An impenetrable language

When travelling I do like to learn a few a words of the language. You know: just enough to be polite, please, thank you, good morning, good night, two beers. 

Here in Portugal though I have totally given up, the language is incomprehensible, a mix of Arabic and Latin, spoken with a guttural sound that resembles Russian. Luckily most of the Portguese speak good English, so my inability to master this complex language has not been an impediment. All I have managed to grapple with is please - por favor - and only because it mirrors the Spanish - and obridaga - which is thank you when spoken by a woman, and just to confuse it is obrigado when spoken by a man. Four-year-old Siena got by with her version of obrigado, thanking everyone by saying, avocado, avocado.

Street art and graffiti are a popular modern communication form in Portugal.

They say that people who are good at languages also have a brain for music and mathematics. Well that is me damed then, if you have heard me sing you would agree. Tom and both boys refuse to let me sing in public for good reason, and my mathematics is equally poor. I have gotten by just adding 'O' to end of most words, or alternatively putting 'Al' in front of words when looking for an Arabic feel. 

Lack of language skills did not stop me ordering the local sour cherry brandy from this street stall. The brandy is served in tiny chocolate cups which you eat after drinking the sweet, strong liquor.

Forza Portugal is the only other expression I have retained, however it has limited use. The Portugese are certainly looking to Euro 2016 and many shops and houses have flags and Forza Portugal banners hanging to support the fancied national team. Cristiano Ronaldo is the great Portuguese hope; you may remember him from an earlier blog post. Portuguese football tops with Ronaldo's famous number 7 are also everywhere. 

The Portuguese make a nice take on the English Keep Calm tag.

Luckily we are leaving Portugal today for Spain so I can leave the language woes behind me. 

We came to Lisbon and they threw a party

We drove to Lisbon on Friday, which coincided with Portugal National Day. I had been researching this public holiday in an effort to find out the best way to celebrate it and I was sadly unable to get much information. As we drove into the quiet city on a warm afternoon I concluded that it must be a family day and everyone was at home enjoying family time. And then night happened!

Portugal was hit hard it the GFC and employment remains high and there has been mass emigration of the young, compounding the statistical aging of the population. So I was not surprised when we drove into Lisbon to find it somewhat decaying in parts. We are staying in one of the older quarters; narrow cobbled streets and 4-5-6 storied, elegantly dilapidated terraced houses with those cute Juliette balconies. Our apartment in Lisbon is just beautiful, ramshackle on the outside, spacious and comfortable on the inside. Lisbon was virtually destroyed in the 1755 earthquakes and subsequent fire and tsunami which killed an estimated 90,000 people. Like London after the Great Fire, Lisbon was rebuilt, but unlike London the new buildings were tested for their earthquake resistance by soldiers marching around them to simulate an earthquake. 

A typical Lisbon former glory

So when we ventured out for dinner and music I did not hold high expectations. But happily the streets that had been near empty in the middle of the day were alive with people, food, beer and music. Some late research tells me that Lisbon is party central; one of the best places for nightlife in Europe and significantly cheaper than other hip cities, as evidenced by the three beers and one gin we bought on the street for 8 Euros ($12 AUS). 

We are not sure if it like this all the time or only for National Day. Streets lined with makeshift charcoal grill restaurants and bars serving cheap drinks, no wonder it is packed.

The party went all night and as expected it is very quiet in town this morning. Tom waited before venturing out to find some fresh bread for breakfast and came back empty handed, I excepted most of the city will not wake until near noon. In the square outside our apartment some young backpackers are looking a bit bedraggled sitting at the table, I think they have been hard at it all night. 

Of course after every party someone has to clean up. Armies of green clad municipal workers attack the streets in the morning to clear the debris.

The party starts again Saturday afternoon with this trad jazz band playing at an outdoor cafe. 

In this uber cool city even the laundermats are cool.

A new respect for port wine

Here in the Duoro valley port wine is what they do. Remember port, that sticky sweet stuff we used to drink in the 70s until we discovered the sophistication of wooded Chardonnay. Murray Tyrrell may have rolled out a decent Chardonnay in the Hunter early on, but once Australian producers discovered the export market for Chardonnay we really served up some horrendous tosh under the name of Chardonnay. Back to port. I was introduced to port, as we called it back then, by Tom and one of our early trips was a wine tasting tour of the Rutherglen region. That is not the trip where we packed the tiny Galant up with eleven cases of wine and at one stage it looked like I would have to get the train home to make room for the wine - that was the Barossa valley trip a couple of years later. Tom and I reprised that Rutherglen trip earlier this year, thanks to a generous birthday gift from his sister Lesley, and we learnt that appellation change has now come to port, which we must now call Muscat or Topaque. But now we are in the home of port we can use that name again.

Port was invented when the British were having one of their many historic spats with the French which cut their access to wine supplies. The British looked to Portugal as an alternative supplier of wine, but found that the wine spoiled on the rough channel trip to England. So they added brandy to the wine as a preservative and hence port was born and the name port developed from the name of the country. This started a long and close relationship between the two countries that exists to this day and is the reason why many of the port producers here have English names like Taylor, Graham and Cockburn. 

The vineyards extend along the valley for over a hundred kilometres which makes for a very pleasant river cruise. The hills are incredibly steep and the vines are grown in every available space, the rows making a criss cross pattern across the hills, not unlike a Nick Kyrigos haircut. In this terrain the vines are tended by hand, no tractors or machines can get to these slopes.

I am disconcerted to learn that it is still legal to foot-tread grapes in Portugal for commercial wine production. Not many producers do it, imagine the labour costs (unless they have something like a 457 visa scheme and they can use cheap workers!). We visted one producer, Taylor, who continue to use this method for their most premium port. Why you ask?  We were told that the pips in the grapes can add a bitterness to the wine and foot-treading is the only method which does not break the grape pips.  I am not sure if I entirely believe this story and I wonder if it is just done for the tourists. 

Romantic tradition - or just plain tacky? Even the ancient Romans used grape presses. 

Up in the hills

You could not get a greater contrast from the beach up here in the hills in northern Portugal. We are in the Duoro valley, about one hour east of Porto. Think of the Yarra Valley and add the winding, circuitous roads of the Dandenongs. And as I walk around the gorgeous hill top villages with their tiny, cobled streets all I can think of is, when they have to buy a new fridge how do they get it delivered?

The house we are staying in this week is perched up the hill overlooking the river that snakes through the Douro valley which is famous for port wine production. Our villa is so remote, to locate it we were not given an address, rather we were provided with GPS coordinates. Luckily our English travel companions came from the UK in their car and picked us at Porto airport as I doubt any taxi would have brought us out here.

The steps from the road to the house.

Lugging the shopping in down the stone steps.

The view from the villa over the Douro river.

The villa may be remote, but it does have its own pool.

The villa also has its own citrus grove.

Our meanderings have taken us around the valley and through tiny village streets so small I often wonder if Dave's car will fit through, and then I realise that these are two way streets and we often have to drag the car into the rough to let cars going in the opposite direction to pass by. Car Bitch has been doing a brilliant job of getting us around though I find it hard to take her seriously when she sends us down one of the many cobbled streets which she says is a main road. Many a time her instruction to veer left takes us down a roadway so small and obscure that I am sure Dave has ploughed us into a private driveway.

This roadway is positively generous compared to some we have ventured down.

Even in the towns access to the steep houses and apartments is ridiculous - explain to me how a fridge gets delivered to these homes !

Goodbye to pale skin and European accents

This post was first titled Goodbye to pale skin and Pommy accents, but fearful of offending anyone (ie, Poms) I have toned it down. Anyway, we are mostly hearing Irish accents in the Algarve at present; the Poms -oops, I meant to say the English - come next month. It is all a matter of timing around the school holidays, but more on that Pandora's box later.

The view from our villa in Lagos offers a wide vista of dense holiday villas. I am sure that there are some people who live here, but generally these villas are on high rotation, turning around each weekend to welcome in a new family. Resorts and holiday apartments also abound, but being a bigger group we choose to stay in a villa.  The villas all have their own pools which makes for a very blue dotted landscape on Google Earth.

The streets are quaintly named after important personages, a hang over I think from Portugal's authoritian era. And just in case you are ignorant of the famous person who has lent their name to the street the signs helpfully tell you what worthy endeavour the street's namesake excelled in.

The expat English living here are keenly watching the Brexit vote - you know, will Britain stay in the EU: British Exit - got it now ? The debate in Britain centres around issues of security, migrants and jobs and the Daily Mail has cited a right wing political leader who has advised readers to vote for Exit to avoid the mass rapes that will be perpetrated by the hordes of incoming migrants. Conversely the debate among expats abroad centres on what happens to them if the UK leaves. They can now live and work in Europe with little restriction, if Britain votes to leave the EU I wonder if they realise they will have to queue at the airports with the rest of us 'aliens' in the Non-EU queues. 

As established in an earlier post this place gets ridiculously busy in summer, like most of the places the Northern Europeans visit to chase the sun. Some families wishing to avoid the school holiday crush do so by taking the kids out of school for their holidays. Authorities looking to curb this trend introduced penalties for parents who take their children out of school for holidays without the school's permission. It was a hot topic when we were in Britain and an Isle of Wight father who took his daughter out of school to go to Disney World in Florida has won a landmark case in the HIgh Court against the 

education authorities. Three million school days are lost in Britain each year in holiday absences, and frankly my sympathies lie with the teachers who have to juggle the demands of an already overpacked curriculum around the whims of demanding parents who are too precious to holiday with everyone else. To top it off the fine is only 60 quid so why not just pay up - this bloke has already saved a bucket by not having to pay high-season airfares. And while I am being judgmental - Disney World ?? Really. If you are going to remove your children from a week of precious education at least take them somewhere decent!

Fortunately our child travellers are not yet in school so we can avoid high-season travel without any guilt.

Some places are more able to cope than others with a deluge of tourists. We had the misfortune to head to the local restaurant for dinner just after a table of 18 sat down. All week we have gone past this tiny family run place and at best there have been only 2 diners so we thought we would show our support. We waited patiently while the large table was served, the delightful aromas of the char-grill salmon, tuna, chicken and sardines enticing to sit out the long wait. Luckily the TV was playing the Portugal England soccer friendly and we enjoyed loudly supporting the local team, which may have been a bit annoying to the largely English clientele. Sometime into the second half of the game (yes, by this time we have waited an hour) our waiter approached ready to take our order and we were eager to  share with him our request, only to be told that the only food left was one serve of chicken, two serves of mackerel and pizza. Oh well. 

So today we leave the south of Portugal and head to the north to travel through the port wine region and catch up on some history in Lisbon. We will be meeting our English friends who have travelled from Birmingham to journey with us on this next part of our journey. Let's hope they have not read this post, or if they have that they do not take toooo much offence.

We departed the Algarve region via Faro, a quiet town wth no beach, and therefore few tourists. Faro still has its medieval old town in the centre and we wandered through the peaceful quiet streets. Being Sunday the locals were at home enjoying family time and the town was eerily quiet, which was not unpleasant. After siesta these chaps and their dog ventured out to enjoy their card game in the local park - it was nice to end our visit to the south with this little snippet of slower paced Portugal.

Portuguese tarts for breakfast

Pastel de nata are Portuguese egg custard tarts are just yummy. They were first created by 18th century Portuguese monks who had lived in France and were hankering after a pastry. Convents and monasteries used a lot of egg whites to starch their clothes and the nun's habits and they had to find a use for the left over yolks, resulting in the abundance of sweet cakes and pastries in the country. I had tried one of these at home and was underwhelmed, but the Portuguese ones are scrumptious. The Portuguese introduced the tarts into Macau and from there a version has become popular in China, which explains those egg tarts you see in Melbourne Chinese restaurants, popular at Yum Cha, but which I have always found some what rubbery. No problem with that here, these yummy tarts figure as a daily staple on the menu at Casa Duke, and are very popular at breakfast.

Which brings me to the reason why I have not set fingers to keyboard for a few days; summer holidaying is such hard work. Relentless eating, drinking and sitting by the pool. 

The family travelling party have re-grouped on the Algarve in Portugal for a week in Casa Duke, our rented villa. The Algarve is Melbourne's Mornington Peninsula, just ever so slightly warmer, with fine, cloudless days. Well, at least that has been our lucky experience and if I am honest the Atlantic in May is as cold as Port Phillip Bay. The Algarve is on the Portuguese south coast and is one of Europe's most popular tourist destinations, the population of 400,000 swells to 1.7 million in the high season, and over the summer months an estimated 7 million visitors will holiday in the region. We are so lucky to be here in the shoulder season when there are still seats in the restaurants. And before the Brits come in hoards to play golf and down cheap Mojitos by the jug. 

Sadly we are not in the Algarve to enjoy the Sardine Festival which is the local highlight in late summer. Thousands of people visit the festival which is on for a whopping 10 days. Sardines are a part of the fabric of the area, although the canning industry has long closed down. According to a TripAdvisor review the Algarve Sardine Festival is the best sardine festival in the world, though you have to wonder if there is much competition.

Five reasons to visit Portugal

Cristiano Ronaldo and the Portuguese football team - enough said !