Travel tales
Adventures from here, there and everywhere.
Portugal: the Algarve and Lisbon
Sep 19-Oct 9, 2018
We began our journey in Portugal at its southern-most end in the province of Algarve. It is rumored the Algarve has fantastic sunsets, warm ocean water, and natural red-rock wonders. All of the rumors are true! The beaches were genuinely some of the best I've seen. While there, we attended a four-day electronic music festival called BPM (put on by a Canadian crew!) held at various venues. My favorite was club NoSoloAgua, which is right on the water. You can lounge on a chaise lounge (the comfy, padded kind!) watching the sunset and listening to world-class DJs spin. After the festival, we stayed in Portimão a few more days to relax and see some beaches that were further away.
The Algarve's claim to culinary fame include dishes like grilled sardines, cod, and seabream; octopus salad; grilled garlic king prawns, and anything else you can pull out of the Atlantic ocean, with a side of boiled potatoes or rice and a salada mista: cucumber, tomato, lettuce, and onion individually flavored at the table with olive oil and vinegar. Fig cake for dessert (literally figs mashed into a cake) with a shot of "fire-water" from Monchique, a village in the nearby mountain, which is what other parts of Southern Europe would call rakia or grappa.
The last great thing worth mentioning about the Algarve is its people: they are welcoming to tourists, in good humor and always willing to help! Maybe it's the weather...
Next, we ventured to Portugal's capital, Lisboa, via train. After the laid-back feel of the south, Lisboa felt like a crazy place where no-one sleeps and there was constant life, so much that you ever hardly felt alone. A busker played the saxophone in the stairs beside our apartment beginning at noon until early evening. After that, the small cafe-turned-bar took over with its live act of local artists covering anything from rock or blues classics to Portuguese tune. Students, hipsters, and locals from the neighborhood drank beer on the steps outside the small venue lining the stairs in equal numbers beginning from Monday to Sunday.
Our tiny 18th century flat, once probably considered a large and distinguished piece of real estate, opened to the street below via two small balconies. The street was lined with a record store, a gelato shop, a Cabo Verde (Portuguese-African creole) restaurant, and a café-brunch shop (brunch is a new trend taking off in Europe). There were two ways to access our building: the pedestrian option that meant climbing four flights of stairs up the hill, or the street intersecting the stairs at 90 degrees.
When our balcony doors were open, we usually saw one of the locals or a construction worker renovating a nearby church occupying the bench across the street. After work, they would come down and grab a beer from the convenience store, sometimes angrily shouting at each other until one would pass out, snoring on the bench. Similarly, there was a trio of locals always stationed up the street, past the Cabo Verde restaurant, that interacted with passers by, usually beautiful women. We wished we knew what they were all saying as the conversations seemed lively and amusing.
While in Lisboa, we took two free walking tours, one of the downtown area which showed us all the important buildings and gave lots of historical context to the country, like the fact that Portugal was under a fascist dictatorship until the mid-70's. The more interesting tour, in my opinion, was of the famous Alfama district—-a once seedy place that was the only part of town that survived the devastating 1755 earthquake, which killed 70% of Lisboa's population. So, Alfama's streets are extremely narrow, confusing and all over the place. Its buildings are the size of matchboxes, divided into several floors with one entire family per floor! We confirmed this arrangement when we purchased ginjinha (pronounced "gin-gin-YA"), traditional home-made cherry liquor from a grandma that was selling it out of her living room window. One euro gets you a shot of strong (obviously she doesn't measure the alcohol content) and sweet cherry liquor. When 32 people pass through, she's made enough money to pay her rent. Yes, you read that correctly!
With all of these wonderful experiences under our belts, we packed our bags and headed to Portugal's real capital—-Madrid! Just kidding, Portugal was once briefly a province of Spain... not any longer! :)