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Authors note:
Due to extreme laziness I have decided to do Portugal as the whole country instead of each individual place we visited.
Our travels continue from the coast of Spain further west into Portugal. This meant my first experience of an overnight train, from San Sebastián to Porto. The train was an interesting experience, the 4 bed sleeping cabins are separated by gender unless you feel like splashing out for a two person sleeping cabin. We didn't. It was 12 hours from A to B and I think I maybe slept for four, we arrived in Porto super early and as we were to find out nothing opens in Portugal on a Sunday. We dropped our bags at our hostel and set off to find some breakfast. After wandering around aimlessly for about an hour we were both tired and hangry (hungry to the point it makes you angry) and so the sight of the Golden Arches of McDonald's were a welcome sight. Turns out Portugal also doesn't do a McDonald's breakfast menu but McCafe saved us with a (terrible) coffee and the ubiquitous croissant. Feeling slightly less sorry for ourselves we continued to wander the streets of Porto until we could check into our hostel. Abandoned, crumbling, deserted buildings lined the streets and hills of the city. Houses that were destroyed when the cliff they were perched on fell away remain in a crumbled heap with no attempt to remove the debris. All of this seems to add, rather than remove, from the city's overall rundown charm. The cathedral has beautiful blue and white tile mosaics and as you get closer to the river, colourful houses with wooden shutters replace the derelict buildings from the centre of the city. The riverside is a tourist haven with restaurants serving Portos specialty of a francesinha sandwich. This sandwich has about 3 layers of meat and is swimming in a spicy sauce, as random as it sounds you have to get it once to say you did it. Probably not something you'd order twice. Lining the river are boats, historically used to transfer the port wine from the hills up the river where the grapes are grown, now used for tourist river cruises. Across the other side of the river are the port wine houses, with their names stated on large signs on the rooftops. All in all a rather mixed bag first impression.
The next day we decided that we would venture across the river and partake in a port wine tour at one of the wine caves. We chose Taylor's as not all of the wine houses include tours with their tastings and they had good reviews. Bare with me as I relate what I learnt about port wine as I found it interesting!
No grapes for the wine are grown in Porto (historically or present day),the wine caves in the city were used to age the wine and then it was exported by the English, Flemish, German and Danish people. All of the juice is extracted from the grapes by foot (even now apparently) and was originally carried down the Douro river by boat, a journey that took four days. Now the wine is transported by road and only takes 3 hours to reach the wine houses where the port is aged. Port is not categorised according to the type of grape as all ports are blends, it is characterised by the ageing process. Ruby port is (unsurprisingly) a red colour and has a fruity taste. It is aged in huge wooden casks which allow little oxidation. Tawny port is a browny, orange colour and has a nutty flavour. It is also aged in wooden casks but they are smaller and allow more oxidation. Ruby port (if of a particular quality) can be further aged in the bottle and is then referred to as vintage port. There is also white port which was news to me. The tour took us to the ageing cellar where the huge wooden casks filled the room. All of the casks have a sign on them stating when they were last tasted and modified and how long the ageing process had been going on. After the brief but informative tour we returned to the wine house to do some tastings. We got to try a white port, which we both struggled to finish, a ruby port, slightly more drinkable and a tawny port which tasted like liquid sticky date pudding! Feeling slightly woozy we wandered back across the river and decided to do a river cruise. We thought they would give us some chat during it on Portos history but they simply drove up one way for 20 minutes and then drove back. Definitely don't recommend it!
On both our two nights in porto we chose well with our restaurants. The first night we came across a cute restaurant while trying to find another one that turned out to be closed on a Sunday night. It was called Papa no Lingua and was a one man show, he cooks, waits tables and does the dishes. I had a delicious green pepper stuffed with smoked cod and Dan had a tomato stuffed with spaghetti and cheese. The wine was great and so was the chocolate mousse. The second night we found the restaurant we were looking for the night before. O Caracas is a mother, daughter operation. The mother cooks and her twin daughters wait tables. We once again had the Portuguese specialty of smoked cod and the wine was once again delicious.
The next day we were on a train to Portugal's capital, Lisbon. We definitely didn't allow enough time to check out this lovely city, in retrospect maybe a night less in Porto and one more in Lisbon would have been ideal. Nevertheless, we spent our first afternoon taking in all the touristy stuff. We took photos of buildings, tried the local pastry specialty, walked thorugh the modern art museum and went on the cute, old yellow trams. I regretted not wearing my contact lenses and sunglasses as every building in lisbon is white, very hard on the eyes. That night we decided to try some peri peri chicken, so off we went in search of something delicious. Now this meal was probably our most epic fail to date in terms of bad food. They literally brought out a whole roast chicken with a side of hot sauce (very spicy but not tasty) and some sort of rice soup?! The wine tasted something like petrol smells, luckily we bought the whole bottle. We finished it all, as not only was it the worst meal we had tasted but also the most pricey. Go figure. We spent most of the meal trying to decide if the three crabs in the tiny fish tank were alive or if it was just the current of the water moving them, much to my regret we never found out.
We allocated one of our Lisbon days to going to Sintra. Sintra was for centuries the summer residence of the Portuguese royal family. It is like a fairytale with its colourful palace, impressive moorish castle and houses with landscaped gardens. Sintra has many sites to visit but as we were pushed for time we had to be picky. We walked from the train station into the town centre and then onto Quinta de Regaleira, which is basically a huge house that some olden day pimp decided to sculpt beautiful gardens around. It is truly amazing, with waterfalls, grottos and underground walkways to an ancient well that you can walk up the stairs on the side. Next on the tick list was Pena Palace and gardens. Pena palace is the colourful castle that when you google image Sintra will be the first photo you see. As we were being cheap and all the guide books we read said don't bother we didn't go inside the castle. Instead we walked to some viewing points in the gardens (which are beautiful) so we could get some good castle shots. Last on the list was the Moorish castle, which was Dans favourite. You can walk along the castle ramparts, which go up pretty high, for plenty more photo opportunities. They are currently excavating more of the castle and renovating the site, so it will be even more worth while in the future. We left Sintra feeling amazed and slightly poorer (all the sites costs a few euros).
Having had enough of cities our next destination was Lagos, a town on the algarve. Lagos was, like San Sebastián, overrun with young Australians. One of them (a 17 year old male), enjoyed the hostel we were staying at so much he had yet to actually leave other than at night to get OTP. The beaches are beautiful and the sea is crystal clear, however, being on the Atlantic coast the water isn't the warmest. This doesn't matter as much as it should as every day was about 35degrees or more. We spent two glorious days lounging on the beach and splashing about in the water. I can understand how so many Australians get stuck there and don't leave. Feeling relaxed and less pasty white we were ready to return to Spain, destination Barcelona!
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