This year’s summer holiday was in Portugal – a land that has held a lot of fascination for me due to some ambiguous family roots and the potential that my family name is Portuguese. It’s been enough for me to support Portugal in the World Cup (in years where Australia was not competing) so I was excited to see this country first hand.
Porto
We started with a couple of nights in Porto on the north west coast. Porto is the home of port wine (which gives its name to the whole country) and seemed an ideal place to stop over for a couple of nights before our next leg. We had an early flight from London and so we were in town by 11am. We’d dropped off our bags and headed down to the Douro riverside by lunchtime, basking in the warm sunshine.
Porto is a small city, so we’d done a circle of most of the central area in the first few hours. Our legs were really getting a workout too – its very hilly, with lots of narrow lanes and alleyways. After a very average lunch we decided on having some of the famous seafood for dinner. It was nice, but not fantastic – unfortunately food is not the best aspect of Portugal, as we were to discover. That night we did our first port tasting – one each of the three main styles of white, tawny and ruby ports accompanied by dried fruits and chocolate. We love our dessert wines, and the port was in the same vein, but not better than a good Sauternes.
The next morning we woke to the unexpected – rain and grey skies. Perplexed, we walked around for a while, realising we’d pretty much seen the whole town on the first day. Kirsten noticed that a conference on utopianism was going on in a building nearby, and before we knew it were in the audience for the interesting summary lecture – an interesting way to spend a couple of hours, and certainly more intellectually stimulating than most holiday activities!
Later that afternoon we ventured to what looked like the boring south side of the river, technically another town called Vila Nova de Gaia, where the port wine cellars were all located. Surprisingly, we found that these were still is use as real cellars, and so we took a tour at the Offley port winery. The tour itself was not particularly interesting, but the tasting (8 different varieties, all with decent sized glasses) was fun! We were joined by an interesting Dutch couple and a had a great time drinking and talking for a while.
For dinner, we dared to sample the traditional bacalhau (dried salt-cod) which was being sold in almost every restaurant we saw. We first heard about this on our trip to Norway (bizarrely, that’s where all the bacalhau comes from these days due to their abundance of cod). We didn’t really see the attraction – it was fantastic.
What tasting bacalhau did do was give us an insight into the the poor nature of Portugal. While Porto certainly had its high points, it was obvious that if this was Portugal’s second-biggest city then it was a very backwards country compared to its Western European neighbours – it has a distinctly Eastern European feel.
The Douro Valley
In many ways, visiting the Douro Valley was the main point of our trip – we wanted somewhere quiet, summery and enabled us to do some walking around the countryside. So we took an early train from Porto almost directly east, tracking along the Douro river to the central north of the country. We got off at a small town called Pinhão, which is the ‘epicentre of the port-making industry’.b
From there it was a pre-arranged 20 minute taxi ride to our accommodation for the next 3 days in Vilarinho de Sao Romão. Our lodging was probably the grandest residence in the area, now turned into a 5 bedroom accommodation with an all-important grassed area and pool. There was almost nothing to see expect similarly sized small towns in the distance and vineyards – exactly what we wanted.
Once we’d settled in we took a quick walk around the village and headed for the poolside for a ‘quick’ sunning. A few hours and a decent afternoon nap later, I had some tingling in my legs (which I guess is what white people experience as the start of sunburn) and Kirsten had 3rd degree burns. The lure of the shady warmth and the mask of the cool breeze had got us!
That evening we’d organised to have dinner at the accommodation itself – pricey at €28pp but it wasn’t like we had a huge amount of options. As it turned out, it was a great move – 3/4 courses of really well cooked Portuguese food, home-cooked but obviously the kind of dishes that most Portuguese reserve for special occasions, all served on fine china in the grad dining room by the accommodation’s housekeepers. The food was really good, and this meal (along with the other meal we had at the accommodation a couple of days later) were to prove the best meals we would have in Portugal.
The next day we head out for a proper walk, one of the many written up and mapped out by our hosts. Once we’d left the village we found ourselves in a bizarre environment – it turns out that outback Portugal is almost indistinguishable from outback Western Australia, gum trees and all. Okay, there were a few more pines and things were a little greener, but you’d never know at a glance. And to our bodies, used to the English weather, the late 20’s or early 30’s temperature felt as warm as late 30’s in Australia. This time, Kirsten was covered from head to foot though, no more chances of burn!
The walk was pretty and warm, but luckily not too far. We had ‘lunch’ along the way in a small town (a ham and cheese sandwich – and we were lucky to get that) before heading back to the pool to chill out for the afternoon. Much like our trip to Tuscany about this time last year, we were amazed at the temperature control of the accommodation – not so much that backwards Portuguese could build houses that were cool despite the heat outside without the need for any air conditioning, but that places like Australia still can’t manage to do this despite everything. Crazy.
That evening we headed to the nearby town of Sabrosa for dinner – it was meant to be about an hour’s walk (and, being a little larger, we had a chance of finding a taxi that could take us home). However, we missed a turn at the start of the walk and turned back, put off by our tiredness from the morning’s walk and the fact that Kirsten’s sunburn was chafing against her jeans. We managed to get a lift from our host into Sabrosa, but were disappointed by the food. Still, it was a nice change and good to get out, but being night we didn’t see a lot of the town.
The next day’s walk was much less ambitious – we managed the walk to Sabrosa that we failed the previous night without getting lost. Walking in the heat of the day, we were exhausted, but it was a nice little town. We spent the afternoon in our usual way, and had dinner at the accommodation again before getting and early night. We had a train to catch at 7:30 the next morning!
Lisbon
The train back to Porto went off without a hitch, and we changed for another train south to Lisbon. The intercity train to Lisbon was a treat itself in two ways: firstly, it shows how train travel should be (hitting 220km/h, in air-conditioned comfort for €22 – are you listening Virgin Trains??) and secondly, because it showed us the west coast of Portugal which is again the spitting image of Western Australia.
Lisbon, in contrast to Porto immediately struck us as a vibrant and buzzing city, if not also crazily hot. All the white marble and stone paving everywhere didn’t help, neither did the crazy amount of hills throughout the city. They give great views, but are a real pain – I’m guessing these are the only things keeping the pastry-living Portuguese from exploding into fat monsters.
As it happened, our guest house/hotel room was at the top of a hill just to the north of the main square in the centre of town. Though we’d booked it ages ago, I recall being sold on the idea of staying at the top of a hill because there was a funicular nearby (and we love funiculars anyway). Of course, it was being repaired while we were there…br /br /It didn’t take long for us to drop our bags at the hotel, dripping with sweat, and head straight for the river views of Bairro Alto – the cool, and appropriately dingy drinking and eating area where all the cool kids hang out. We settled at a great wine bar, sampled some local wines and enjoyed the sights and sounds of the most buzzing part of a pretty happening city.
As evening drew in, we found ourselves at a nearby (temporary) park, where a Gallo Family olive oil promotion was going on. Bands were playing, people were drinking and lounging around on the grass and the vibe was very much summer on the continent. We remarked how it was busy, but not crazily so (as would be the case in London) – of course its a million miles away from anything that could happen in Australia; somehow people in Europe know how to drink in public without going overboard.
The next morning we took the famous #28 tram for a tour around Lisbon. While it’s apparently just a normal tram route, it does take in most of the awesome sights of Lisbon while negotiating some crazy inclines on your behalf. Its always packed, but well worth it.
That afternoon we headed down to the Electricity Museum, just outside the main part of town. Kirsten thought it would be interesting, or perhaps relevant to her job and I was happy to tag along. It was even happier when I found it was currently hosting its annual World Press Photo exhibition, which I was much more interested in!
Soon after we headed further out of town to Belem, a small town just outside Lisbon (practically attached) which is the home of the famous Portuguese custard tarts (pastéis de nata, or pastéis de belem in Portuguese). We munched down on a couple each, and the horrible coffee (quite unusual for Portugal) didn’t manage to dissuade us that these were indeed the best of the few examples we’d sampled.
Later that evening we headed out to the Aflama area of Lisbon, which is home to the famed fado, the traditional Portuguese folk-singing which originated in this part of Lisbon. We paid a small cover to see a really very good local band play in a restaurant, and while the set was short it was excellent, much exceeding my expectations. The crowd singing along led us to believe that these guys were pretty famous (as the fado club claimed), so we were sure we had enjoyed the pinnacle of the genre.
Sintra
On our last day we headed out of Lisbon to Sintra, a town about 45 mins train ride out of Lisbon towards the west coast. The train ride itself was interesting, taking us through the slum-like suburbs of Lisbon, before reaching the picturesque Sintra.
The Lonely Planet called Sintra “something out of a fair tale” and that wasn’t far from the truth! We walked around the main town a little before choosing to walk the 2km (steeply) uphill to the Castelo dos Mouros (pictured) – the remains of a 9th century Moorish castle. It was a hefty walk, even in the shade. Deeply Catholic Portugal (like Spain) doesn’t like to make much of its Muslim/Moorish past, so it was surprising to see a Moorish (?) flag flying at the castle (alongside a Portuguese one, of course).
We then climbed further up to the lavish Palácio Nacional da Pena – the palace that gives Sintra is fairy-tale like feel. The palace honestly looks like something out of a Disney movie on the outside and even more outrageous on the inside (deer-head room anyone?). We caught a bus down (rather than up, like most people did) and headed back to Lisbon very happy that we took the time to explore Sintra.
Our last night in Lisbon was again spent in the Bairro Alto area, where we ended up sharing a dinner table with a Kiwi and his couple friends (a Geordie and a Dutch woman) who were all International Teachers. They had taught some interesting characters (including Nico Rosberg, and the kids of Sergey Bubka and Ruud Gullit. It was a good night, and a great way to spend our last in Lisbon.
Overall, Portugal was a mixed bag. As a holiday, it was awesome – especially the quiet calm of the Douro Valley and the excitement and buzz of Lisbon. It was a lot poorer than I expected, and really very backwards generally despite obviously also being a former colonising powerhouse. The Portuguese language is actually quite horrible to listen to, and sounds nothing like Spanish or Italian despite being written in a very similar way. And the food was a major disappointment.
But overall, it was a fun, interesting and eye-opening summer holiday, filled with an appropriate amount of ’summer’ (its raining heavily as I sit here in London writing this, in contrast).
You can see more photos of the trip to Portugal here ».
We stopped off in Hong Kong for 3 nights on the way back from the UK to Australia, finally visiting a city that I’ve long wanted to see. We managed to avoid the worst of the snow which managed to cause some problems at Heathrow by a day or two, and landed in Hong Kong having sampled the best economy class in-flight entertainment yet, thanks to Cathay Pacific.
