Monsanto

My last stop in Portugal before heading back to Lisbon and then home (time to admit that these past few posts have gone live when I've already been back Stateside) was the incredible, tiny, mountaintop town of Monsanto, which got itself named "The Most Portuguese Town in Portugal," and is all houses made of stone, nestled among enormous boulders, with incredible views.

I'm home for about six weeks and then the plan is to head to Alaska for a couple months of work at the same research camp I worked at last year. See you again from there!

Food!

Okay, at long last, a post about food. I've been saving up the pics. 

When I told people I was going to Portugal, the one thing everyone said is that the food is fantastic. Which made me feel a little guilty because I wasn't so into it. Very heavy on the grease, meat, and cheese.

Our day trip to the Paiva Staircase included a "traditional Portuguese meal" of which the main course was two enormous dishes of meat and potatoes.

I did try a couple of traditional meals that I thought might be more up my alley, and the rice-and-bean stew I got in a plato do día was definitely delicious (and I tried the codfish fritters, but they weren't my favorite).

I also tried a veggie version of a francesinha, which seems like the Portuguese version of poutine, but I wasn't a big fan.

So other than that, I decided to just get food that sounded good to me, even if it wasn't Portuguese. And then, in general, I'd say the food was good. At a bar that I had no hopes for, I ordered a veggie crepe and got this beautiful work of art.

There were roasted chestnut carts in the main squares of the cities, an amazing winter treat that took me right back to living in Italy 24 years ago, the first and last time I ever had roasted chestnuts, which I very much love.

One night I made a little feast of them, along with a bit of cheese and fig/nut roll I'd bought at an artisanal store that day, plus an orange I took from a tree in a park that was heavy with them. (There were SO MANY oranges around, many of them just seemed to be falling from the trees and going to rot, people not even knowing what to do with all of them.)

Of COURSE I had to try the pastry that was mentioned in everything I read or heard about Portuguese food, the sweet, eggy pastel de nata.

The pastries, in general, are incredible.

Though I'm not much of a drinker, I LOVED ginja, a sour cherry liquor that they serve in little chocolate cups. Heaven.

And you can never go wrong with bread and olives.

The apex of food experiences the whole time I was there might have been the afternoon in Porto when my honorary Auntie S treated us to a port tasting, along with a cheese board and charcuterie. A.M.A.Z.I.N.G.

Peneda-Gerês National Park

 In an entire day out, many hours of driving and mild hikes to a couple of waterfalls, we only saw a tiny portion of this mountainous park. It will be at the top of my list of places to return to next time I'm in Portugal!

Braga

Ponte de Lima

 A very very lovely town that bills itself as the oldest in Portugal!

Oh, and Aunt J let me taste her vinho verde, the regional specialty. (BTW, there will be a whole post on food soon.)

Douro Valley

 Another day trip from Porto to the Douro Valley, where port wine comes from. The bridges of Régua were stunning.

I loved the scenery, as usual.

And mostly we might have gone to vineyards for tours and port tasting. I learned a LOT about port, and soon forgot most of it, so I'll just share one thing with you that I learned: The vineyards let spiderwebs accumulate on the barrels because the spiders take care of the mosquitoes.

I didn't manage to drink much of these, but they were all tasty.

Oh, and we got to take an hour-long cruise on the river, even!

It's supposedly routinely over 100 degrees F here in the summer, so I'm glad to have visited in the winter and for this spectacular vista.