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British Mensa Travel Special Interest Group |
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Christmas
in Portugal by Mike Cruickshank First impressions of Albufeira in southern Portugal: appalled. It looks like an over-developed version of Blackpool with whitewash and palm trees. If this is Portugal, then stuff it. In all fairness, being a lover of things Spanish, Portugal comes off second best anyway. 23 Dec Still not sure about the place. At times it makes me think of an overworked trollop - at first glance quite attractive, but on closer inspection rather the worse for wear. After a lengthy walk through the town, we had lunch (cod, grilled sardines, piri piri chicken, 2 beers, mineral water and a lemonade for just over 6000 escudos) and went down to the car rental office to pick up our car. Most of our fellow guests seem to be Mancunians. English is spoken widely and well. English channels are available on Sky TV and English films shown on the local channels tend to be subtitled. Christmas Eve We went first to the open air market at Loule. It had quite a variety of lace, leather goods, clothes, soft toys and souvenirs. A leather purse set me back 900 escudos. From there we set off for Evora. Once we had left the coastal strip behind, we passed through some mountains into rolling open country. The weather was perfect, a calm day with a cloudless blue sky. The countryside was very pleasant, groves of olives and cork oak alternating with large tracts of open fields. Some of these were under corn; others had been freshly ploughed. There was very little livestock about, apart from small herds of goats and cattle in the vicinity of the occasional farmhouse. I suspect that lack of water in summer months doesn't make livestock farming on a large scale viable here. Farmhouses and villages are few and far between in this area. Passing through one village, the road was almost blocked by a motor accident. Judging by the size of the village, almost the entire population had turned out as spectators. Certainly, there were enough of them to suggest an almost complete lack of television or any other form of entertainment. Most of the roads are very good, but some are awful, the most badly potholed ones running alongside new roads under construction. We arrived in Elora mid afternoon and, after much toeing and frying, asking for directions and fraying of tempers, found our hotel. The Paeans O Aberrance, which had originally been a convent, is up a narrow street in the town centre, not far from the cathedral. The town, on a more leisurely inspection, proved to retain a considerable medieval charm, in total contrast to the rent-a-crowd Costa atmosphere of Albufeira. Many of the shops and stores were open for the benefit of last minute shoppers, but most of the restaurants were closed for the holiday period. So our evening meal wasn't too impressive - grilled pork fillet, prawn piri-piri and boiled cod. This, with a bottle of wine, two Cokes and two coffees came to just over 6000 escudos (approx £25). Christmas morning Up at 8.30 for breakfast - coffee and rolls. It was a lovely spring-like morning, not a cloud in the sky and tresses of mist stretching out over the valley. After breakfast, a short walk and then up to the cathedral for Mass at 11 o'clock. A very poor turnout, with many of the congregation being elderly. The service, too, was unimpressive - not a patch on the Pilgrim Mass at Santiago of Compostela, which is admittedly pure ecclesiastical theatre and plays to a packed house every day. We went from the cathedral to the pousada (the local equivalent of the Spanish parador) next door for lunch. I had leg of wild boar while the other two had cod. They didn't think much of the cod, but I enjoyed the boar. It had a strong rather garlicky taste to it. The local cheese had a powerful tang to it. After a quiet afternoon strolling round the town, the evening meal was a cafe snack. The cafe was of the old fashioned variety - if the floor is full, please use an ashtray. The clientele was very mixed, from a smart young couple to an old down and out. Sitting against a wall and sporting a superb head of grey hair and a magnificent beard, he was having an animated conversation with an invisible partner, rather like an Old Testament prophet having an off day and giving the Almighty a load of verbal. 26 Dec. We left Elora just after breakfast. Getting out of town proved a lot easier than getting into it, and we found the Lisbon road with no difficulty. It was a pleasant drive, with a noticeable ground frost whitening the fields until well into the morning. By the time we reached Lisbon the visibility was poor, partly due to the weather, partly due to farmers burning off stubble. It was the first cloudy day we had had. The motorway took us through a toll gate and over the Tagus by way of a suspension bridge a mile and a half long, which took us right into the town centre. Finding a hotel involved the usual mystery tour, long and irritating. We finally booked into the Avenida Palace Hotel near the main railway station. After a snack lunch of the tapas variety, we set out to find the old quarter of the Alfalma. On a cold afternoon, it brought home with a vengeance the expression "slumming". The area had once been prosperous but had come down in the world considerably since then. Even on a cold day, the smell of some of the smaller streets was pretty bad. In summer, it must have been intolerable. The only bright spot was a panoramic view of Lisbon from the top of the hill. The poor visibility meant that the modern blocks of offices and flats towards the outskirts were almost invisible. This evening, after a mediocre meal at a Chinese restaurant, we went to a cafe for beer and toast. The Portuguese toast comes in thick doorstep slices, a trait the Japanese copied when they imported bread from the Portuguese missionaries. 27 Dec. Left Lisbon this morning and went 30 km north west to Sintra to see the Moorish castle there. We eventually got there, along a long narrow hairpin road up the mountainside. Exploring the ruins, which date from the 8th and 9th centuries, made me realise just how totally unfit I am. The views over the surrounding countryside were superb. In its heyday, before the advent of artillery, the castle must have been well nigh impregnable. From there back to Albufeira, stopping halfway back for lunch. 29 Dec. A lazy day yesterday, just mooching around. This morning was spent packing, followed by a last minute bit of sight seeing. We went up into the hills to the village of Alto. Most of that was closed. We handed the car back mid afternoon and went out to look for lunch. The only place open was a place run by Britons and serving English food. The steak and chips and cod and chips were awful, a clear case of culinary thrombosis (a clot in the kitchen). It was easily the worst meal we'd had in Portugal, or anywhere else for a very long time. By bus to
Faro airport. Our flight was delayed yet again, for 20 minutes this time,
and was rather bumpy at times, but got us back to Gatwick just after 10pm.
On reflection, this was not a trip I would repeat. Albufeira represents
for me mass tourism, which I do not like at all. |