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Published: July 20th 2010
Rooster
Symbol of Portugal. Everywhere and all of the same basic design.Walk into an 'Iper' in Portugal, as any self respecting self caterer who happens to be in Portugal will do at some time - we are actually secretly carrying out a world wide review of supermarkets of all kinds but that is another story - and you will immediately pick up the whiff. Walk down a road past a restaurant, almost any restaurant it seems, and you will smell it being cooked. Even now, around our camp, your nostrils will be quivering at the lovely aroma of bacalhau in its dried and cooking states. Cerverjas is simply Portuguese for beer and it goes well with bacalhau. 'Dios' is 2 in Portuguese and if you don't know what 'por favor' means then you haven't watched Fawlty Towers. And enough with the language lesson.
You obviously get used to seeing local specialities in supermarkets. We search them out, taking the view that, even though we are using up the world's resources by travelling, we can at least minimise our environmental footprint by eating local produce wherever we go. And there is always a chance that the best stuff will be on sale close to home. We had heard of the apparent Portuguese
Olld Aqueduct
well maintained and runs through the city obsession with smoked cod but that didn't prepare us for the sight of stacks of dried salted cod in and around the fish section of our first 'Iper'. We are talking stacks here, piles if you like, all sorted into grades that clearly mean a lot to the locals. Not being locals we sought the assistance of the friendly lady who clearly thought that buying from the cheapest pile - on special - was not the way to get the best bacalhau but who still helped us to sort through the pile to get a 'good' bit. Best of a bad lot I suspect but it was still the smallest pile, so possibly there are others like us.
It remains to be seen whether we can cook the stuff as well as they did in the restaurants we tried but we are, of course, going to give it a go. I have been buying local cook books as we have moved around. I know you can get most of this sort of thing off the net but I just like the idea of getting something written by someone local. A better souvenir than most for my money. Anyway, the
Great Footpaths
Some ideas for the driveway when we build another house only one we found for Portuguese cooking was 15 Euros for a 30 page book. Too rich for my blood. So we read it instead and memorised the bit about bacalhau. There are reputedly hundreds of recipes. It is salted fish after all so you can do most things with it and mix it up a bit here and there. Maybe that is its attraction for the Portuguese. We have eaten it fried, baked, shredded and fried up with shredded potato, rolled up into balls with bread crumbs and fried and mixed with egg and potato and fried. The latter is pretty good but could do with a dash of chilli, and that is likely to happen to it shortly. I am absolutely certain though that, whatever we do with it, someone else will have been there first.
And just before someone points out that our environmental credentials are actually shot by our purchase of bacalhau, we do know already. The cod is caught mainly by Norwegian fishers and is imported to Portugal. Doesn't seem to worry anyone here though. They seem to love the stuff.
We arrived in Portugal right at the time when Portuguese, and a
Ceramics
So, so many ceramics goodly proportion of the rest of Europe, are starting their holidays. We didn't plan it that way. You simply have to arrive somewhere when people are on holidays. Luckily, the overwhelming majority of the people here are just like they are in Australia. They head for the beach. We don't mind a good beach but are just as happy in a mountain or sitting beside a river. Too long in the tropics I suppose where everything at the beach either bites, stings or gives you nasty melanomas. We did try to get a decent camp in Porto - second largest city in Portugal and the home of port - but all of the camping options we could find were on the beaches and they were absolutely chock-a-block. Skinny roads, frantic drivers, hot day, no decent camping and we decided that the hills were a better option.
At a superficial level, and this is really a superficial view, Coimbra was all that Porto was not. Big wide streets in all but the 'old' city, good camping option at the municipal 'campismo' and a relative lack of people - or at least the large squads on the beaches.
A small
For Adam
Popular around here digression here. Apart from local cook books we also tend to pick up, where we can, books written by people from the places we visit, or at least about the places we visit. It adds to the experience to see places that others have described, even if for very different purposes. Henning Mankel and his books about the detective Kurt Wallander in Sweden, Michele Guitterez and his books about another detective in Florence, Vikram Seth and others whose names are just beyond recall for the moment from India, Orhan Pamuk from Turkey all come to mind. It is Jose Saramago, though, who makes me feel particularly inadequate. In his book 'Journey Into Portugal', this Portuguese writer tells his stories with such wit and obvious passion that you read to delight in the words. The fact that he is writing about a journey through Portugal is secondary. He did win a Nobel Prize for Literature. I haven't finished it yet but, if you are looking for a well written book by a man who loved words and his country, take a look.
And just one little quote from Saramago. Reflecting on a building that had been built by the Moors
Obvious
Large green bear in a park. No idea why but he fits. and added to by the Christians to produce a particularly fine building:
'It might rather have been an act of intelligence and sensitivity to combine their interplay of strength and grace. Instead, it was deemed simpler to chop off their heads, one lot shouting “At the Moors - in the name of St James” and the other lot: “In the name of Allah!”. What kind of conversation would Allah and Jehovah conduct on high, that's what we really need to know.'
People do tend to go on about churches - of whatever religion. They are listed in the attractions for places partly because they are often the most spectacular buildings around, reflecting the desire to give glory to one god or another or, possibly, reflecting the desire of well heeled people to buy their way to something. They often hold the best 'stuff' of a place and they are, at times, the only decent building around. Religion and Portugal do work together. In Coimbra, the Old Cathedral is about the most impressive building. The New Cathedral is higher up the hill but it is the old one that is worth the visit - in my humble and uneducated
School Projects
and not destroyed. Coimbra is that sort of place I think opinion. Coimbra is famous as one of the earliest university towns in Iberia with the university dating back to the 1200s. More impressive buildings there and a good view of the surrounding town.
From the Cathedrals and the old part of the University you descend through a relatively small, old and not all restored, historic quarter. Streets as skinny as a high priced model but considerably more attractive. Many tourist type shops and residences. Interestingly, it appears that some of the town's radicals live in this area. They have bedecked their balconies with flags and banners and, you might well punt, are responsible for at least a little of the considerable amount of political graffiti in and around the area and the town.
We never established whether Portugal has as extensive a system of municipal camping grounds as France but the one in Coimbra is well organised and will only get better as the trees grow. They have some already and we were able to camp in the shade, but there are many more planted. Give the place a few years and it will be an even better spot to spend a few days but the road is
Quality Graffiti
A lot to select from noisy and, if that is worry, then ear plugs may be useful.
The chances of finding a half way decent campismo within 10 kms of the centre of Lisbon seemed pretty abysmal after our experience of Porto and along the coast more generally. We were wrong. Took us a while to establish that though. We planned, in what seemed a good idea at the time, to work our way in from about 20 kms out and look over places to see if there was one that was both reasonable and had good transport access to the centre. There were a few but the transport access wasn't great. We decided to go for top and headed to the only one listed in our material, in Monsanto. Just 6 kms from the city centre and, with the maps on TomTom not so good on finding campismos in Portugal, not so easy to find. But we did and it was another municipal place. Well run, large sites, good price and with a bus from near the front gate into Belem and then the centre. I decided, on looking around and almost without a second thought, to lift my ban on some things
Maybe Better
need some tree lopping to get a proper look though. with the name Monsanto - never all though, not until they change their ways.
As I perhaps noted in previous posts, we are tiring a little of the normal fare of old centres with their tourist shops and the obligatory places of worship. We visited the Museu of Modern and Contemporary Art in Lisbon. The crowds were elsewhere and missed this facility which is, unaccountably, free. We would happily have paid admission, but were just as happy not to do so. It is a good thing for a government of any colour to do, to make such fine facilities available for the great unwashed. Others should take note and consider their responsibility to their citizenry.
I will not claim that every exhibit in the gallery was wonderful or even capable, by me, of being understood but we spent a very interesting, enjoyable and stimulating time for a few hours wandering the rather stark halls and galleries of this spectacular building. A collection of the work of two brothers, Octavio and Gustavo Pandolfo who are known by the name of Osgemeos was probably the pick for us. They are Brazilian artists, originally graffiti artists and have imaginations that drift
Montage
of political stencils. There is someone keen around here through dreams, magic and social criticism. Very glad we were lucky enough to see it. And totally unexpected. A Romanian bloke who is pissed off with one of the comments that Karl Marx made - they are both dead so they can blue with each other wherever they are - was given a great deal of space to put his view. Some of it was good, some not so, but he had an interesting concept and you could never question his commitment to the cause. Another exhibition called German Faces was of the photographs and other works of Collier Schorr an American artist - I am getting smarter and saved the pamphlet so that I can remember some of this information. Interesting and occasionally confronting. Overall, well worth the time we took. We congratulated ourselves as we walked away that we had seen something interesting and thought provoking rather than yet another collection of excellent works copying the same old religious education subjects in another available museum.
Apparently, Lisbon has just been voted or found to be one of the world's most livable cities. Not sure who decided that, but it was also our conclusion, after just a couple
You Can Run
but you can't hide of days. It is not as pretty as Prague, their statues are not as clean and shiny as other places and it is a little scruffier than Paris or even Rome - but it does have a bit of a Napoli feel to it, without being in the Palermo league. We used the Hop On Hop Off bus as a way to take in a good overall view and then carried on our investigations using the trusty 'foot Falcon'. Walked 10 kms in the heat before a tram beckoned and gave us a lift the last couple.
There is a heatwave in Europe at the moment. High 30s on the days we were in Lisbon. The heat wave didn't extend to Cabo San Vincent which is the south-western most point of Europe, or perhaps it is normally a lot colder there. Plenty of wind. The obligatory stalls flogging stuff to the tourists who are the only ones who come to such places were selling what looked like good quality knitted and crocheted goods at exceptionally good prices. So now you know where to go for your winter woollies. Other than that not a terribly exciting place. A bit like
Lady
Liked her face ends of the earth wherever you find them.
We had to make another decision. Pull up somewhere along the Algarve and experience what all of those retirees from England, and other northern places are said to love, or have a bit of a look, decide it is not really a place we need to spend time on and head for Spain.
And so we are now in Spain again, sweltering in Seville (in the 40s). If I get this loaded tomorrow and if the photo selection executive gets her act together, we will be up to date, pretty well.
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Robyn Kramme
non-member comment
Hello
Portugal sounds like a good place to visit. Maybe next trip! BTW-when I was reading up on Basques, I found out that Che Guevera was a Basque!! Stay safe.