Saturday 10.30.2010


Beach Time


The weather hasn’t improved much this morning with continuing rain and gusty winds. We do the 9:30 breakfast session again and meet a nice young couple from Austin, TX on the way in, and chat with another nice young couple from Holland while eating. They are serious travelers aided by many weeks (she 8, he 5) of vacation time that they use creatively. This is her birthday and she loves Port wine so what better way to spend her time. They give us a pitch on Greece and South Africa and the name of a great tapas bar in Barcelona. Mary makes notes.


The rain lets up a bit so we run up the street for the car and bring it back to load up. Like most good hosts John and Carmen have become immediate pals and they walk us out to the car with hugs all around. We program GPS Gal Monique to take us to our next stop without toll roads or motorways, which carries us out of Porto through miles of suburbs. It is supposed to be a 2-3 hour drive by motorway but this way will take us at least five.


Most of the trip today seems to us to look like Portugal should. Steep hills dotted with citrus groves, olive trees, and stucco and stone houses painted white or in shades of pink, yellow, orange or blue, many trimmed with blue-on-white patterned tiles. We pass through Coimbra, another of the major cities of northern Portugal with a prestigious university that we see perched on top of a hill above town and a major cathedral. This isn’t on our agenda, however, so we’ll save it for next time. We see more pilgrims along this route hiking not to Santiago, but to Fatima, Portugal’s holiest shrine. There is no “trail” here so they have to wear their bright yellow safety vests and march along the road. We’ll march by Peugeot to Fatima sometime in the next couple days.

About a half hour before our arrival in Nazare’, our destination for the next couple days, we stop for a McToilet/McDonalds break once again where John tries to get the Parmesan Especiale, a burger topped with shaved parmesan cheese and diced tomatoes. After much consternation, an English-speaking customer tells him that they are out of tomatoes and cheese and would he still want it? He gets the Big Tasty (with sliced tomatoes – guess they didn’t know how to dice them). We move around the corner to the supermarket where Mary gets cheese and crackers for her lunch. Everybody is happy.

It’s about 5:00 when we check into our hotel the Albergaria Mar Bravo, right on the beach in Nazare’. There are a couple parking places in front where we can unload our luggage and then move the car a few blocks away to an underground garage. We take a hike along the beachfront street, completely lined with souvenir shops, condos, hotels, bars and restaurants. It is a Portuguese Myrtle Beach. There isn’t much else to see here, but that’s why it is on our agenda, so we can take a break for a couple days and soak up some sun. There have been showers off and on all day and thankfully, they are off right now. There is a touch of blue sky on the horizon that gives us hope for a sunset over the Atlantic. We see tourists with their kids hoping for one last warm fall weekend at the beach and the old folks that we have seen everywhere for the last few days. The old men in their hats and heavy sweaters or jackets sitting in the sidewalk cafes smoking and sipping beer or coffee, or just hanging out with their buddies on the street corners, always talking and waving hands. The old ladies in shawls and dark skirts selling fish that is drying on sidewalk screen frames, seeds and nuts that they have in large bags on folding tables, or selling rooms to last minute visitors. We have disrespectfully named them the Portu-geezers.


We check out a couple recommended restaurants reading menus and testing ocean views. Eventually we decide to eat at our hotel which also is supposed to have a good restaurant and a 10% discount to we guests. We book a table for 8:00 and then go back out to see a bit of sunset with a few more clouds than necessary. For the second stay in a row we have English TV channels which means we have “Strictly Come Dancing,” the BBC version of “Dancing with the Stars.” We haven’t seen the show since Arles so all the losers have gone and the five remaining contestants are pretty good. They finally wrap up at 8:05 just making us slightly late for our reservation.


Mary has a fish soup that is peppery and good and John has the seafood soup which is hearty with a strong shellfish base. Mary then gets a scrambled egg and cod dish that is quite bland but inoffensive. John gets the fish stew that consists of a piece of flaky white fish, a few potatoes and some tomatoes and peppers on the plate. It isn’t a large portion, but certainly enough to eat. Then they bring the pot with the rest of the stew, about four times as much as is already on his plate. Both of us plug away at that with Mary adding the flavor of the stew broth to her egg dish and John refilling his plate like it’s Thanksgiving. There is still enough for a small family in the pot when we finish. We also have our first taste of vinho verde, an icy cold fruity light white wine with a feel in the mouth like club soda that really works well with the seafood.


The wind is starting to kick up outside so we retire to our room to watch the waves, the Notre Dame vs. Tulsa football game and an old sappy movie.


Today’s Picture: A view of Nazare' from Sitio above. Our hotel is on the beach side across the wide square on the left-center of the picture.

Friday 10.29.2010


Pouring Port as it Pours in Porto, Portugal

It is raining cats and dogs and numerous farm animals this morning and the wind is whipping the rain against the windows of our room. The river, which flows from left to right as we watch it, seems to be going the other way with the wind pushing waves upstream.

We have a leisurely 9:30 booking for breakfast and our host John is dressed in his restaurant finery to be our server this morning. He does the morning shift while Carmen handles the late stuff. He says he is serving us sardines and warm milk, but we think that is just that crazy South African humor. Actually it is a plate full of tropical fruits, yogurt, meats, cheeses, fresh squeezed juice, coffee and a big breadbasket. People are coming and going at the other two tables in the breakfast room so we don’t chat with our fellow guests.

We had planned on this Sunday as a day to catch up on laundry and lie around, but with the rain this morning we may get a new plan. After we read for a while, we think we should do the laundry today, so Carmen writes us a note to the laundry person down the street which we present along with two bags of dirty togs. She says 4-hours (we think) so we have time to kill.


We had talked about doing the hop-on hop-off bus tour of the city and we think that is still doable in the rain as long as we don’t hop off. There is a blue line and a red line and we can use our tickets on either. We think we catch the red, but really it is the blue and after a spin around the downtown sights we go across the bridge to the port wine lodges. We planned to see a couple lodges anyway so we jump off here (just a drizzle now) for some tasting and touring. The first place, Croft, will not have an English tour until 3:00, but they are happy to pour us a taste. Okay.


We walk farther up the hill to Taylor. They have an English tour starting in five minutes (2:30) and we have a couple more tastes while the tour is delayed by yet another downpour. Port wines are made from a variety of grapes from the Douro Valley, about two miles up river. In this particular style they begin the fermentation process like other wines, but when it reaches a specific point they add brandy to stop the fermentation that leaves the wine slightly sweet and higher in alcohol. After going through those steps following the fall harvest, the wines are then brought here in the spring where they are stored in huge caves (lodges) on the north facing slope of the river bluff and are aged for one to dozens of years. The quality of the vintage determines how and how long a wine will be aged. There is one barrel that holds 100,000 liters of vintage port that will turn into 133,000 $50 bottles. You do the math. Interesting and tasty.

We find the blue bus again and finish that route and then transfer to the red bus that takes us farther out into the city. Our lodging view is of the old city along the river, but we now can see newer development and really very nice upscale neighborhoods. We turn back at the Atlantic Ocean where the storms are bringing massive waves on shore although the sun is now peeking through from time to time. We follow along the shore until it becomes river and back to our part of town.


It’s almost 6:00 when we pick up our laundry, so what started as our replacement rest-up day filled up nicely. Carmen books an 8:00 table at their favorite neighborhood restaurant, a tiny place across the square called A’Grade’. Our B&B host John is at a table in the corner having dinner and will soon be replaced by Carmen as they switch shifts. Noah, another guest at the B&B from Toronto, soon joins us and we share stories from separate tables as we have dinner. After small appetizer plates of octopus, sardines, and other delicacies, Mary has a uniquely Portuguese cod dish and John has the sole. Both of these arrive in earthenware pots and we have at least enough for two in each. At the end of the meal the owner pours us small glasses of homemade jet fuel he thinks will help us digest our dinners and then he pours us another. We are now becoming fluent in Portuguese and several other languages.

We wobble up and down the river to air out a bit before bed and find a couple new side streets with bustling restaurants and bars. We manage to avoid those and make it back to bed.

Note:  Since we always talk about the weather in our blog we are no longer going to do the statistics here, but rather a caption for the picture of the day.

Todays Picture:  Our riverside neighborhood in Porto.  We are inside those top two white windows closest to the river in the black building in the center of the picture

Thursday 10.28.2010


Another Day, Another Country


It is a foggy wakeup this morning, but warmer than it has been. We’re up before 8:00, but for some reason it’s 10:00 before we go to get the car and amazingly 11:00 by the time we hit the road. Maybe energy is slipping, but we gain an hour today when we cross into Portugal so we have plenty of time. We pick up an apple and croissant at the little grocery across from our hotel for breakfast in the car.


The drive today is a combination of low mountain peaks interspersed with peeks at the ocean to our right as we move south. We go through a dozen small towns that seem spic and span and relatively new compared to our travels until now. Real cities Pontevedra and Vigo on the Spain side also seem pretty upbeat and modern. There is construction everywhere and given the plight of the Spanish economy, we wonder if this is the result of EU stimulus money.

At 2:00 we cross into Portugal, set our clocks back to 1:00 and stop for lunch in Viana do Costelo. This reminds us of a Mexican seaside resort with a million condos and in late October hardly anyone in the streets. We park in the center of town and walk down to the beach where there are still a few sleepy cafes open. The one we pick, Billabong, is a combination sandwich shop and surf-wear shop with a definite Aussie image. There are a few tables outside and the sun has burned away the early morning fog so we sit and watch very heavy waves crashing in on a very nice big beach. Mary has the ever-popular grilled ham and cheese sandwich while John goes big with the burger topped with, yes, ham and cheese. We also have a couple giant coffees and the total bill is E9.70--we might like Portugal. There are a couple surfers paddling out, but otherwise this is definitely off-season.


The drive into Porto, our stop for tonight, is pretty smooth with Monique giving us the instructions we need to get the last few miles through busy city streets. A doorman at a neighboring hotel gets us the last few feet to our B&B where we meet hosts John and Carmen. They grab the luggage and get us moving to their negotiated-rate car park a block away. When we get back, the luggage is in our room and they bring us a nice glass of white port and a dish of peanuts. Very pleasant.

We have a room on the fourth floor (they have an elevator!) overlooking the Douro River and the Port Wine lodges on the other side. This is the splurge of our trip so we took the best room with the best view and we better enjoy it. We get a city map and hit the Ribeira, the walkway along the river, and then venture uphill into the "downtown" part of the city. The only level place in town is probably the river and we know that is flowing downhill to the ocean a mile away. We huff and puff our way past churches, statues, historic buildings and eventually onto Rua Santa Catarina, the main pedestrian shopping mall. We will attest that walking downhill is a lot easier than up, especially on these rough and tumble cobblestone streets. We're strolling for more than a couple hours so dinner will look good tonight.

Carmen has booked a table for us at a riverside restaurant D'Antonho, but they disagree when we arrive. They are apologetic, however, and get us right in. We are back to an old school menu with appetizers and main courses, so we both have a nice vegetable soup, and Mary has the salmon again and John has a sort of veal stew with potatoes and vegetables. Speaking of old school, our server plates everything tableside with great attention to presentation detail which is fine. The trouble arises when he gets three tables seated at the same time, one of them a table of eight and he is scrambling to open and pour wine, plate appetizers, then plate entrees for thirteen people all at once. We don't see him for a while.


There have been about a hundred kids (18-19 year olds) running and singing and marching up and down both sides of the river ever since we arrived this afternoon and they are outside the restaurant when we leave. Almost all have on black t-shirts, but there are a few in coats and ties with black capes. We get dribs and drabs of information, but our understanding is that this is a first year university ritual and the dressier ones are the upper classmen leaders. This has been going on for hours by now and it seems they are wearing down. So are we.

It is a pleasant walk back along the river and when we get back Carmen plops us down and we all chat about the lodging business. She is a Canadian from Montreal and John is from South Africa. They worked so hard to get this place up and running that now that it is successful they would like to sell it and move along. She wants to get a camper trailer and travel the U.S.--Yikes! Their big break came when they were featured on the "Today Show" as a great European bargain destination. And to think it is our splurge.


We have English speaking TV for the first time in a couple weeks so we are fascinated. We don't even mind catching up on the election crap. Mary watches an old movie while John crashes.

Today's weather: Foggy early with sun later and warm. Low 50, high 68.