Thursday 11.04.2010


Portugal’s South Coast


We are surprisingly refreshed this morning after our late night. Susan and Dominick had to catch an early flight back to London/Dallas/Albuquerque so they had better be able to sleep on the plane. Luis looks chipper and we meet two new folks from upstate New York who have returned after some time in the country. They live on a “Company Farm” that is owned by a seed company used as a demonstration farm. He planted 2900 tomato plants of 85 different varieties last season. He smiled politely when we told him that we got a nice crop from our eight plants.


We were going to include a picture of Luis since he has been such a big part of our last couple days, but things got busy and it never happened. He is Seve Ballesteros, the Spanish golfer, except younger (42) and shorter (5”5”), but always with the V-neck sweater. He is easily our best host and never does a lick of labor other than be with the guests. No cooking, no cleaning, only chatting. It seems to us to be a good way to run the business. It has now become routine with our lineup of great hosts—Luis helps us with the luggage and gets us up the first flight of the outside stairs where we can roll, and then hugs and kisses all around. We feel like we are leaving a friend which is the definition of a great B&B host.

We get a mild surprise when we get to the parking garage and our bill is 94 euros and they don’t take credit cards. We barely have enough cash to make it out without finding an ATM. If we had it to do over, we would have made other plans for the car here and perhaps parked at the airport and took a cab or bus to the center. Live and learn. Monique recovers from the nervous breakdown she had entering the city and manages to get us out and on the road. In spite of telling her “no tolls” she leads us into a 2-euro trap but after the parking it is a cheap surprise.


Our route today takes us straight south toward the coast. The terrain is rolling but less hilly than the north and much more arid with a changing landscape of palms, olive trees, cork trees, cactus and some grapes. About an hour into our drive we change plans and turn southwest toward Sagres, the southwestern tip of Europe. We were going to be within an hour anyway so thought we should include it. This bumpy narrow road is perhaps not one Monique would have selected for this part of the trip, but we like the change.

In Sagres we travel a couple miles from town to the point where we think we can see some little town in Maryland, but we may be imagining that. It has been great weather for a few days now and the blue sky and blue ocean from this high cliff completes the picture. Now it is straight east from here to our stop in Tavira. After a stop for supplies at a supermarket we tell Monique she can find us a motorway which kicks up our speed and lowers our time of arrival.

We have picked tonight’s stop, Herdade del Corte in Tavira because it was close to the highway and we just needed a roadside rest before completing the rest of our drive to Seville. They had asked us by email if we would like to eat in their restaurant and we said “why not.” As it turns out the place is about 10 kilometers from the highway down winding country roads, but when we pull in, it is a WOW. It is a low-slung Hacienda on a hill overlooking hundreds of acres of rolling orchards of citrus, grapes, olives, oak and cork trees.

When we park, the lovely Adriana comes trotting out with a “Mary and John” welcome. She explains that we are the only guests tonight so we have our beautiful room overlooking the pool and hillside and all the public areas as well. We assume that dinner will be a problem, but of course it isn’t. The dining room will be open from 7:00 until 9:00. We relax and explore a bit before wandering down for dinner at 8:00. There is one table set in front of the fireplace with a couple logs burning and Adriana is our server and her husband Jorge is in the kitchen. They are Argentinian transplants, probably about 40-years old with three kids, who have been hired to run this place. She tells us great stories while taking our orders and her English is workable.

The menu has a few Argentinean dishes including a great big grilled steak. After months of all manner of sea creatures this is welcome news to one of us. We start with piri-piri shrimp, John has the monster steak that is perfectly seasoned and cooked, Mary continues her theme with piri-piri chicken and Adriana finds us a nice bottle of wine. It reminds us of Winter Monday nights at the Lodge when we had dinner by ourselves in front of the fireplace.

We are drifting past the pool and back to the room looking at the million stars and Adriana catches up to give us a walkie-talkie since the phones have been knocked out by last weekend’s storm. While we are chatting Jorge comes out, and even though he speaks about five words of English we talk for another fifteen minutes about who knows what.

This place is a gem and we are lucky once again.

Today's Picture: Mary at the tip of Europe with the white village of Sagres, Portugal in the background