Portugal Part IV

Hey! I hope you all have a great week so far! Actually, I wanted to bring the Portugal series to a worthy end with this post, but as there are some excellent shots left, there will be one more 🙂 As always, I hope you enjoy it!

Lisboa, Alfama. We didn’t try either Sangria or Caipirinha. Wine is relatively cheap, even ordered in a restaurant (but not as cheap as in Sicily). I like Sangria, though; I must revisit Portugal to try the Portuguese one.

Another shot of the great Mosteiro do Jéronimos in Bélem. The entry was a couple of Euros and was very much worth it. It was great. Our (first) hostel was practically around the corner. The tramway line leads straight into the city center, our daily commuter. It’s not always as modern as this one, sometimes cranky and out of wood, but even more charming!

A busy street in Lisboa. As I wrote in previous posts, Lisboa is interesting because it is very much European in every sense of the word but also kind of out of time and laid down a bit like a living anachronism. You don’t have a McDonalds and H&M on every corner (I didn’t say there are none of them ;)). There are many small shops and handcraft, even shoe cleaners. At the same time, it is not as stressful as Italy (♥) or other southern countries sometimes tend to be.

Self-examining seagulls. You are pretty – don’t worry.

One of many traditional wine distilleries in Porto. Well, that is not entirely correct. The distilleries are on the other side of the river in Gaia. On paper, it is an independent city, but most consider it part of Porto anyway (and the wine is called port wine in the end, isn’t it?).

So, what is actually the story behind Portwine? It is firmer and sweeter to be more durable during long ship journeys. One day, an Englishman came to Porto, liked the local wine, and took a bottle as a souvenir to England. It turned out to be a hit, and Englishmen – being Englishmen – did start to settle down in Porto and make businesses out of the production and shipping of the wine. Now, this small local tradition has become truly global. You can visit these distilleries – like the above Sandeman – and taste all the wines! The 10-year-old Sandeman was my personal favorite.

Let’s stay with food 🙂 Usually, I don’t like food pictures – we see enough of them in advertisements, and they make you hungry – but unfortunately, I guess I have to make you hungry right now. Because I feel like a Portugal recapture could not be complete without a picture of a gorgeous, gargantuan, excellent, good, deadly Francesinha.

So what is it? It is a toast with different kinds of meat in a cheese crust dunked into tomato/wine sauce (with about 2331859 calories). I’ve never heard of it before, and the story behind it is kind of great: In the fabulous 1920s, a man from Portugal once traveled to Paris and liked all the beautiful girls there (get it). That was a contrast for him as he only knew the not-so-outgoing (very catholic country) and skinny Portuguese girls. So he invented the Francesinha – small French – to make the Portuguese girls gain some weight and make them all hot 🙂 I guess it worked out quite well.

In the background, you see the bridge on April 25 in Lisboa. It is a magnificent bridge, which I discussed in a previous post. I guess the view speaks for itself.