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

Wednesday 11.3.2010

Fun with Fado

We are starting to get the rhythm of Zuzabed Bed and Breakfast when we hit breakfast this morning. Dominick and Susan are still here and we are joined later by Phillip and Crystal who just got off an early morning flight from Brussels. There is a constantly changing cast but the director of the show, Luis, never lets the production lag. He is bright-eyed enthusiasm full time and he knows everything about everyone within minutes of their arrival. Of course many of the guests we have met are returnees and we can see why.


Luis gives us the primer on public transportation so we can catch the train to Belem after breakfast. We have decided to go back to the Italian place for dinner tonight that we mistakenly sat down in last night. We liked the looks of it, so Luis is off the hook for reservations, but we tell him that Fado is definitely on our list for tonight.


We walk down to Rossio and across past the evil lunch restaurant from yesterday (where we would still be waiting for our check) to the little transportation shop that sells multi-use tickets. We get two “Zapping” cards that we have loaded with three euros each and walk out the back door to the #15 train stop. This is like the Minneapolis light rail that cruises through the city on surface streets. We are going down-river a few miles to get to the harbor opening into the Atlantic.


Belem is the point where all of Portugal’s seafaring adventures that made them a world power for centuries have historically begun. Today it is a working shrine to those times, but when Lisbon was virtually wiped out by an earthquake in 1755 it also became the home to many of the country’s elite and remains so to this day.


We are intrigued by the Carriage Museum where royal means of transportation prior to the combustion engine have been collected and restored. It is surprisingly interesting to see a couple hundred years of the evolution of horse drawn transportation and all the costumes and hardware to go with it. King John V was obviously a prodigious sinner because he gave three intricately carved magnificent coaches to the Popes who were in office during his reign.

Next is the Monastery of St. Jeronimos, a monster of a church and cloister erected in the 1500s to see sailors off on adventure and welcome them back with their riches (which will pay for the church). The church is the resting place of Vasco de Gama, Portugal’s most famous explorer who carved a route to the Orient and established the Portuguese as a trading force to be reckoned with. The church itself is a theme park of carved palms, elephants, foreign faces and waves depicting the reach of the empire around the world. You can’t argue with success.

There is a pile of school children swarming into the cloister so we move to the park across the street where Mary whips out a couple apples and some breakfast bars that will serve as lunch today. We have a nice view of the river mouth, some ships cruising, the huge April 25th Bridge across the water and a statue of Christ on the far shore. This was inspired by and is similar to the iconic statue over Rio in Brazil.


Our #15 train carries us back into town. There are ticket cops on the train and are writing up some young fellows behind us which we hear results in a huge fine. Our little Zappings will keep us safe. We get off where we get on and immediately catch the #12 trolley up to the top of the hill on the Alfama side of the city. This trolley is the real deal and at one point the driver has to get out with his crow bar to change the direction of the tracks. We sputter and clamor to the top for a great view of the river and a cruise ship just leaving port. We stroll around the castle on the top and then work our way back down, through Baixa and back to the elevator that offended others and us yesterday.

Today we get right on and are up in our neighborhood in a flash. We stop in one of our little local squares for a beer break and listen to a five-piece Brazilian acoustic band kick out some tunes.  The National Guard armory where the 1974 revolution to overthrow Salazar took place is right behind us as is our parking garage.  Mary wondered how they could get a tank into this square if we could barely get a Peugeot in.

We don’t get much of a break before it is time for dinner. Luis draws us a map to get us to a Fado bar later and says he might see us there. Dinner tonight is at Esperanca, the Italian place we almost ate at last night. Mary has a really good smoked salmon pasta, and John an equally good ham and mushroom pizza with a salad to share.


It’s almost ten by the time we get to our entertainment for the evening. It is a drinks only place with a complicated Portuguese name that translates to Chico’s Bar. Susan and

Dominick are at the bar sipping a port and we snuggle in to do the same. Fado (translated “Fate”) is the folk music of Portugal accompanied only by stringed instruments and sung from the soul. It is performed in a hands-in-the-pocket understated style where only the voice gives rise to the emotion of the music. Our host is the first to sing and gets the evening off with a bang as he cries out a song that brings a tear to our eyes and we don’t understand a word.

There are two musicians that will back up all the singers tonight. One is playing a traditional looking guitar that lays a very rhythmic base line and the other has a round twelve string Portuguese guitar that sounds like a mandolin and presents a complex array of notes behind the long laments of the singers. They are fantastic!


What a line up. Each set has a couple singers who rise when introduced by the host and with a few words to the musicians begin their song choices for tonight. There are several women, one 87-year-old fellow, a couple younger guys who are pretty operatic and a mixture of regulars. The place is now overflowing into the street outside and is mostly locals with a few flash-bulb popping tourists. Occasionally there will be a pause in the lyrics of the song and the entire room will break into the chorus while the singer closes his eyes and sways with the music.

In the midst of the evening Luis and Luis come rolling through the crowd with another flourish and handshakes through the room and then join us at the bar. After a song or two there is a word with the host, some people are shoved closer and we all have seats at a table right in front of the singers. They have run out of the port we had been drinking but again, Luis has a word with the host and he breaks out his own special bottle of something that tastes like a cross between wine and chocolate. Now Wolfe and Karen from Germany, who just arrived into Luis’ flock, join us to finish out the night. Luis whispers some explanations of the music when he is not joining in the chorus.

It is close to 1:00 AM when the lights come back up and we all go separate ways from the street in front. What great fun, what a great night and what a highlight of our trip. The streets of Bairro Alta are packed at this hour of the morning, but nobody is having more fun than us.


Today’s Picture: Late afternoon beer break in Lisbon

Tuesday 11.2.2010

Lisboa

The weather is perfect today. Bright blue sky, sunshine, a cool morning and a predicted high of about 74. Wow. We’re ready for the day and at breakfast at 9:30. Luis is entertaining fellow guests Susan and Dominick from New Mexico. There is a vast array of cold meats, cheeses, cereal, pastries, juices and coffee and Luis offers eggs of any style. It is energized conversation all around with Susan and Dominick sharing their recent Spain experiences and Luis offering his widely traveled worldview. He was born in former Portuguese colony Mozambique, raised in this house in Lisbon, works with a Brazilian company that he now visits every other month, has other properties inherited from his Grandmother and has traveled the world.

Susan and Dominick take off and we are now joined by Sylvia and Sandra, a couple of Dutch ladies Luis had dubbed the "Happy Sisters". More chat about places to visit and things to do. We get our dinner recommendation for tonight and a promised 8:00 reservation and we reluctantly leave the party at about 10:30.

We do the Rick Steves Lisbon walking tour today which starts at the church in the square at the top of our stairs. The Church of San Roque is an exquisite Jesuit building with gilded carvings and a false domed ceiling that is an artist’s rendering of multiple dimensions. Unfortunately we encounter the first of our tour groups here, a theme that will be repeated throughout the day. We escape uphill a block to a great overlook of the city. It isn’t better than the view from our room but a slightly different perspective including a view of our building.

We follow the sights in the book down and around until we actually come to the square where our car is parked. We know there is an elevator down to the Baixa neighborhood, next on our agenda, right around the corner so we get in line for the ride. We have a run-in with a mini-dictator tour guide who is trying to shepherd a too-big group onto the two operating elevators, pushing her way in front of John, but behind Mary. The result is that Mary is on and John is off and when this is pointed out to her, she tells Mary that she has to get off. Oh oh, here we go. There is much shouting directed at the dictator among the group behind us, first in English since that seems to be the language of the argument, and then when the tour guide plays the Portuguese card, the shouts get angrier in Portuguese. Finally John coaxes Mary off the elevator, and we, along with the twenty people behind us, decide we will not give a nickel to these obnoxious oafs and we all leave to walk down the hill. We’ll show them!


We cheat a bit when we find a multi story department store/mall that also has an elevator getting us down to the same place we had in mind. The Baixa neighborhood is bordered by the Tejo River on one end, the new sterile business district on the other and the hills of Alfama and Bairro Alto on either side. We start this walk on the river end at the “Praca do Commercio,” a square surrounded by government buildings and then go inland up the pedestrian friendly Rua Augusta. This is all shops and restaurants with tables defining the center of the street and the walkers finding their way around the sides. On a day like this, it is packed with sun-worshipping lunchers.


By mid-afternoon we have found our way to Rossio, the city's main square, and beyond onto the grand Avenue Liberdade, Lisbon's answer to Paris' Champs-Elysees. We loop back to Rossio where we find a shady sidewalk table for lunch (Mary a turkey and scrambled egg sandwich and John a tuna salad) and a cold beer. We have waiter issues (there seems to be a shift change) and it takes a long time to get anything, but that gets worse when we try to get our check. Our current waiter, a Portu-geezer, is now slammed with about eight tables seated at once, so he takes all eight orders and disappears for twenty minutes. We had waved at him before this but he immediately averted his eyes and kept going. After much ado and waving our money at a cashier inside, the issue is resolved and we are on our way. Don't get us started on the advantages of the American system.

We walk for another couple hours up some back streets of Bairro Alta and eventually back down the steps to our current home. At 7:00 we are relaxing when Luis calls to tell us that he, Dominick, Susan and Debbie from Australia are moving out to a wine bar and please meet them there. We walk in to a table full of nibbly things, bottles of wine being passed around, meet Debbie and Luis' friend, also Luis, and enjoy much more conversation and laughter. We have to hustle to make our 8:00 reservation two blocks away, especially after we were seated at another restaurant that we thought looked like ours.


The restaurant, Sinal, is busy but they have saved our table in the back. Mary has a traditional shrimp/tomato rice dish, John has a traditional shrimp and bread mixture that has the consistency of turkey stuffing and we share a salad. Our waiter, Mauro, is a linguist and is switching languages easily as he moves from table to table. There is an Aussie couple from Brisbane seated at the next table (2 inches away) who we chat with for a while after dinner. As we get ready to leave at 10:00, Luis, Luis and Debbie from Australia all arrive with a flourish for dinner, they all meet our friends from Brisbane along with Mauro. We avoid further trouble by making a clean getaway and strolling through the crowds back to our stairs and bed.

Today's picture: Rossio, Lisbon's Main Square. To honor Portugal's seafaring history, the square is paved with "ocean waves" of tile that make you a little woozy when you walk over them.

Monday 11.1.2010


Back to City Life


What a surprise, the sun is out this morning and the winds have died down significantly. We postpone breakfast to take an hour-long walk along the beach down to the marina and back, so out the door at 8:00. We’re back at 8:05 as a big black cloud emerged from the bluffs above us and it started to pour. OK, this won’t last long so breakfast first and then the walk.

The stroll isn’t perfect with clouds and sun taking turns to make it either too cold or too warm, but it is a lot better than the last couple days. The marina and harbor are a pretty big deal with big new stone jetties extending well out into the ocean, a traffic control tower and some good-sized fishing boats.

The dogs are out on our way back, some with their humans and others just having an early morning meeting at the beach. It is like a big dog park where they just show up to run around after each other with the little ones nipping at the big ones trying to get noticed. We also take this final opportunity to walk down to the water so Mary can perform her ritual touching of this body of water (eastern side). A big wave surprises us and as John is back-peddling up hill to get out of its way, he performs his ritual butt-plant on the beach much to Mary’s amusement.


We’re in no hurry to get going this morning. This is a national holiday in Portugal (All Saints Day) so a lot of people are milling around in the square outside our window. One fellow has a miniature remote control car that he is running up the road to our right, covering the block in about three seconds. He then has the bright idea to run it down onto the beach whipping around in sand spewing circles. This of course gets the dogs fired up and they are now all chasing the car. When they get close to it, catching it no longer seems like a good idea and they tend to get out of the way. We are standing on our balcony in the sun very easily amused.


We don’t leave until noon with one stop in the old village of Obidos on our way to Lisbon. While this is Portugal’s best example of a medieval walled village, we have been through some of the best on our trip to now, so it seems less impressive than it otherwise might. We give it an hour of walking around and pick up a couple pastries with ham and cheese baked inside for lunch.


Monique is programmed to avoid toll roads today, but we think she is avoiding any kind of major highway. We tiptoe into Lisbon through all the suburbs so it is a slow methodical process. We have a general idea of where our B&B is located, but Monique loses control and tries to have us steer onto a cruise ship in the harbor. We go back to old school with Mary on a map and John playing dodge-em cars on streets two inches wider than our car.

We pull over when we think we are close, look up and see the name of the street we are looking for. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the street isn’t a street, but a stairway that goes from the top of Lisbon (Bairro Alta) to the bottom (Baixa). John parks illegally and goes down the stairs while Mary guards the car. After a couple laps up and down, John finally gets some help from a sidewalk café waiter and when he gets close he hears someone say, “John?” It is Luis, our host who has been sitting outside waiting for us.


Luis gets us to a parking ramp and then helps us tote our luggage a few blocks back and then up three flights of stairs to our room. He then pulls out the maps and begins the one hour check-in process covering sight-seeing, restaurants and attractions, all interspersed with stories. What a delightful fellow. He gives us a cell phone with his number programmed in so wherever we are, we can call for help. He then calls and makes a dinner reservation for us for tonight and we are ready for Lisbon.

Our room overlooks the entire city with a very nice terrace outside a sliding door. With the time change it is darker earlier so the lights of the city are twinkling on as we get ready for dinner. We are eating tonight at Al Faia, back up the steps and across the square (where we illegally parked earlier) and down a block. Mary has an interesting monkfish dish and John orders the suckling pig (sorry, we’re out of that) and gets a large segment of pork product with big bones and skin. It looks bigger than a shank and smaller than a shoulder, but it must be one or the other. The meat found somewhere inside is very moist and tasty so worth the work to get to it.

The Bairro is bustling when we come out from dinner and we hear Fado music coming from the cafes. Another pretty nice experience for us.

Today’s picture: Looking from our room over the Baixa and to the Alfama district on the opposite hill.