eakdoeseurope

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Portugal miscellaneous photodump

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Extra photos of the sunset from the Miradouro de Santa Catarina.

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Portugal, day 7

Our seventh day in Portugal was a traveling one; we left Viseu and headed back south to Lisbon. We decided to make a detour to the coast, stopping in Figueira da Foz (literally "fig tree of the (river) mouth"), a touristy beach town on the Atlantic.

Because it was a Sunday in July, I was expecting the worst in terms of traffic, parking, and crowds, but it was surprisingly empty. We easily found a parking spot and an empty table at a beachside restaurant (which called itself an "Irish pub" but served Portuguese food).

I ordered pasteis de bacalhau and Michele ordered bolinhos de alheira (sausage balls), and we each ordered a side salad. The waiter showed up with three side salads and acted like we had somehow ordered three of them, despite the fact that there were clearly two of us, and in what world would two people order three side salads? But he very magnanimously did not charge us for the third side salad that we neither ordered nor ate.

After lunch, we walked down one of the extremely long boardwalks that went down from the sidewalk toward the water. The beach at Figueira da Foz is extremely deep; I swear we must have walked half a mile when the boardwalk ended and the ocean was still way off in the distance.

The lot where we parked our car was also home to the most abandoned active carnival I've ever seen. I think I saw one child on a bumper car and that was it. A large Ferris wheel slowly turned with all of its carriages obviously empty. I accidentally took this very artistic photo when I was trying to capture the massive number of seagulls in the sky.

The Ferris wheel, though empty, looked pretty nice (apparently it's the largest one in Portugal, at around 100 feet), so we decided to go for a ride. The ticket booth was empty, but eventually an 8-year-old boy showed up, followed by a man who was presumably his father, who loaded us up into a carriage for our three rotations. (He offered to give us more, because there wasn't exactly a line, but turns around a Ferris wheel have sharply diminishing returns so we declined.)

We got some nice views of the town, including a medieval fortress and a really sad ocean-themed bouncy house.

We also saw a seagull taking a little ride on top of the next Ferris wheel car over.

Ferris having been fully wheeled, we packed back into the car and completed the drive back to Lisbon. Returning the car was a considerably more streamlined process than picking it up, in that it took about 5 minutes instead of 120.

We checked into a hotel right by the airport, then headed to the Time Out Market, a large, bustling food court by the water.

I was hoping to eat arroz de pato again before leaving Portugal, and thankfully that was the Sunday special at one of the booths, so we both ordered it, and took our food to the Miradouro de Santa Catarina, one of Lisbon's many scenic lookout points, for a picnic dinner.

We watched the sunset for a bit, then headed back to our hotel. It was a lovely cap to our trip, and a microcosm of sorts — delicious food, beautiful scenery, and marginally annoying but manageable crowds of tourists.

The next morning we flew back to Chicago, and thus ends this installment of EAK Does Europe!

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Miscellaneous photos from my hike that didn't fit in my previous post.

Also, the dog that hangs out outside the hotel really likes head scratches.

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Portugal, day 6

On Saturday morning, I dropped Michele off with some friends and went on a solo hike. I tried out the AllTrails app for the first time, and found an interesting-looking, medium-length (about 5 miles) hike in a loop starting from the nearby town of Oliveira do Conde.

Unlike the previous two days, the weather was pleasant; mostly overcast and in the 70s, though a little humid. The hike took me through a range of terrain, from rolling vineyards to forest to a scrubby plateau overlooking a valley.

It also went past several dolmans, a.k.a. orcas, a.k.a. ancient arrangements of massive slabs of stone that served as burial spots.

I ran into some trouble, however, when the AllTrails map seemed to direct me where there was no apparent trail. I was perhaps a bit too trusting of the route and went off-trail, trying to keep my GPS position as close as possible to the path the app was telling me to take (I drew it on in yellow below; green is my actual path).

As you can see, things did not go great. Without a trail, I was trudging through waist-high grass and shrubbery and the occasional raspberry bush, crunching over moss-covered granite and desperately looking for anything resembling a worn path. I think the little loop was the part where I fell on my ass and started reconsidering my life choices. Eventually I decided to climb a large pile of boulders and there was a perfectly fine path on the other side of it, which I made a beeline for. I learned my lesson after that, and when AllTrails again told me to blaze my way through the undergrowth, I followed the trail markings instead.

I arrived back at my car exhausted, sweaty, and bleeding from a variety of scratches obtained from raspberry bushes and other thorny shrubs.

I picked Michele back up and we headed back to the hotel, stopping by a supermarket (or "hypermarket," as they're called here, because what they call a "supermarket" is actually a bodega) to pick up some stuff for a light lunch. I accidentally stole someone else's shopping cart, which she attempted to tell me about, but I did not understand what she was saying until she went and took my cart (both were empty), at which point the issue was resolved. We ate on the patio by the pool, hiding our food like feral children because you're not technically supposed to eat by the pool unless it's an ice cream bar you bought from the pool spa. I also finally took a dip in the pool, which was extremely nice after my six-mile adventure.

I was a bit worn from the past few days, so I relaxed in my hotel room while Michele had dinner with friends. I drove to Beijos to pick her up, which involved some minor white-knuckle driving down narrow cobblestone streets, as well as a delay due to a goat moseying down the street in front of my car.

And that was our last full day up north!

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Portugal, days 4 and 5

Our first two full days in the north were occupied with the impetus for the trip: the opening of a museum related to Michele's research, and the attendant festivities. There were a lot of speeches (mostly in Portuguese), a lot of musical performances, and absolutely no adhering to the schedule.

After last year's 100°F vacation in Italy, I was looking forward to a non-sweltering time in Portugal, which has a cooler climate with typical highs around 80°F in July. But of course I brought a heat wave with me, like I always do, and it was nearly 90° both days of the museum opening. Being crowded under a tent with hundreds of other people for hours was not exactly pleasant! But it was an interesting experience, and we were plied with massive amounts of food. I didn't exactly have the biggest appetite, due to the highway rest stop seafood salad sandwich debacle, but I got to try several more Portuguese specialties: pasteis de bacalhau (cod fritters —yummy), feijoada (bean and meat stew — very chorizo-y flavor profile, not my favorite), and arroz de pato (duck rice — delicious). Also something they called a "samosa" that was actually a flauta filled with chorizo.

Anyway, I don't have any photos to post from the festivities, so here's a picture of the hotel pool instead.

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Hate chairs you can sit in and tables you can put things on? My hotel's conversation nook has you covered!

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I was pretty excited about this chocolate salami I got at the supermarket, but it turns out it's basically like if someone who had never had fudge tried to make fudge.

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Portugal, day 3

This morning, after I walked to Aldi to get some pastries and a cheeky Coke Zero for breakfast, Michele and I crammed all our belongings back into our suitcase and headed to the airport. But we were not there to catch a flight; instead, we entered into the bizarre, labyrinthine process of picking up a rental car.

The rental car area was a zoo, though Sixt had a relatively well-organized number system in place. This was where their organizational skills ended. (Foreshadowing!) After about 25 minutes my turn at the counter came, and I went through all the usual car rental rigamarole, then was handed a sheet of paper and told to proceed to ANOTHER counter at a second location. This involved pushing all of our luggage through a parking garage and taking an elevator to the second level of the parking garage, whereupon I presented my paperwork at a new counter and was told "your car is currently being washed, it will be ready in about 10 minutes." We took our place amongst the crowd of people waiting along to periphery of the parking garage to be given their assigned cars.

10 minutes passed. Many tens of minutes passed. I kept going in and asking what was going on and getting extremely unhelpful shrugs in response. At this point the crowd was dwindling and I had just watched a man struggle mightily to drive off in his manual transmission car. (They could have given that car to me.) After about 45 minutes a slightly more helpful employee told me that now the car was being refueled and it would be another 5 minutes. It was more like 15, but we were finally given our car, and we were able to leave Lisbon and head north.

Though driving in Lisbon proper would have been an absolute nightmare (truly the most aggressive driving combined with the worst streets I've ever seen), we pretty much got straight into the highway from the airport, and Portuguese drivers are, on the whole, remarkably non-aggressive and orderly (i.e. not like Italy). It was a pretty stress-free drive!

Originally, we'd planned on waiting until we stopped in Coimbra (two hours into the drive) for lunch, but because it took us two hours to get our rental car, we decided to have a quick lunch at one of the highway rest stops. I, for some reason, selected a seafood salad sandwich. (More foreshadowing.)

We still stopped in Coimbra, which is a beautiful old mountain town.

It was really hot and we'd been walking in the sun, so we got some gelato.

At this point I was starting to feel a teensy bit iffy, but I wrote it off as gas and we continued on our way to Nelas, where we checked into our very nice hotel.

It was 8pm at this point and I was very hungry, so we drove to a nearby tapas place. As we were waiting for our food to arrive, things finally broke bad, w/r/t Chekhov's highway rest stop seafood salad sandwich. Thankfully Michele was able to get us out of the restaurant speedily and I drove us back to the hotel, where I could suffer in the comfort of my own room.

Now it's 6am, I've had half a good night's sleep, and I'm feeling fully recovered. But I won't be eating any more delicias do mar this trip.

Time to try to get a few more hours of sleep!

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An actual text conversation between Jilli and me

E: How do I have food poisoning AGAIN

E: I mean, the answer is that I had a seafood salad sandwich from a rest stop for lunch

J: No way

J: HOW

J: Though... why would you do that???

E: Because I'm an idiot

J: Okay next time we’re traveling and I think something is dodgy I’m going to tell you that you cannot eat it

E: Good idea

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I think I previously remarked on how strange it was that all four major Romance languages have totally different words for "mushroom." Today I discovered that "butterfly" is the same way.

Spanish: mariposa

French: papillon

Italian: farfalla

Portuguese: borboleta

Although, now that I look at it, it's possible that "papillon" and "farfalla" come from the same root. Some ancient Italian speaker could have just put some real spin on those p sounds. This has been today's Fun Language Fact (that turned into Fun Language Speculation).

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Photos from the Museu Nacional do Azulejo (National Tile Museum).

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Portugal, day 2

After a good night's sleep, I went for a little walk and got a pastel de nata for breakfast. Pasteis de nata are little custard tarts and they're probably the most famous local specialty.

I also went to Aldi, because when I'm in a different country I always have to go to a supermarket and look at all the different stuff (and buy chips with interesting flavors).

After breakfast, Michele and I headed to the National Tile Museum. Azulejos, as they are called in Portuguese, are another object of national pride. Many building facades are covered in decorative tiles (I'll post a photodump at the end of my trip) and there's a lot of public art making use of tiles as well.

The museum was relatively small but nice, with art tiles on display from as far back as the 15th century and as recently as this year. (I'm butting up against the 10-photo-per-post limit, so I'll post some tile photos separately.)

I was particularly impressed with the exhibits they had for the visually impaired. They had special tiles with different textures to represent the different colors of tiles on display, and they came up with three different ways to convey the 3D optical illusion of one of their contemporary artworks.

The museum occupies a former monastery, and the elaborately decorated chapel is still on display.

When we were done with the museum, we headed to the Praca do Comercio, a large plaza by the water flanked by outdoor restaurants. We shared grilled beef sandwiches and a salad with prosciutto, ricotta, and grilled peaches.

From there we went to Cascais, where we did some stuff related to Michele's research, and then we returned to our hotel. I went for a walk down to a shopping area and got some gelato. I ordered a "child cone," which I assumed would just be a small scoop of gelato on a cone, but instead I was presented with this comically, insultingly tiny thing.

Met Michele for a cocktail at a restaurant across the plaza from our hotel (virgin strawberry mojito, extremely delicious).

Then I went off for food myself while she caught up with an old friend. My goal was to try pasteis de bacalhau (cod fritters), another local speciality, but after I sat down at a tapas place that advertised pasteis de bacalhau, the waiter regretfully informed me that they did not have any pasteis de bacalhau, and it would have been way too awkward to say "oh, okay" and stand up and leave, so instead I just had some salmon pate on toasts. Went for a little post-dinner walk, and now I'm back in my hotel room with Law and Order: SVU on the TV while I write this blog post.

Tomorrow we head north!

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Somebody, quick, let that baby out of there!

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It's not that I thought that the skull and crossbones motif came from nowhere, it's just that I never thought about where it came from, and it turns out it came from the practice of arranging an actual skull with actual femurs(?) crossed below it. People sure are weird about death!

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Now I know who to contact about yatches.

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Portugal, day 1

It's time for another European travelogue! This time I am spending a week in Portugal with my friend Michele, who actually speaks Portuguese, rendering this a very different experience from my last visit to Lisbon. We'll be spending a couple of days in Lisbon, then heading north to Viseu for festivities around the opening of a new museum, then back to Lisbon for a day before heading home.

We left Chicago on a 6pm flight last night and arrived in Lisbon at 8am. Our hotel rooms weren't ready yet, so we decided to cross a tourist destination off our list right away and headed to St. George's castle.

The castle is located on top of a hill and has lovely views of the city. There weren't any informational plaques about anything so I didn't really learn much other than "Castle old. King built castle. Moors? Maybe involved?" They did have one of those "identifying landmarks in the panoramic view" displays, which was located... behind an enormous shrub.

The castle was also home to a lot of peacocks, many of which were "piebald peacocks," meaning they had large white patches. I thought maybe this was vitiligo, but apparently people deliberately breed peacocks this way? Anyway, the peacocks and peahens also had babies of various ages with them, which was pretty cute.

After we were done at the castle, our hotel rooms were ready, so we took a much-needed nap. Then we hopped on one of those double-decker bus tours, which took us down to Belem and back.

It was nice to see so much of the city without having to walk it all, though the audio commentary was somewhat lacking. My British narrator said every sentence with the same exact intonation and produced some truly baffling pronunciations, like saying "amethysts" as "uh-MEE-thuh-sists." Shortly after that he was jarringly replaced by a different narrator, as though he had gotten fired partway through the job. But then that guy said "Argentinia" so I don't think there were exactly stringent standards these guys had to meet.

After the tour we had a brief rest in the hotel, then walked a couple of blocks to a little cafe for dinner. We got Alheira de Mirandela, which is a quasi-sausage that was invented by Portuguese Jews in the 16th century because everyone else was eating pork sausage and they didn't want to stand out. This particular version was the texture of a crab cake and was very salty, but went nicely with the rice on the side. And there was a fried egg on top, because why not.

Now it's 9pm and I'm in bed in my very nice hotel room, looking forward to a long night of sleep. More adventures tomorrow!

Bonus drain pipe at the castle: