Friday 11.05.2010


Espana Redux

Our weather has become a blessing rather than a curse. It is a beautiful morning with deep blue skies and temps in the mid sixties. Adriana has told us the breakfast is from 8:30 til 10:00 and we make our way past the pool, orchards, hillsides, etc. at 9:30. Insensitive slugs that we are we could have told her last night that we wouldn’t be there at 8:30 but didn’t. She had a lovely table set for us by a window overlooking the terrace with fruits, cereal, meats, cheeses, jams, yogurt and a couple pint glasses of fresh squeezed orange juice and we dig in.

After disappearing for a few minutes, Adriana comes back toting a pot of coffee and plates of eggs, bacon and a dish that a “local guy” makes of beans, sausages, onions and garlic. Unbelievable. If we thought last night’s steak was a highlight, this matched it.


Tonight we are crossing back into Spain and staying for three days in Seville, about an hour and a half away by motorway. Even if we go the slow way it won’t take much more than three, so we make the very rational decision to take our coffee to the veranda and park ourselves there until noon. We tell Adriana to forget about us and go about her business but she continues to make sure we’re happy. When we load up to leave, Jorge and Adriana both appear for the hugs and kisses all around. We agree that we could stay here for days if not weeks.

We start by driving into the town of Tavira, right on the water, and then continue to follow the coast until we reach the Spanish border. We kick onto the motorway to get across the river and then back off into some small commercial towns heading east. We lose an hour when we cross the border so after a bit of poking around we get back on the big road to carry us into Seville at a reasonable time.


Monique takes us along a couple nice city boulevards as she ticks down our time of arrival at our hotel. With about a kilometer to go we need to get off the boulevard and into a warren of back streets that is the old ancient Jewish quarter of Seville. Pretty soon she is screaming, “turn right, turn left, make a u-turn” and we think smoke is coming from the screen. She does not do well in these tight quarters, but then again neither do we.

We are now in a position where we can only go a certain way through streets that are a couple inches wider than the car and dodging cars that are somehow parked fractions of inches from stone buildings. Mary is out guiding John a few inches at a time with the side mirrors tucked in as tight as possible. Finally we reach a left turn from one alleyway to another with every corner a three story stone building. No “blanking” way. Monique tells us that we are now 200 meters from our hotel so Mary decides to abandon this sinking ship to walk ahead and get advice IF she can find the hotel.

Meanwhile John makes about six passes at the turn and every attempt ends in the car being wedged into the corner. Finally a local fellow comes out of one of the buildings shaking his head and surveying the predicament. He starts the guiding process forward a quarter inch and then back a half. Cut and turn, and now straight an inch. It takes fifteen minutes but the deed is done and John continues down the same streets with inches to spare and a new sense of confidence. Mary is walking back by this time (now that the ship is safe) with hotel and real parking info.

The hotel is actually tucked into one of these alleys so we’re back to a public ramp again tonight but less than half the price of Lisbon. We get checked in and go out in search of a beer. About a block from the hotel we start bumping into Seville’s famous sidewalk scene with cafes, bars and restaurants all spilling out into squares and streets. We pull up a chair and tell our waiter “Dos cervesas por favor. Grande!” Mary is immediately in love with the energy and spirit of the city. John is in love with his beer. We make reservations for 8:00 at Tres de Oros on one of the squares and take a break.

The restaurant has saved a table on the sidewalk and also inside so we pick outside. It is still warm from a day that reached eighty degrees. We share an Andalusian Gazpacho soup and the Paella for two. The paella is loaded with fish and shrimp and the rice is tasty, but we both think we have had better. Maybe next time.

 

After dinner we take a long walk through our neighborhood with little bars and cafes around every corner and people milling around everywhere. It’s only the crack of eleven so these Spaniards are just getting started. Off to bed for us.

Today’s Picture: That is Mary on the corner of the veranda at our great Hacienda in Tavira. This is the way to kill a morning.

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.

Sunday 10.31.2010


Happy Halloween


Today starts really early for us. We have a great oceanfront third-floor room perfectly placed across from the beach so we can hear the waves crashing. The location is less perfect when that same beach and ocean decide to join us in the room. The wind has blown off the ocean all night and at about 4:30 am reaches tropical storm proportions with sand and ocean spray pounding against the windows. The canvas awning fringes just below us are snapping and cracking like a cross between a popcorn popper and machine gun. We don’t really feel threatened, but it makes for uneasy sleeping after that.

We give up and get up at 7:30 and get ready for the day moving down to breakfast at 9:30. We passed thousands of orange trees yesterday and the juice in the restaurant has to be weak “Tang.” What a pity. There is plenty of coffee, meats, cheeses, scrambled eggs and cereal.


The main town square to the side of our hotel is covered with sand, some of it inches deep, and there are shredded awnings and blown out plastic shelter panels. The wind is still howling (at least 60 mph) to the point that our hotel has to keep their front door, which doesn't even face the beach, locked with someone poised to open and close it as guests pass through. Only a few people have ventured out near the beach and they are covering their faces to avoid the probability of being sandblasted. Well, this has long been scheduled as our day of rest so we may as well hunker down with a book and old movies.


That lasts for about a half hour. We have suspected that we are sneaking up on the end of European “summer time” and sure enough it happened overnight. When we thought we were bored at 10:30 am, we are doubly bored now that we know it is only 9:30 am (again). Geniuses that we are, we think, after much discussion, that if we can get out the side door (the locked one) and walk a couple blocks inland, we can get to the garage where our car is parked without incurring a lot of damage and then drive further inland to see some sights. Amazingly it works and we are driving through very dramatic weather in just a little while.


Our first stop on our day of rest is about an hour from Nazare’ (naz-array) in Batalha. This is the home of the Monastery of Santa Maria, reputedly Portugal's finest architectural achievement. We join noon mass already in session. The place looks a little rough in detail but monstrous in scope from the outside, while the inside is finished in it's best 14th century finery. Our tour of Spain and Portugal is not intended to be a religious pilgrimage, but the history of the countries are coupled so closely to their religious struggles that there is now little difference between the two.


Which brings us to Fatima. We twist our way from Batalha up winding roads to a perfect hilltop for a miracle. In 1917 three little shepherd children, Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria, left their flock in the manger to come outside only to see their shadow which meant that there would be six more weeks of winter. Just kidding. The three little shepherds, Lucia, Francisco and Jacinta, on the 13th of May, 1917 saw a vision of the Virgin Mary in an oak tree on a hill outside of their village. For five consecutive months the same apparition appeared on the thirteenth of each month until on October 13th with 70,000 followers present, in the midst of a rainstorm the sun danced around the sky, plunged to the earth and finally everyone woke to a sunny mild day. The Holy Mother was said to have delivered three messages to the children: There would be peace soon after the bloody battles of WWI; Russia would reject God and espouse Communism leading to the second great war; and the controversial prediction of the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II.

Fatima has now become a wonder of religious vigor with a central esplanade that would be the envy of our national mall in Washington. On one end is the Basilica built over thirty years finishing in 1953 and on the other is the Church of the Holy Trinity, a round super-church that will hold 9,000 worshipers, built under the auspices of John Paul II in 2005. Near the Basilica is the original oak tree where the children witnessed the miracle, and the Chapel of the Apparitions where pilgrims finish their journey of worship. Pilgrims will "walk" the last 100 meters alone on their knees through the esplanade to reach the chapel.

To one side of the Chapel was a long narrow building with smoke rising and people lined up outside. Since it was mid-afternoon John suggested that they go over to the grill for a burger or hot dog to make it to dinner. When we get there we realize that the people were pilgrims lining up to place their candles into an everlasting fire that was a gas-fueled inferno. No burgers here.


On the way back we went through Sitio, a small community above and overlooking Nazare for a bird's eye view of our current home, and then toppled down the hill returning the car to the parking garage. It is now late afternoon and we hit the snack joint across the square for a small pizza to share with a beer on the side. So much for our day of rest.


After a couple hours break and watching the results of Strictly Come Dancing, we find another little cafe for a light dinner. Mary has the "Sandes de Pasta de Thom" (tuna sandwich) and John has a skewer with mixed fish and shrimp, peppers and onions, and fries on the side. Just right. There is a group of about 20 women in the restaurant next door with witches hats and assorted scary outfits, our sole reminder that it is Halloween.


We had everything today with rain, wind, sun and more of each every half hour. The high winds keep things off balance for us all day, but perhaps tomorrow will be a better day. (Where have we heard that before?)

Today's Picture: The Esplanade and Basilica at Fatima.

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.