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 good shots left there will be one more 🙂 As always hope you enjoy!

Lisboa, Alfama. We didn’t try neither Sangria nor Caipirinha. Wine is quite cheap even ordered in a restaurant (but not as cheap as in Sicily). I like Sangria though, guess I have to visit Portugal again to try the Portuguese one

Another shot of the great Mosteiro do Jéronimos in Bélem. The entry was a couple of Euros and it was very much worth it. It was great. Our (first) hostel was around the corner practically. The tramway line leads straight into the city centre, our daily commuter. 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 shop and handcraft, even shoe cleaners. At the same time it is not stressful at all like 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. Actually 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 portwine in the end isn’t it?).

So what is actually the story behind portwine? It is stronger and sweeter to be more durable during long ship journey’s. One day an englishman came to Porto, liked the local wine and took a bottle as 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 the production and shipping of the wine. Now this small local tradition became truly global. By the way you can visit these distilleries – like the above Sandeman – and taste all the wines! The 10 years old Sandeman was my personal favorite

Let’s stay with food 🙂 Usually I don’t like food pictures – we see enough of them in advertisement and they make 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 amazing good deadly Francesinha.

So what is it? It is a toast with different kind 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 of it is kind of great: In the fabulous 1920s there was once a man from Portugal traveling to Paris liking 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 very thin 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 of the 25 of April in Lisboa. It is a magnificent bridge and I talked already about it in a previous post. I guess the view speaks for itself.