Splash!

OMG, guess what just happened?! I fell, full-body, backwards into a rock pool. Like the whole of me, Annie Field, WAS IN A ROCK-POOL. Fully clothed- jeans, new “hiking” shoes, t-shirt and hoodie. Bloody soaked through. There were no injuries, luckily and though my state was/is slightly tipsy I had the forethought to give Mick the camera as I scrambled over the rocks. Phew!

This afternoon we drove from Porto, north to the Galicia region in North West Spain. We are staying in a ridiculously cheap bungalow about 150 metres from the beach, hence my rock pool enthusiasm. As well as being famous for Pimientos de Padron this coastal region is famed for having the BEST seafood in the world. Here’s hoping.

Back to Porto for a moment. We attended our second football (soccer!) match while there. FC Porto V CSKA Sofia (Bulgaria) at Estadio do Dragao. I actually never blogged about the first, which we attended in Spain. Valencia V Vila Real. Both were a heap of fun and confusion.

The Spanish match was held in Vila Real, about an hour north of Valencia (south east coast). We bought the cheapest tickets available, the “away” end, which landed us with a bunch of passionate Valencia supporters behind a cage at one end of the stadium. We weren’t sure who the cage was there to protect but I’m certain the eight or so police in riot gear were only there to cheer on Valencia.

We drank beer and munched on salted pepitas (pumpkin seeds) like the locals and learnt a few swear words along the way. If somebody calls your mother a burro or a puta, feel free to sock em’ one.

The Portuguese match was in some ways more exciting. It was a Europa League match and I think the competition between two different countries added to the intensity and wild enthusiasm from the crowd.

There were drummers to lead the FC Porto fan club in their cheers, beating out a rhythm that reverberated around the stadium. At one stage the Bulgarians removed their shirts in a show of support (or something), which prompted a third of the police on hand to descend on them. There was even a pitch invader, who got a roaring applause from the audience.

Alas, no Portuguese swear words. The language is a tricky one, influenced by a billion different things. That sounds Russian or Eastern European. We’ve found it very confusing, it’s almost as though you read something on paper, think of the extreme opposite of how you would pronounce it in English, twist that around beyond recognition, spice it with a Russian huskiness and there! That’s Portuguese.


Live long and prosper,
Annie XO

If I was a head shorter, I could be Portuguese.

Yes, the following three rumours are true. We are slowing down, being bad tourists and getting lazy. Our time in Europe is grinding to a halt and, strangely enough we aren’t too fussed by it. We are still having a grand old time discovering new cities, new cuisine and new booze but after so long on the road the things that weary us seem to be outweighing the golden moments.

We are now about 80 days and 13000kms into the Western Europe leg of our trip. To experience the places we wanted to visit, our time has been split something like this, four nights destination A, pack up, drive 4 hours, unpack, four nights destination B, pack up, drive 4 hours, unpack... Repeat. It’s very taxing, mainly because we are not talking about unpacking two suitcases, we are talking a large sedan worth of stuff. A regular modern day gypsy caravan.

Though neither of us are particularly Christmassy, we are both feeling a little more homesick (for want of a better term) as people back home gear up for the holiday season.

Enough moping, in two and a half weeks we drop the car back off in Paris, pick-up a final felafel in Le Marais, spend a brief three days in London before hopping a plane to India. Then Melbourne bound on the 4^th of Feb (for those at home keeping tabs, we have cut HK off the itinerary, send money).

Now back to the good stuff. Since our last blog we have driven from Jerez in Spain, to the Algarve region of southern Portugal, where we stayed six nights (exception to the rule) in fairly rugged farmland. Our host was an eccentric Belgian/Sth African/Spaniard who was in desperate need of a good scrub. The property was beautiful, our favourite feature being the double fronted glass fireplace that divided the main living area and the bedroom.

While staying there we visited a sad looking bird sanctuary, apparently the site is an important one for winter migratory birds. To us it felt like a lot of money had been spent setting up the facilities, maybe twenty years ago, but since then funding cut and the entire sanctuary fallen into disrepair. I hope this is not representative of other important ecological sites in the country.

One afternoon we tried to walk from our cottage to the coast. It turns out that a lot of Portugal’s roads aren’t mapped on Google maps or our cars GPS. So without our usual pre-Google-mapped instructions or a map (paper maps are for old people) we headed south, backtracking often when we realised a “road” was actually somebody’s driveway. Amongst the awe-inspiring veggie gardens, the vocal dogs and a curious array of poultry; we saw a man knocking pine cones off a large tree. Fresh pine nuts (without the pine mouth) from the back yard? Sounds divine. I wonder how long the trees take to reach maturity.

After the Algarve we drove north through central Portugal to the Alentejo region. The landscape on our way there was dotted with eucalypts, we wound down the windows to enjoy their familiar scent. The roadsides were patterned with alternating groves of cork oaks and olives, herds of cattle and flocks of happy looking sheep.

Alentejo is also one of Portugal’s major wine growing regions. Our very gracious hosts even had their own vineyard (see review at end).

From there we drove north again to Porto, home of... you guessed it- PORT! My beau’s favourite post-dinner tipple. We only visited one of the major Port caves, Graham’s. They are owned by the Symington group, who also owns Dow’s, Warres (pronounced Wars) and a few others that I hadn’t heard of.

Of the six ports we tried our favourites were:

Dow’s 1985 Vintage, C- ribena-esque, N- rum-raison chocolate, touch of caramel, P- amazing acid and fruit, blackcurrant & cocoa

Graham’s 20 Year Old Tawny, C- Deep amber, N- coffee, treacle, butterscotch, P- buttered popcorn

In Alentejo we drank (amongst other things!) Herdade de Maroteira Syrah 2008, approx €18 (a princely sum for a bottle in Portugal) - C- Inky garnet, N- liquorice, dark chocolate (70% cocoa), incense-like spice, P- sweet raspberries, cocoa & burnt toffee, upfront fruit and soft tannin.

All Shook Up

We have just finished dinner. We cooked up fresh seafood we bought at the Mercado Abastas this morning. It took us three laps of the seafood section to pick a stand that had a good selection of everything we wanted and a person manning it that didn't look too intimidating. Seafood is shockingly cheap here and we were blown away by the sheer size of some of the offerings. We saw a section of swordfish that would have easily been 30cm in diameter, lots of big tuna and whole sharks. I'll take some photos on our next visit.

I started by sautéing finely chopped garlic, leeks and dried chili in a decent amount of extra virgin olive oil. Then we added pipis, mussels and half a glass of cava. After letting that simmer for a minute or two I added sliced pieces of squid and half a tin of diced tomatoes. A minute or two before serving I chucked in some hacked up pieces of sea bream (neither of us have filleted a fish before and we only had a chef's knife on hand) and freshly minced parsley and lemon rind. Oh there was also some al dente pasta thrown in but that kinda got lost in the mix.

Not to toot my own horn too much, but I have to say it was pretty darn good! My enjoyment of the meal was probably elevated by the top soundtrack, we were joined by Elvis, Roy Orbison, Buddy Holly and Little Richard.

We drank Juve y Camps Reserva de la Familia, Brut Cava, 2007 €13. C- pale straw, fine but not very persistent bead, N- very savoury notes of yeast capsicum, P- very dry, hint of green apples.

Rebañar

At 10 pm last night we headed out for dinner. We are trying to get into the rhythm of Spanish life and the rhythm here is in distinct contrast to our Melbourne “clocks”. Though not too dissimilar to Italy, the lateness of the Spanish dinner time is hard to get used to.

Restaurants tend not to open until nine in the evening and even then, nine is considered “tourist early”; locals preferring to eat from ten until midnight. The people we’ve spoken to about it, mostly expats running holiday rentals, tell us it makes much more sense in the summer time, when the sun makes it too hot to eat earlier. We also keep forgetting the 3-4 hour lunch break in the late afternoon, which closes shops and most tourist destinations. I’m sure by the time we figure it all out; it will be time for a new country and a rule book.

Back to last night’s meal. We googled (often problematic, as you sometimes get stuck at tourist traps) and found a restaurant called Bodeguita de Boca. Jerez is a small town, so it didn’t take long to find it. The blurb online said that it was a friendly restaurant run by a mother and son. They weren’t wrong. As we ordered a selection of hot tapas from the menu, our host yelled out “MAMA! CINCO TAPAS CALIENTE!” into the kitchen.

The five tapas we had were, a Spanish omelette with jamón and mushrooms, a rich and tender piece of bull’s tail, a sweet red pepper stuffed with tuna, a melt-in-your-mouth piece of Iberian pork cheek and chicken nuggets. As the son had selected the tapas for us, as he served each one he described in Spanish and one or two English words what they were. As the last was served we looked to him for explanation “nuggets from my mother” he said, we looked at him amused and searching for more information, he simply said “chicken”. Much giggling ensued, both from us and him, not helped by the fact that he repeated the nugget line a few times, just for laughs.

He taught us a new word whilst he cleared the table, rebañar, which means the scraping of the last delicious morsels from a plate or bowl. Putting it into practise we sopped up the last of the hearty sauce that accompanied the pork cheek with slices of thick white bread. Yum.

Xo