Our time was running out and when I checked the weather forecast it was obvious that staying longer in North Portugal would mean looking at more rain. It has rained for a lot of our stay in Portugal.
Despite the rain, we’ve both enjoyed Portugal and intend to come back, one day (years from now). It has beautiful buildings, amazing tiles on buildings, spectacular beaches, great history, scrumptious food and the people are worth seeing and meeting too.
My favourite part of travels is always the ‘human element’. We found the people of Portugal to be friendly (if approached). Often we noted some basics in life there: women doing laundry by hand in public purpose built facilities, and hanging the clothes on rudimentarily constructed clothes lines; people traveling by horse and cart; hardware shops selling new kerosene lamps and fuel burning cooking stoves. (These are just a few exceptional things we saw, for the most part people seem to live as you might expect in a European country: washing by machine, travel by car or public transport, cooking and lighting via wiring and plumbing to appliances.)
Clothes lines next to the public laundry facility. I didn’t photograph the women doing their laundry by hand.
Eating out or having a coffee out in Portugal can be very affordable. A shot of espresso: €0.65, a ‘menu of the day’ meal of 3 courses with wine €7.50; coffee with a famous Portuguese custard tartlet €1. So, we made sure we tried a few specialities while we were in Portugal.
Our favourite eats were: the spiced bbq’d chicken we had at a Sunday market - olives, bread, whole chook, salad, wine for me and beer for H, total cost €11; The delicious octopus meals we had in Algarve (not so cheap, but worth it); the delicious Portuguese custard tarts, which we ate again and again across Portugal, and often trying a different type of cake or tartlet. Oh, and let’s not forget the cafe overlooking the ocean in a tiny coastal town where we had 2 coffees (for H), tea (for me) and a big slice of cake still warm from the oven all for €2.90!
In Portugal it’s also really nice to shop at the local market: there are permanent fresh produce and fish markets in many towns.
The Portuguese also have great festivals. We accidentally arrived in Alcoutim during their ‘Festival of Contraband’ and it certainly was a lively and fun festival, but I guess any festival with wine sold for €0.50 per serve is going to be lively! And we went to Sao Brás de Alportel’s Easter Sunday procession of flower torches. For that they decorated 1km of streets with flowers laid in patterns on the bitumen and then the men, carrying torches made of flowers, walked through them in a religious procession. It was such an effort by people to stage this fantastic event.
Volunteers laying down the flowers in São Bras de Alportel.
The procession of the flower torches in São Bras de Alportel.
We saw some stunning coastal scenery from long beaches to rocky headlands. A brief break in the wet weather allowed us to stand in front of the old fort at Nazaré and excitedly watch the massive waves and a Jetski tow a surfer out to surf them (they are said to be the biggest surf waves in the world).
Inland we saw the forests of cork trees with their bark removed, and many plantations of olives, and citrus, and, of course, grapes in the Douro valley.
We saw grand castles and palaces, and impressive buildings of religion, as well as admiring the ‘average’ houses adorned in fantastic tiles and the striped houses of Costa Nova.
Striped houses in Costa Nova. The effect in town was sometimes by tiles, sometimes paint.
Despite our dislike of cities we enjoyed both Lisbon and Porto, rode old trams in each, cycled the river of each, and in Lisbon we were gobsmacked by the Jeronimo Monastery and from a Regua-Porto river cruise we were struck by the beauty of the Douro Valley.
In an artesan’s shop in Nazaré the owner described to me, with passion, the various types of Fado music after I returned to tell him how much I liked the music in his store. And on our final evening in Porto we saw 5 different and wonderful Fado singers acompany the Fado string instrument musicians at a local bar (with local, not tourist, prices).
Fado in a local bar in Porto. The singer’s name was Patricia and she was one of 5 talented singers who accompanied the wonderful musicians.
So, yes, we liked Portugal a lot. And we really do intend to go back one day.
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