete filigree decoration, past the Santa
Justa Elevator, a landmark tower and bridge with views over the city
linking the lower business sector with the Bairra Alto, and on to the
Restauradores, a large busy square lined with restaurants and bars and betting
counters, some with life-size religious statues overlooking the gamblers. On one
street corner we see musicians dressed in Indian dress complete with feathers
playing Andean music. We did not know that Brazilian Indians wore feathers.
There are many British tourists in town for football game, drinking beer on the
terraces -- it is only 11 AM. We do not want to be around for
the evening game. We discover later on that
Portugal won, so we are doubly glad we were
not there.
We continue
to the pedestrian Rua
Augusta, the city's main shopping street with its majestic portal and
arches overlooking the Tagus River at the south end. Denise, sans luggage, needs a change of clothes.
This proves to be more of a challenge than we expect. Young girls dress in
fashionable, colourful clothes, but after a certain early age, Portuguese women
seem to dress very conservatively, in grey or black. We find quickly that the
casual styles we are accustomed to seeing in
Canada are not available to fit women’s
bodies. Shopkeepers tell us that women need to have clothes like that
tailor-made. But we manage to find something to tide Denise over.
We are
hungry; we have spent the first jet-lagged day in shops. We stroll down a
restaurant row on the pedestrian-only Rua das Portas de Saõ Antaõ, off the Praça
de Restauradores and a block away from the Avenida da Liberdade. Most of the
restaurants have menus in English, and many in up to 6 languages to include
French, Italian, German, and even Spanish making a rare appearance. The
Portuguese language seems to be a lot like Spanish, but we are not familiar with
the local names of many dishes so it becomes a real challenge to understand. But
many of the establishments have colour photos of the dishes posted outside and
it seems that meat and potatoes and rice or fish and potatoes and rice dominate.
We have been advised to try the bacalau – the codfish – and it seems
that bacalau is offered in many variations on most menus. We do not know if the
restaurant was welcoming or if the repetitiveness of the menus started to be
outweighed by our hunger; we decide to go into one restaurant offering a menu
“tipico portugues”. What we see on
the menu, as we have on most other menus, are a half dozen varieties of fish
including the ubiquitous bacalau and a handful that were listed in our
Portuguese phrase book, as well as a few dishes of meat and potatoes or meat and
rice or meat and both. Barry orders a codfish stew. The waitress plunks down a
plate of smoked ham and one of cheeses. We give her quizzical looks – she says
in English with a strong and gruff East European accent “don’t worry, you don’t
eat you don’t pay I don’t charge you”. This is our introduction to the custom of
restaurants providing a “couvert”, usually bread and olives and some other
little finger foods, all charged separately on the bill.
Our main
courses arrive. The flat pieces of codfish are full of bones and you have to
suck the meat off the fish bone and discard the bone, a messy way to enjoy an
otherwise bland meal. Is this the dish that has been elevated to culinary
greatness in Portuguese guidebooks? Now, of course, it seems that every
restaurant menu is featuring bacalau, and we wonder what else there is to eat in
Portugal, but we are only a day into the
trip – it is far too early to judge. We learn later on from a Portuguese visitor
at our Bed and Breakfast that Portuguese people do not eat in restaurants
because they consider this peasant food. However, we take a vow that we will not
go into restaurants that have pictures of the food or hawkers soliciting
business. It turns out that is going to be a lot more difficult than we think.
After an overall uninteresting meal made a little more pleasant by the vinho
verde, the slightly effervescent Portuguese white wine, we arrive at the hotel
and Denise’s missing bag is in our room. We can return to being just tourists
once again.
Friday, March
14
It is a sunny day, we feel warm
throughout. We climb one of the hills overlooking the core of the city to the
Bairro Alto. The Bairro Alto is a pretty residential area with neat houses and
parks overlooking the downtown of Lisbon. We begin to recognize a number of
features we will see frequently in Portuguese buildings: Moorish style arches
and white stucco, entranceways decorated with filigrees of stone and cement,
fabulous tilework around doorways and windows or filling spaces in empty walls,
Manueline (named after King Manuel) fancy urns and cupolas that adorn the
corners and centres of the flat roofed buildings giving the cities a very
distinctive skyline and spatial texture.
We see a
store displaying tiles in the window. It turns out that this store carries tiles
up to several hundred years old removed from buildings being demolished. There
are tiles with simple flowers, human or animal forms. These are commonly used in
large geometric mosaic patterns. There are also more complex flower or
pictorial arrangements of a dozen or so tiles together. We buy a couple of
two-century old flower motifs. We would like to put a new tile splashback in our
kitchen, but we will frame and display these to recall the most memorable and
enduring part of Portuguese architecture. (Boutique “Solar”, Albuquerque &
Sousa, Lda 16th – 18th century demolition tiles. Rua Dom
Pedro V, 68-70, Lisboa,
solar@mail.telepac.pt)
That
evening we want to hear some fado music, so we decide to try one of the
show-restaurants suggested by the hotel. The restaurant is located in a
charmingly restored lower level of an old palace in the Alfama, a tangle of
narrow streets in the old Moorish quarter of Lisbon. Our couvert included little boiled
carrots in garlic and oil and an assortment of little sausage pieces, including
boudin (blood pudding). Starters were a Portuguese fish soup (tasty) and an
assortment of asparagus (from a jar). Denise opted for the octopus – it was
served whole, deliciously grilled and tender. It could have ended there in pure
delight, except it arrived in a bowl, floating in a bath of olive oil and served
with – guess what – potatoes. Barry’s pork filet stuffed with prunes was served
alongside an Alpine range of mashed potatoes; it was actually quite flavourful,
served with some sort of green, we think collard green. Denise asks the waiter
if she could have some of the green vegetable since she is not a potato eater.
He returns with a small disk of broccoli and cauliflower both boiled to the
point of falling apart, grey and devoid of any flavour. She points to Barry’s
plate – “that is what I asked for”. Her answer, “this is what we serve”. We
finish with an orange flavoured bread pudding and coffee. The vinho verde (Portuguese “green” wine)
was dry and slightly effervescent, a nice light accompaniment to the
meal.
The food
was really secondary, though. Entertainment was provided throughout the evening
by three women singers and a guitarist and someone playing a Spanish viola
(which looked and sounded like a mandolin) seated in one of the rough stone
archways. One of the young singers had a pleasant enough voice, but the second
one put a fair amount of drama into her singing. The third singer, an older
woman, performed between cigarettes with mature passion that belied a once-sweet
voice – we agreed that she was both our personal favourite. The guitarist sang
too, with a sweet voice and much less sadness than the women. This was our first
experience with fado, the traditional Portuguese song performed mostly in minor
keys. We did not understand most of the words, but it seemed to us that the fate
(fado) the women sang about was sad and the man happy. The women clutched onto
their requisite black shawl as they sang, in remembrance of the famous fadista Maria Severa. And fado has a lot
of “sh” terminals, plurals; they must be singing about emotions, not emotion;
tears, not a tear; hearts, not a heart. It is a rich and beautiful singing
which, thankfully, brings us a lot more pleasure than the food.
Saturday, March
15
We are up
early to get to the Feira da Ladra, Lisbon’s renowned and apparently only flea
market. We return to the Alfama in daylight, and make the steep climb up the
hills to get to the market, which closes around noon. There are hundreds of vendors spread out along several city blocks
selling everything from household junk to antiques and everything in between. We
are interested in the antiques. There is a large variety of old Portuguese
ceramic dishes, antique azulejos
(tiles), and a lot of decorative hardware (brass fittings from furniture).
Denise is on the outlook for embroidered linens, but the tradition in
Portugal seems to be to crochet work, and
this is very similar to what we find in North
America.
Overall, we find the merchandise expensive compared to our experience in other
places, and the vendors typically unwilling to bargain. We wonder if our difficulty with the
language is a contributing factor. Fortunately, some of the vendors speak
English or French, but we suspect the deals are rare once we are marked as
“tourist”. As in most of our travels in Europe, once we identify ourselves as
Canadians, the people do warm up to us a bit.
We leave
the market and climb up and down the slopes to Castelo São Jorge, a popular
lookout site, asking several times for directions and trying to match street
signs to our map, until we finally realize we have made a circle and are several
blocks downhill from the Castle ruins. We never actually saw the castle.
Could this be an
omen
of
what navigating in
Portugal will be like?
We decide
instead to return to the central portion of the Alfama and look for a place for
lunch. This tangle of narrow streets, once the Moorish centre of
Lisbon, is largely a slum area; however,
it appears to be at the threshold of a wave of gentrification. Many buildings are under
renovation. A few shops have opened up, clearly not catering to the local
residents, some of whom are grilling pork short ribs or sardines in the middle
of the street on small charcoal barbecues. Mmmm – smells good, but we really
need to find a restaurant. Fortunately, there are several, and we find a small
place where we feast on bread and olives, sardines and fresh salad. Two
gentlemen in business suits are sitting at the next table. They have ordered the
bacalhau, and are busy picking the little pieces of cod from the bones and
getting into quite a mess. So this really is the famous Portuguese salt
cod!
More about the food
As always,
food occupies a large part of our travel experience. After all, we eat several
times every day, morning, noon, and night. We have been in
Lisbon for only a few days, and
Portugal has revealed some unique culinary
customs. Fish and potatoes, meat and potatoes, these are the staples of lunch
and dinner menus. The varieties are there – codfish, grouper, sardines, octopus
on the fish menu, grilled beef and pork filet on the meat side, but at some
point it seems that every restaurant has the same menu and is offering at dinner
what you had at lunch. This is peasant fare for some.
We have
enjoyed the pastelerias (pastry shops). They serve drinks and pastries, of course, but also often offer a
variety of menus. The pastries are uniformly delicious, not overly sweet, and
the ubiquitous custard tart quickly becomes a favourite. The Pasteleria a Irlandeza,
around the corner from our hotel, quickly becomes a regular stop for coffee and
snacks. One day we try the sausage
with (fried) egg and steak with egg for a thoroughly enjoyable no-fuss
lunch.
On
Saturday, we decide to return to the Bairro Alto district for dinner. An English
couple we met highly recommended a small place there – O Farto Bruto – for
dinner. We look at the menu, and it is the same line-up of dishes that we have
seen for the last 3 days. Somehow, neither of us wants to choose from that.
Perhaps there is a place where we can hear some fado music again. We wander up
and down the streets, past many little restaurants, some of them no larger than
10 tables, looking at the menus as we go. Of course there are places, there are
many in the Bairro, and they all have the same menu and music format. In
particular, the fado restaurants all have hawkers standing outside trying to
entice people into their establishments. This is not unique to
Lisbon – we have seen
restaurant hawkers in other large European cities and
in Montreal as well (on
Prince Arthur Street). Our experience is that the more
effort they put into trying to entice you inside, the lower the quality of food,
and we have vowed not to go into any place that does that. We broke the rule
last Thursday night and had the worst meal we have had in years on Rua das
Portas de Sào Antào.
We quickly
become accustomed to the couvert (French for “cover”) – the charge levied for
bread and butter and appetizer (anything from olives to dried ham, cheese,
meats, and so on), and the idea of bringing it on without being asked. It is
often very good – Portuguese breads stand among the best we have tasted. At the
fado restaurant, we were levied a “show tax” of 10€ each, although this was
noted on the menu. We have learned to ask if there is a supplementary charge for
the music. We have also learned to choose our own restaurants and eschew those
that advertise in the hotels. After a while, the couvert becomes normal, and we ask the
waiter to take it back if we do not want it.
But it is
Saturday and it is already past eight and we have to make a decision. We find
one place that features what appears to be modern interpretation of Portuguese
dishes, but the idea of codfish stuffed ravioli with tomatoes is just not
appealing at the moment. There are also a small Italian restaurant in the area,
and a brasserie serving steak-frites, and decide to choose between these two on
the toss of a coin. We end up dining on steak-frites at La Brasserie de
l’Entrecote, which curiously and comfortingly resembles a similar restaurant in
Montreal both in decor as well as the menu.
It is a long room with large mirrors on both sides, waiters in long white aprons
serving the only item on the menu – salad with walnuts followed by grilled steak
with sauce and copious quantities of matchstick French fries. Delicious, as was
the Quinta de la Rosa red Douro! Overall, we have enjoyed quality
food and quality service – so far, a rarity.
Sunday
night, our last night in Lisbon, we try the other side of the
flipped coin, a small Italian restaurant we had seen in the Bairro Alto. It
turns out that many places close on Sunday night, but, fortunately, this one was
open. As we were seated, we were presented the requisite couvert, a small dish
of garlic olives with toasts and pieces of parmesan cheese. We started with
caprese salad (buffalo cheese and tomatoes) and arugula salad. From the moment
we tasted our salads, we knew we were on to something good. Fresh, crisp
ingredients, lightly oiled (not a bath), the caprese drizzled with small dabs of
pesto, arugula nestled under shavings of sweet, salty parmesan. These were the
freshest ingredients we had tasted since arriving on
Portugal. We continued with spaghetti nero
and gamberi, penne di bosco with 2 kinds of mushrooms. We had found it – a
restaurant that serves fresh ingredients, combined to tantalize the taste buds,
and without pretence. A pleasant white Douro at 12€, bottled water, and coffees
completed the experience and did not break the bank - this is the least
expensive and the finest supper we have had so far (Restaurante Esperança, Rua
do Norte 95, Bairro Alto, Lisbon, tel. 21 343 20 27).
It may be a
coincidence that our choices boiled down to French and Italian, two food
cultures particularly appealing to these two Montrealers. In our travels in
France and in
Italy, we have always found the food
good, and often exciting. So far, in Portugal, we have only scratched the
surface. We have heard of small restaurants called “tascas” which are supposedly
inexpensive and good, but have only seen one, in the Bairro, that smacked of a
pizza-by-the-slice joint from home. Thankfully, the scourge of American fast
food is limited -- we have seen one McDonalds, one Subway, and a Ben and Jerry’s
in our wanderings (we have not been to any urban malls). At least the ubiquitous
pastelerias ensure there is always the opportunity to enjoy good coffee and
delicious pastries and many offer simple meals
as well. The hotel restaurants appear to have taken the step to offer
variety, but at a price. This is an option we have rarely taken in our travels,
choosing instead local places. We hope that once we leave
Lisbon, we will find another side of
Portuguese culinary culture.
Sunday, March
16
The Lisbon
Metro (subway) is an easy and inexpensive way to get around the city. Today, we
take a side trip to Cascais, a popular and pretty beach resort about 20 minutes
additional by train from the Metro in Lisbon. Cascais has many small hotels and
low-rise stucco houses and restaurants lining the coast alternating between
beaches and rocky outcroppings. There is a large fishing port as well, and we
imagine that this pretty town must be full of tourists in season. In mid-March,
we are content to be able to stroll in the early spring
warmth.
We stop for
lunch. We had this vision of a little restaurant beside the
fishermen’s docks serving the fresh catch of the day. However the restaurant
owners seem to be offering all bacalau all the time once again. We opt for a
presunto (dried cured ham) sandwich and iced tea on a sunny terrace. As we are
discovering, a sandwich in a Portuguese restaurant is bread and a slice of meat.
You need to ask for mustard and you will not likely get anything else (lettuce,
tomato, etc.) in it. The bread is good, mind you, except the sandwich is rather
sparse. We are thankful for the pastelerias.
Overall, we
have found Lisbon very clean. We have heard many
warnings about pickpockets, but we are careful. There are many street vendors –
it seems everyone has something to sell, in restaurants, on street corners –
sunglasses, beaded jewellery, salvation. We see them everywhere through the city.
There are a lot of beggars too, and blind men who tap their canes up and down
the aisle of the Metro cars asking for coins. We also discover a curious
practice we had never seen before – men stand in parking spaces demanding
payment for the spot. Apparently this is illegal but tolerated as an alternative
to welfare.
We are very
pleased with our Lisbon hotel, the Hotel Aviz ****, where
we enjoy a comfortable room, in-room wired internet to manage our B&B
reservations, and a full and varied breakfast. Four days seem to have gone by
quickly. We are rested and it is time to see the rural side of
Portugal.
Monday, March 17 (St Patrick’s Day –
a non-event in Portugal)
We leave
Lisbon and head out on the road to explore
the countryside. Rumour has it that driving in
Portugal is perilous, but the drive out of
Lisbon is easy, with roads fairly well
marked and in good condition. We travel on some unnumbered country roads, and
see the occasional sign “piso en mau
condiçào” (road in bad condition) – in fact, the roads so far are no worse
than we have seen at home, and nothing near to the potholed tragedy of a
Montreal springtime.
Our first stop is Sintra, one of the
15th century homes of the Portuguese kings. Sintra is perched on the
side of several hills, and is overlooked by an old Moorish castle, dominating
one of the hilltops. We tour the Palácio Nacional and are overwhelmed by the
variety of tilework used in the palace. Islamic tile geometries abound in the
palace. We note the use of tile as trim where the French might have put plaster
and gilt or and British use carved stone or fancy woodwork. Themed rooms are
identified by the magnificent paintings in the coffered ceilings – the swan
room, the magpie room (in honour of women who talked non-stop).
There are
several other museums in Sintra, but afternoon has crept up on us quickly and we
must head for Óbidos, our stop for the night. The roads are not well-marked, so
we rely on town destination signs to guide us. We remark at some point that we
have yet to see a road where the words “flat” or “straight” could be used at any
point. We pass through the small city of Mafra, and find ourselves in front of a
magnificent palace, today, a civic building with museum and tourist office.
Unfortunately, it is lunch hour and everything is closed, and it has started
raining heavily, so we continue on to Óbidos.
Once a port
town until the nearby river silted up, and mostly contained within castle walls, Óbidos has been
extensively restored and is today a picture-postcard tourist stop of whitewashed
housed perched on roads leading up to the castle. The town was once a wedding gift from one of the
Portuguese kings to his bride. We climb the narrow streets past the pretty white
stuccoed houses to the top, where, from the castle walls, there are vistas over
vineyards and olive groves in all directions.
The Hotel Real provides a
comfortable and luxurious room and a sumptuous breakfast in a converted 14th
century building. We quickly accustom ourselves to the modern amenities such as
motion detectors
triggering lights in
the corridors and parking garage, presumable to conserve energy.
We dine
that evening in
a small restaurant near the hotel
and run by the chef-owner, who is there by herself tonight. At
her recommendation, the soup and steak in sauce are delicious. It is a quiet
night, and we enjoy our vinho tinto
(red wine), whatever it was, at 1€ a glass. We retire for the night and fall asleep quickly
in the comfort of our hotel.
Tuesday, March
18
We
head towards
our next major stop –
Coimbra. We pass through Batalha, home to
one of the largest gothic cathedrals in Europe. It is raining heavily again, but
we still enjoy the simple interior, the stone tracery on the interior walls
around the gothic arches and framing some of the stained glass hearkening back
to Islamic influences. Batalha Cathedral was never completed, and we see the
pillars of the unbuilt chapel rising several storeys above ground, pointing to
the heavens yet ending abruptly and squarely above the current roof beside the
main chapel. Of note - the public restrooms
neat the cathedral were clean, with an attendant to clean up after users. This is consistent with what we see throughout
the country.
We continue
to Fatima, where a huge shrine has been built and commerce sprung up around
the vision of three children, one of whom is still alive. The plaza in front of
the shrine is immense, seemingly larger than we recall St Peter’s Square. As we
approach the shrine, we pass through an arcade with little stalls selling
souvenirs, religious artefacts, candles and wax body parts – arms, legs, hands,
hearts, intestines, breasts, livers, all displayed rather grotesquely on the
path to the shrine. It is holy week, and Fatima is abuzz with tourists. A midweek
service is underway in one of the side chapels, a large outdoor room, and
pilgrims prepare to make their ascent up to the main shrine on their knees. In
spite of its serious mission, Fatima is a lively place with much of the
business geared to accommodate the large number of visitors to the
sanctuary.
We pass
through Tomar, the historic home of the Knights Templar in
Portugal straddling a tributary of the
Tagus River. We would like to visit the city,
but after trying for a half hour, we found nowhere to put our car so never get
to see very much of the historic city.
Our drive
through the countryside has taken us past many densely populated hills and valleys. We pass
through quiet villages – it seems that there are few terrace restaurants or
cafés, if any. Everyone is indoors. We note that the houses are neat and bright,
white stucco with colourful trim. Occasionally, we see terraced fields for
cattle grazing and grape vineyards. The driving is easy, with excellent quality
back roads and courteous drivers. We have yet to see the legendary dangerous
drives of
Portugal, at least in the first 200 km from
the capital.
We arrive
in the thick of Coimbra traffic, with little sense of where
we are. Yet, for some reason, in a stroke of luck that will repeat itself over
the next few weeks, we are in front of the Hotel Oslo. Three stars. We ask to
see the room. No problem. The room is small, but clean and the beds comfortable.
The bed linens even have the hotel logo embroidered on them, something we see
commonly in Portugal. We tell the desk clerk that we
prefer to check the rooms because we have had some bad experiences in
Europe. He says, “I have, too, in
America”. Denise says, “We are Canadian”.
He replies, “It’s the same thing” to which Barry retorts “that’s like saying
Portuguese is the same as Spanish”. “No, no!” shouts the woman behind the
counter, mere nanoseconds later. It is clear – we all understand
now.
Coimbra is home to
Portugal’s oldest university. We visit the
centuries-old campus and assume that the week leading up to
Easter is school break because there are very few people aside from tourists
there. We get an interesting view of university life five centuries ago. In
fact, the university was established in the 13th century but moved to
its present location, an old royal palace, in the 1500s. We tour the ornate
library, a spectacular Baroque space built in the 18th century for
the university, the student jail (the old palace jail), used to house students
whose behaviour was not up to the standard of the university, and various palace
rooms still used today for formal university functions, such as award of
doctorate degrees.
Like the
other Portuguese cities we have visited, Coimbra is built on the sides of hills (the
university crowns a hilltop), with
narrow streets zig-zagging their way up and down the hill. There are plenty of
choices for supper in the narrow alleys of the pedestrian zone at the bottom of
the hills, near our hotel and the Mondego River. We are thrilled to see the little
dining rooms with few multilingual menus and no one outside hustling for
customers. For once, the Portuguese menus start to sound a little less
repetitive. Except, if southern Europe evokes in us the image of outdoor
dining terraces and sea breezes and olive trees,
Coimbra is from another place. In fact, we
have seen very few restaurant terraces – virtually all of our meals have been
indoors. In Coimbra, there is little room for
restaurants to expand outdoors because of the narrow streets. The fact remains,
however, that we have encountered very few outdoor terraces so far in
Portugal. Perhaps the winter skews our
experience. (Cool weather does not stop the French – they place outdoor heaters
on their terraces. Later on we will find heated terraces in the
Algarve.)
We go to a
dining room off a narrow alley in the central pedestrian area of town, and like
many of the restaurants in the district, it is a small room with brightly lit
fluorescent lights and TV news in Portuguese playing in the background. Supper – sopa alentejo (also known as açorda à Alentejana) a rich water and
olive oil base with coriander, garlic and poached egg served over day-old bread)
and caldo verde (a potato broth with
collard greens or kale that tastes somewhat like miso); goat stew, chanfana in Portuguese, served with,
guess what, boiled potatoes. We chuckle when the waiter comes by as we are
eating our chanfana and asks us how
the “kid” is. Another night, we try leitào (pronounced “laitowng”), roast
suckling pig, a popular and delicious regional dish. These are all delicious,
heavy fare, appropriate to the late winter temperature.
Thursday, March
20
A side trip
takes us to Praia do Mira, an Atlantic beach town a
mere 30 kilometres from Coimbra. It is an easy drive – we still
wonder where the legendary bad roads of
Portugal are. We pass an old man and woman
riding on the road in a donkey cart; we pass a field with a shepherd, standing
with his crooked staff in hand. Except for the cars on the paved road, it was as
if the last century had never occurred. Praia do Mira is very quiet out 
of tourist season, but we see
tractors and a few people clustered on the beach near the water. The fishermen
are bringing in the net – two winches dragging in the ends on the long net as
men coil it up in the back of the truck. We do not see any fish, until the end
of the net, buoyed up in the water by colourful floats, is dragged ashore, its
load bouncing around under the links of the net. There are mostly sardines (a generic term
for small fish), but they have also caught a few larger fish, and eels and squid as well.
A dozen fisher men and women kneel around the net and sort the fish by size and
type, all by hand. They will fill several dozen short plastic bins by the time
they are done. Within an hour, these fish will surely be in the markets or the
canning factory, and in restaurants by lunch.
We continue
to Figueira da Foz, a large Atlantic resort further south, where we see the
widest beaches we have ever seen before. They are empty during the winter, but
with the string of large hotels a mile long along the beach, we imagine that the
town is hopping in season. We stop for lunch in a little restaurant and enjoy
shellfish (cockles for Denise, something we do not recall but delicious for
Barry) and salad. We delight in the freshness of everything we are served, and,
frankly, the absence of potatoes. The appetizers are also fresh and delicious –
fish paté, dried ham, garlic olives. And, as everywhere, the bread is delicious.
We eat everything off the little plates.
The castle walls of
Montemor-o-Velho, looming on a hilltop above the village alongside the
Mondego River leading back to
Coimbra, dominate the landscape from miles
away. Over a millennium old, little remains of the structure except the
machicolated outside walls and a small Princess’ Palace (a royal version of a
children’s playhouse) housing a café today. The chapel, with portions dating
back to the 10th century, is intact, complete with Moorish
decoration.
We arrive
back in Coimbra in time for supper. We are, once
again, in the pedestrian zone, and we hear the sounds of drumming and voices. A
group of about 15 young men, dressed in black suits and ties with black capes,
are playing guitars, ukuleles, Spanish viola, and tambourines, and singing a
Portuguese song as they march through the narrow alleys, led by a flag bearer.
They show up again later on, in the restaurant where we are dining, and perform
a few numbers for us before taking over part of the restaurant for their supper.
They are Economics students from the university, and this is like a fraternity
ritual. They explain to Barry that this is something that they do – the songs,
the costume, that has been passed down for centuries. They also have a “code of
practice” which apparently supersedes University rules, although it sounded
somewhat like upperclassman lese-majesté to Barry. They will be
performing at 10 PM in the Praça do Comercio, however,
we pass the restaurant at 10:20 and they are still eating supper.
From our hotel room, we hear their voices resonating through the alleys. It is
well after 11 PM.
Friday, March
21
We have
grown fond of Coimbra, a spirited, fun city so different
from tourist-oriented Lisbon. But it is time to leave for the
northern part of Portugal. We leave the city and begin to see
villages similar to what we have seen in the rural south of
France, plain stucco buildings right at
the street, no front yards. We realize that these are not really different from
what we have seen in the south of Portugal, except the buildings are just not
painted.
A special
adventure begins today. We are going to Porto, Portugal’s second largest city. The
travelling so far has been fairly easy, the most complicated part (finding our
hotel in Lisbon) being left to a taxi driver.
However, our reservation in Porto is in the dense array of streets in
the historic centre, and we are doing the driving. We have directions and a
tiny, crude map retrieved from mappy.com, with a series of 14 instructions like
“Carry on the Praça de Dom Joào IV I (65 m)”, especially à-propos for streets that change their
name from block to block. This could be easy in cities that have street signs,
but Porto? It turns out that only half the street corners are signed. Voila!
We have a 50% chance of finding our destination. Barry says, “If we get this first shot,
we deserve a good glass of wine; if we don’t, we will need
one.”
We make our way through the southern
suburb of Vila Nova de Gaia, and across the bridge which spans
the Douro River from a majestic height, giving us a
bird’s eye view of Porto’s stucco buildings in varied pastels and grays terraced down to the
water’s edge. As we approach, we realize that Porto is a very old city and there are
many dilapidated buildings speaking of a faded glory.
We deviate
from the instructions at one point when a street comes to an early
dead end, only to
find ourselves back once again on our itinerary in old Porto. A few wrong turns, a 
situation not unfamiliar to us now,
an illegal u-turn or two, and we are near where our hotel is supposed to be. One
left turn remains, but all the streets are one-way going right. Barry stops and
musters up his best Portuguese to get instructions from an old gentleman on the
sidewalk. We have passed our street and are, indeed, only a few short blocks from
the hotel, but we discover that to get there entails a series of turns on
one-way streets going the wrong way, taking us out of the centre. We follow the
signs back to “centro” and stop to
locate ourselves; we are on Rua Almada. Denise says “isn’t our hotel on Rua
Almada?” Yes! We go down the
street, it is a long street (we have gone a long way), and discover it is south
one-way for most of its distance and then north one way in the section where our
hotel is located (a detail which mappy.com missed and which is why we are going
in circles – GPS-lovers be warned). A few more turns on one ways (they all seem
to go the wrong way) takes us on a tour through a non-descript older section of
town until we return to the centre again, and find the southern entrance to Rua
Almada. One block up, we see the sign, “Hotel Internacional”. The hotel is a
classic old European hotel, with luxury lobby, elegant staircase with a massive
stained glass skylight and art deco furnishings, and bedding that has seen much
better days. Well, it doesn’t matter -- we have earned our glass of
wine.
The hotel
clerk reminds us that if we are unsure about how to find a place, just go to the
tourist office - they are marked with blue “i” directional signs. (Except the
Porto tourist office is located at the top of a narrow web of streets
hardly wide enough for a car - see
photo at the right - and is closed today, Good Friday, but that’s a moot point.)
Porto was clearly once a great city, the British influence is strong, we
see it in the architecture of the storefronts, the downtown with its baroque
facades and symmetry evocative of Regent
Street, the Art Nouveau storefronts and cafés. Many buildings in central
Porto are abandoned or under reconstruction. The port wine industry is now
run by Portuguese, and there are very few English left. And the restaurants
offer the same “tipico portugues”
items on their menus. It is Good Friday, and in many places of the Christian
world it is a holiday, but it is a busy shopping day in Porto. A few blocks from our hotel we
find the downtown pedestrian zone with its boutiques, pastelerias, and, of
course, wonderful mosaics underfoot.
The hotel
dining room is offering an Easter special, an “ementa de degustacião” (tasting menu).
We enjoy the Caldo Verde, the Lascas de
Bacalhau à moda de braga, (Codfish) Braga style - chunks of cod,
lightly battered and fried, and served with little fried potato slices cut in
fancy shapes, the Alheira de Caça laminada s/grelos
salteados e ovs de codorniz - sausage made of game meat on a bed of collard greens served with a
quail egg, charmingly rendered in English on the menu as “hunting meat laminated
over turnip tops”, the Vitelinha em berço
tostado, literally veal on a toasted crib, chunks of stewed veal in a
delicious sauce on a piece of toasted baguette. We end with a glace with biscuit and strawberries and
a typically strong and tasty coffee. The red douro which accompanied the meal
was delicious.
This is the
first time we feel we have truly dined on Portuguese food. Little touches, the
look of the food, little decorations of sauce to frame the food on the plate,
are tremendously important and set this dinner apart from every other one we
have had. A Portuguese chef interpreting traditional dishes – using quail
instead of chicken eggs, preparing the potatoes in decorative shapes, all make
the difference. This is indeed the best meal we have had to
date.
We go
around the corner, to the Café Guarany, for an after-dinner glass of port. The
large room has probably changed little since the café opened in 1933, except the
art deco clock above the bar
has
lost its hands; also, the waiters,
in tuxedos and formal dress, carry little wireless devices to enter the orders.
The room is evocative of a large cruise ship dinner café. We are fortunate to
get the last little table near the door. There is a band performing Spanish
music, salsa, and the usual hits – Guantanamera, a Ricky Martin number. There is
a small dance floor in the rear beside the band but people are moving at every
table -- it is impossible not to. Two young Spanish girls, out for a beer on
Friday night, take the table next to us. (The city of
Porto is popular with Spanish tourists
who cross the northern border for weekend jaunts.) A few minutes later, a portly
older woman all dressed in black squeezes between the two tables and plunks
herself down on the bench, nestling between Denise and one of the Spanish girls.
She knows the girls – we suspect she is their grandmother. We have heard that
Spanish girls are still escorted when they go out. But by a “bubby” (old-world
grandma, from the yiddish), frowning as she clutches her purse to her bosom, on
this party Friday night? That doesn’t stop the young girls from having fun,
singing along to the songs, and trying to get Bubby to smile. Well, it turns out
that all it takes is the right song, probably something old played at a wedding,
and soon Bubby is swaying her wide hips in the bench seats and moving her arms
in rhythm to the dance music. There is music every night. Tomorrow, fado. We
will be back. (http://www.cafeguarany.com/)
The next day we decide to visit the
port warehouses. The only authentic port wine is made in the town of
Villa Nova da Gaia, across the
Douro River from Porto. We take a small boat tour of the
Douro River in Porto, and enjoy the riverside vistas of
both Porto and Villa Nova da Gaia, with the massive bridges high above spanning
the cliffs. We disembark and cross
one of the lower bridges by foot and visit Croft, one of the port producers. The
grapes are grown up the river and brought to Porto by boat where they are blended and
aged in casks. We learn of the different qualities of port, that the LBV (Late
Bottled Vintage), a higher quality port, is the only one for which the juice is
squeezed by foot. Mechanical means risk crushing the grape pips and releasing
some bitterness into the must. We try a few glasses of different types of port,
including a new product, a pink port, all delicious and especially warming on
this day in which it has rained non-stop.
Easter Sunday, March
23
We leave
Porto on Easter Sunday and head towards Braga, the ecclesiastical capital of
Portugal.
This drive brings us into some of the mysteries
of Portuguese road signs. The local road from Porto to
Braga is the N14. We find it easily
leaving Porto. At times, the road signs identify it as the N13, at time the IC-1,
at times all three. There is a certain minor relief to see the N14 sign again at
these times. We have learned that the N roads are the local two-lane highways,
and the IC roads are the 4 lane divided highways, so the name change from N to
IC and back becomes normal. But we are never quite certain about the N13 and
N14.
We have
learned not to rely on the road numbering signs. The reality around driving in
Portugal is that the roads are generally
very good but the signage is confusing. We find ourselves making many wrong
turns and having to reverse direction many times throughout the trip. We often
find ourselves going around the many traffic circles several times until we can
make a choice. The true guidance in Portugal is the sign pointing to the next
town. We had been using a fairly good road map provided by the tourist bureau,
but many of the towns are not shown on it, so we purchase a
detailed Michelin map in Coimbra. It turns out to be one of the best
investments we made, although it does not completely eliminate wrong turns. We
never actually get lost - after
all, Portugal is a small country – we just take
the longer road.
Today is a
solemn day on the Portuguese calendar, as it is for Christianity worldwide. We
arrive into the centre of town to a chorus of firecrackers. These will continue
throughout the day and into the next. We notice flower petals scattered at the
doorsteps of houses, presumably in a Portuguese Easter ritual. The preceding
week - semana santa (holy week) was full of
celebrations, but today representatives from the parishes around Braga are
arriving with white sashes, ringing bells, and holding religious symbols, as
they march to the city centre, and a blessing in the City Hall and then on to
the religious services.
Of course,
everything else is closed, so after a
brief
walking tour of the city centre, we decide
to continue to Guimarães, our destination for the night, a mere 20 kilometres
away. Guimarães is known as the birthplace of
Portugal – it was the capital of the new
nation when King Alfonso Henriques was crowned “King of Portugal” in
1139.
We arrive in Guimarães in the middle
of a traffic jam as the churches empty after Easter Sunday service. We manage to
make our way to the city centre noticing that here, as in
Lisbon, the core is full of parking spot
hustlers, demanding money for permission to park in choice spots. We do not
encourage them, parking easily a block away from the core. The centre of the
city is walled, and the ancient inner part consists of a tangle of narrow
streets lined with well preserved stone and half timber houses, some probably
dating to the early days of Guimarães. Most shops and restaurants are closed for
the holiday, as is the tourist information office. We stop into a hotel in the
old section and ask about tourism and our hotel. The woman at the desk is
obliging and gives us a little map and draws the itinerary on it for us– we may
never have found it otherwise.
Some of the
cafés are open, however, for lunch. In the centre, in the cafés, outside on the
sidewalk, on the street corners, the cityscape is predominantly older men,
standing around, some talking in groups, some alone. These are men with nothing
to do, or, rather, doing nothing. We do not know why. We do not know where the
women or youngsters are. It is a scene we will see again in other Portuguese
cities.
We have a reservation at the Pousada
Santa Marinha da Costa. Pousadas are state-run hotels in historical monuments or
otherwise beautiful properties. Santa Marinha is in an 11th century
monastery, converted into a modern luxury hotel, situated on a bluff a few
kilometres out of town. As we approach the pousada, we are impressed by the twin
granite spires of the old monastic church soaring above the horizon, crowned by
ornate Manueline figures and urns, reached by a double staircase in palatial
fashion, with the old stone monastery building attached to the side.
Extraordinary spaces abound, for example, the dining room is in the shelter of a
20 foot stone arcade. Our rooms are large and ultra modern even including
wireless internet (which we never get working); however, the public spaces
retain a lot of the original monastic arches and stone and tile work. A
colonnaded breezeway complete with stone fountain of Moorish design and
elaborate tile wall motifs provides cool seating outside. Outside the building
we stroll through formal gardens, past a hedge cut into a maze, flowering
magnolia trees and orange trees full of fruit, spring plants including something
that smells very sweet, a reflecting pool in a shaded area surrounded by moss
covered benches where monks must have sat in quiet contemplation. We are pleased
to be in such a quiet and grand place, away from the bustle of the city. Santa
Marinha is reputed to be the most beautiful of the pousadas, and certainly lives
up to that expectation.
We decide
to dine at the pousada. A tiny chicken pie, tangy, tasty, served with a green
salad; melon curls with presunto; grilled plaice with potatoes and green beans
and carrots – Barry never thought he would be happy to see cooked greens and
carrots on a plate; roast duck on a bed of rice and vegetables - the duck is
delicious but a bit dry and could have used some sauce. Everything was different
from what we have been seeing on typical menus. It was all very tasty and served
on large, simply-decorated plates. Once again, we enjoy a vinho verde, the crisp, young,
inexpensive Portuguese white wine that goes well with just about everything and
does not leave you with a headache the next morning. We are pleased to be served
yet another Portuguese meal prepared in style although we find in general that
courses are served very quickly. The waiter takes away our appetizer plates and
returns immediately into the dining room with our main courses. We would
appreciate a little more time to enjoy between courses.
We return
to the centre of Guimarães on Monday, but Easter Monday is still a business
holiday, so the shops are closed. This is a pity, as there are many interesting
little shops we would like to visit, selling Portuguese linens and decorative
hardware, among other things. We do visit several of the historical monuments,
the old castle and a medieval church with millennium-old dates of the deceased.
We reflect on the experience of
having visited many old large, churches.
Portugal is all geared up for the Easter
holiday and we are witness to a much more orthodox
example Catholic faith than
we have seen before. Massive churches adorned with opulent gold-covered altars
and details attest to the power and wealth of the church over the years. The dearth of Renaissance
paintings and sculpture so familiar to us in our visits to French and Italian
churches may be an effect of the Portuguese
Inquisition, begun in 1536 by King João
III, which froze their religion in time. Stations of the Cross are erected
on street corners throughout towns and cities. Life size statues of Jesus bearing the Cross, in
purple robe and adorned with human hair, add a surreal feeling to all of this.
We are not sure whether this is normal religious expression or something special
for the holiday. The Stations seem to be permanent. Overall, we get a sense of a
more feverish religious practice than we have seen before, not quite caught up
with the wireless world.
Tuesday, March
25
Today we go
to Évora, the biggest city in the Alentejo region of
Portugal. To get to Évora, we must cross a
large part of Portugal from north to south. Some
Portuguese have expressed surprise at our courage to undertake such a long
drive; however, it is only about 400 kilometres, easy for ones accustomed to the
distances between places in North
America.
There is no direct road – we need to either retrace our route through
Porto and Coimbra or follow mountainous roads nearer
the north-south Spanish border. We decide that the first route is less risky
time-wise, and the auto-estradas (expressways) take us to
Santarem, east of
Lisbon, in a few hours. We follow local
roads from that point, and pass through relatively flat terrain for the last 100
km to Évora. In contrast to the more developed coastal regions, we see few towns
and little evidence of land use except for some grazing and cork trees, stripped
of their bark and numbered with a single digit to indicate the year of harvest
(Cork can be harvested once every ten years).
As with
many cities, Évora has a central square (praça) with streets radiating from it
and ringing around it. We follow the signs to the centre and find ourselves on a
narrow street with many services and shops and full of pedestrian traffic. The
cars have come to a stop. Barry asks a man on the street for directions to our
hotel; he looks puzzled for a moment and then talks to someone in the car behind
us. This car is apparently going in the general direction of our hotel, so we
pull over on the sidewalk and let him pass to lead us. We follow him through a
long and confusing sequence of turns along 
the narrow spokes and rings roads
around the praça – our hotel is actually about three blocks from us across the
pedestrian zone –our disorientation compounded by the hilly terrain on which
Évora is built. We finally see our hotel, the Pousada Dos Loios, at the top of a
little bluff, and wave thanks to our guide.
Our pousada is
situated in the 15th century gothic Lóios Convent, which incorporates
the remains of the Roman Temple of Diana. These have stood witness to Évora
since the first century AD, fourteen of its granite Corinthian columns
remaining. The hotel rooms are called “cells” and are, indeed, tiny, however all
the amenities are there, including the wireless internet. However, the public
spaces are large and impressive.
Wednesday March
26
Established
by the Lusitanians and then taken over by the Romans, the Visgoths, the Moors,
and finally conquered by Portuguese King Alfonso in the 12th century,
Évora has a rich and
important history in Portugal. Its location on many travel routes
reflects its evolution as a centre of commerce for southern
Portugal.
Évora has a well-preserved old town centre, still partially enclosed by
medieval walls and a university dating to the 1500s. As in most of
Portugal, the buildings are white painted stucco
with a wide swath of colour along the bottom edge and corner, usually bright
blue or yellow. In the centre, Praça do
Geraldo is a large pedestrian square with mosaics underfoot, many shops, a
few cafés, a large Renaissance fountain, and church, and a lot of old men
hanging out, doing nothing.
We wander to the
delightful public gardens of the 16th century Dom Manuel Palace, a mix of Gothic, Manueline, Moorish, and
Renaissance architecture, where Vasco da Gama received his commission to command
the fleet that would discover the sea route to
India. A flock of peacocks lives in the garden
and entertain us as they strut regally along the tops of the Moorish arches or
open their magnificent fan-like plumage.
We visit the Igreja de São Francisco (Saint Francis Church). The church is typical of what we
have been seeing in Portugal, Gothic or early Renaissance, much gilt
decoration, few paintings. Of particular interest here is the Capela dos Ossos, or chapel of bones, a gruesome room
whose walls and arches are covered with the bones retrieved from the graves of
5000 monks. Ostensibly a place for meditation, it bespeaks a bizarre brand of
religious expression, yet it does not seem entirely out of place given what we
have already seen. As with most churches, we pay a few euros to enter. There is
also a €0.50 charge for “permission” to take photos.
Thursday March
27
Today we
are leaving for the Algarve. With about 150 km of southern
Atlantic coast, the Algarve is a popular sun and beach
destination. We have heard wonderful stories of the
Algarve. People have spoken of the
Algarve almost teary-eyed, effuse with
emotion, perhaps a bit of fado bubbling through. Beautiful landscapes, good and
cheap food and rooms – is it a myth? So far, low-cost
Portugal has been a bit of a myth. Hotel and
food prices have consistently ranked alongside anything else we have seen in
Europe. And the overall absence of local outdoor garden markets has limited
our choices to more expensive restaurants. Sardines, salt cod, cork, and cattle
– this is the Portugal we have been
living.
The drive to the
Algarve takes us through the Alentejo whose
rolling landscapes are a sheer delight to behold. If the land is a canvas, the
umbrella pines are the solitary and wide dabs of paint giving rhythm of light
and shadow to the drive. The pines punctuate vistas of shimmering green meadows
alternating with stands of cork, all brought to life by the occasional flock of
sheep or cattle or free range pigs.
The road
south is a well maintained two-lane highway; here we discover the main
difficulty with driving in Portugal. The road parallels the autostrada, a 4 lane expressway with
expensive tolls, so the local road is a favourite for most travellers, including
truckers. The Portuguese drivers on this road have a tendency to pass on what we
might consider dangerous conditions – on curves and hills, pulling up close to
our tail, and passing with minimal visibility and clearance, and then pulling in
front of us just in time to allow an oncoming vehicle past, all at speeds equal
to the autostrada. The nerve-wracking
experience justifies the excessive tolls on the
expressway.
We have
reserved a hotel in Albufeira, an old beach city with a Moorish tangle of
streets in the centre, Its central location, roughly in the middle of the
Algarve east-west, makes it attractive as a
pied-à-terre for exploring the region. Our primary source of information was
booking.com, an easy-to-use hotel European-focused booking site with many user
reviews. There are many hotels in Albufeira – it is very developed – and the
user reviews intrigue us – negatives are typically “hard beds” (Portuguese
style, so get used to it) and “no English breakfast” (So what? So far, every
hotel has served us sumptuous spreads of delicious breads, pastries, juices,
cereals, cold cuts, cheeses, and excellent coffee).
It turns
out that Albufeira is overrun with commercial development catering to an
overwhelmingly British tourist population. Pubs abound, featuring specials such
as fish and chips and roast beef with Yorkshire pudding. Blackboards announce
the upcoming football (soccer) games between teams from such far off places as
Birmingham and
Manchester. Products from the
UK are available in shops everywhere.
The old Moorish centre of Albufeira is little more than a noisy, visually
polluted British marketplace.
Albufiera did not become that way by
accident. It is situated on one of the most spectacular beaches we have seen,
and in spite of the cool March weather, we enjoy our walks, framed on one side
by the Atlantic Ocean and sandy beach punctuated by rocky
promontories and on the other side by white stucco houses seemingly perched one
atop another climbing to the hilltops.
In spite of the British influence, Albufeira offers a variety of
restaurants of different cuisines, many with outdoor terraces thanks to modern
outdoor gas heaters.
As is our
custom, we visit the reaches of the Algarve over the next few days. We stop in
Tavira, a coastal town dating back to 1000 BC when it was settled by the
Phoenicians. Later
taken over by the Moors, their influence can still be seen in Tavira today with
its whitewashed buildings,
Moorish style doors and rooftops. As
ancient bridge links the two parts of the town across the Galào
River. In stark contrast
to Albufeira, we enjoy how Tavira respects many centuries of history and is not
yet spoiled by tourism – this is a recommended pied à terre for the eastern Algarve.
Not far
from Tavira is Fuzeta, a small fishing village, a dot on the map. Our lunch –
just-caught dorade and something whose name is not in the
phrasebook, but tastes suspiciously and deliciously like swordfish - was
delightfully fresh and simple, freshly grilled and served with fries, bread and
wine. This is the simple kind of country cooking that we had imagined to exist
everywhere in Portugal.
On
Saturday, we visit the gypsy market in Loulé. This is little more than an open
market of handicrafts and dry goods however the vendors are spirited and
entertaining. We stop in Estoí to see the old castle. Alas it is closed, soon to
be re-opened as a pousada.
Friday March
28
We are
closer to the Spanish border than we have been so far this trip. Historic
Seville is just a few hours away. We
consider spending a night there, but the option of taking a bus and tour for
what it would cost in gasoline alone appeals to us.
Although
there is no formal border crossing anymore, we notice the difference immediately
as we cross from Portugal to
Spain. The brush covered hills and
coastal terrain are suddenly covered with olive groves, and plastic covered
greenhouses, with abundant crops of strawberries stretching for miles
everywhere. As we continue inland,
the farms become larger and the highway is lined with orange trees. At one
point, a high-voltage transmission line crosses the highway and we notice
storks’ nests on each of the horizontals on the top of the
towers.
The tour
bus takes us to the centre of Seville, The drive along the river takes us
past a series of monumental architectural works that form the core of this
beautiful city. These are the legacy of the 1929 Latin American Exposition, an
event that profoundly transformed the core of Seville. Moorish and Renaissance influences
abound in the fair’s pavilions, with tiles, filigree, stucco in a wide palette
of pastel colours, stone columns and pediments, all combined together in a
dazzling array of art deco structural elements. Today, these buildings remain
alive and well, serving as museums and as educational or municipal buildings. We
wander the plaza of the massive Plaza de España, its two outstretched curving
around as if to embrace the pavilions of the American countries which today
remain in the Maria Luisa Park and along the neighbouring streets.
Santa Cruz, the ancient Jewish quarter of
Seville, is evocative of a thriving Jewish
population, thanks to the Castilian conquerors who seized all the Moorish
mosques in 1248 and handed them over to the Church with the exception of three
which were given to the Jews. The web of narrow streets is lined with narrow
whitewashed houses, the filigree iron-worked balconies adorned with
bougainvillea and jasmine. The streets are so narrow that people could jump from
one balcony to another across the street. Today, there are many restaurants and
tourist boutiques lining the street.
We visit the Cathedral which looms
largely over the cityscape at every vantage point in flat
Seville. A UNESCO World Heritage site, the
cathedral is the world’s the largest Gothic building and the largest church in
the Christian world, with a framed certificate from the Guinness Book of Records
to attest to that. Rather than one large space, the cathedral is divided into
zones, each area as large as the largest church we have visited. The many
chapels reflect the variety of architectural styles over the years of the
building. The walls are covered by art, but with a nave extending upward to a
height of 14 storeys, much of it is difficult to see. It is certainly a
challenge to capture the immense spaces with our pocket digital camera. The
soaring bell tower, La Giralda, is the minaret from the 12th century mosque once
on the site where the cathedral was built. Beautifully decorated with stone
filigrees and Moorish arches, the tower provides a beautiful and
all-encompassing view of the city from the vantage point of 32 storey
building.
Sunday March
30
It is the
penultimate day of our trip and we must soon return to
Canada. We leave the
Algarve and head north, stopping for lunch
in Alcácer, a pretty town south of Lisbon where the Rio do Sado begins to widen to the
ocean. Like many towns, it has a cathedral, castle ruins. There is also an
antique shop and several restaurants with terraces on the riverfront. We have
lunch and wander the shops, enjoying a variety of food and product offerings
which has been rare on this trip. It is here that Barry opts for the filthy pig
– actually a poor English menu rendition of “black pork”, a local dark-skinned
pig fattened on acorns, sweeter and more flavourful than most pork.
Tuesday, April
2
We have
reserved a room in the Pousada Dona Maria I, in Queluz, a town outside
Lisbon, about a half hour from the
airport. This ancient palace is now a 5-star hotel and restaurant. The
hotel accommodations are modern and comfortable. We ask if there is a
possibility to provide us with juice and a bun in the morning since we will be
leaving before breakfast for the airport – the desk clerk smiles and says she
will see what she can do but does not actually make any note. Our room is large
and modern. Most vestiges of the old palace are gone inside; the furniture and
décor are equal to any modern luxury hotel.
The
restaurant is located in the converted stables across the road. The menu offers what promises to be our
gourmet experience. Lobster bisque flavoured with herbs, rack of lamb on a bed
of baby vegetables. Vegetables, yes! The lobster bisque turns out to be saltier
than a salt block for horses. The waiter comes by 20 minutes after serving it
and takes away the plate, not questioning why it was not even touched (12 €). He
returns with the main course - two morsels of lamb sitting on a pile of sautéed
onions with a single tiny julienne of yellow pepper. So that is a Portuguese
“bed of baby vegetables”. The lamb was delicious, but at 23 €, seemed a bit
overpriced for a couple of bites of meat and some soggy onions. Pizza Hut would
have been a better choice for quality
and value. Thank goodness for the fine Portuguese
bread and wine (reasonable). At the end of the most disappointing meal we have
ever been served, we forego coffee and dessert, preferring to have a coffee at
the hotel. Back at the hotel, we chat with a family of British expatriates who
had lost their farm and home during the mad cow disease cull in
Britain. They rebuilt their fortune and
bought a property in the Algarve and are now living comfortably in
Portugal. They are staying in the pousada to
bring their asthmatic daughter to a Lisbon hospital for treatment – apparently
the health system is excellent there. We chat into the late evening hours but
must retire as we are leaving for the airport early in the morning. No juice or
snacks were supplied for our pre-breakfast departure.
The
directions to the airport are fairly straightforward - two left turns after
leaving the pousada and follow the signs. If nothing else, the road to the
airport is sure to be well signed. The commuter traffic is building up in the
early morning light, and it is very easy to follow the airport directional signs
as we negotiate the various expressways around Lisbon. At some point, there are no more
signs indicating the airport – have we missed the turnoff? We finally decide to
get off the expressway and turn around. Once again, we see signs pointing to the
airport – we had gone too far!
Our
experience in car rentals tells us that the car return is probably in the
airport departure area parking lot, and sure enough it is. This little bit of
knowledge was useful as there are no signs leading us there. Barry jokingly asks
the man (from France) behind us in the car return how many wrong turns he made
getting his car back to the airport and receives a long
French rant about how signs
were confusing everywhere in Portugal. Perhaps it would be appropriate to equip
tourist rental cars with GPSs. As long as the one-ways are programmed in
there, of course.
Looking back
We realize
that as much as we have travelled to Europe in recent years, we have never
traveled that far from home. We have been to
England and
France, countries whose cultural legacies
define much of our day-to-day life in
Canada. We have been to
Italy -- we have never needed a phrase
book in an Italian restaurant. In Portugal, we are occasionally lost without
one. In the countryside of France, the vintners beckon us to visit
them and taste their product. In Italy, you pay to taste. In
Portugal, we do not know. An office in
Porto can make appointments to visit wineries in the
Douro valley, but when we find out it is too late -- we
have already left Porto and traveled to the upper Douro. Other countries we have visited -
Germany, Holland, Belgium,
Switzerland - are all countries whose lifestyles are somewhat
familiar to us. Portugal, isolated in an extreme corner of Europe, seems to have
evolved all on its own borrowing from the Moors, the Romans, the Christians, and
modern Western Europe along the way, melding these into a unique and definitive
culture.
Portugal is frustrating and
Portugal is wonderful. Its wonderment is in
the sheer beauty of the landscape, from the hills and valleys to the cities, to
the stunning terraces and bridges overlooking the sheer drop to the River Douro
at Porto, to spirited Coimbra, to the beaches and cliffs of the Algarve, to the
endless and intricate mosaics that delight the eye in every direction from the
ground to the sky, to the bubbly and refreshing vinho verde, to the overall cleanliness
of the country. But probably the most beautiful is the backland behind the coast
- the Alentejo, its umbrella-shaped pines dotting the rolling green hillsides in
rhythms of light and shadow, the shimmering greens of the meadows brought to
life by the occasional flock of sheep or cattle, the cork forests – the world’s
largest stands of cork, with the red bare bark-free trees witness to the
continual harvest of this renewable but limited resource. We cannot help but
imagine that everything was placed here for us our viewing pleasure - this is
nature interpreting art.
Wondrous
also is the fierce individualism of its citizens reborn from the relics of
imperial greatness and a ruinous dictatorship, living a vibrant language, religion
and culture they
guarded through centuries of turmoil. It is almost as if the Portuguese are
awakening from having been frozen in time
as a once-great
Portuguese empire.And we cannot leave Portugal without
noting that virtually everyone we encountered was friendly and welcoming.
Portugal’s frustrations are mostly minimal,
things like poorly marked roads, and centered largely on an uncertain culinary
identity and a widespread inattention to quality, factors that are important to
these travellers, and clearly an expectation to have in hand for the future.
That’s a lot for a small country.
