A Blissful Blur of Sunshine and Steak Sandwiches
September 19-30, 2016
Portugal has everything we like most going for it: delicious food, breathtaking nature, nice people, great weather, and interesting cities. We didn't know it had all of these things before we went, though, as this was another country we visited largely due to Mazz attending a conference there for work. To be honest, we didn't know much of anything about Portugal before we decided to go, but a quick study of what the country had to offer made us excited at the possibilities.
The conference took place in Lisbon over a week in late September, which, unbeknownst to us, turned out to be the ideal time to visit. It can get very hot in Portugal in the summer, and also crowded with out-of-towners, so late September offers a pleasant decrease in both temperature and tourists from the busy season. Mazz's work fronted the bill for our Airbnb apartment for the week, which was located at the top of a big hill within walking distance of the old town. We arrived on a Monday, and the scientific program didn't commence until Wednesday, giving us some time to explore before Mazz had to get to work.
We got off our plane and found that the caretaker for the Airbnb had tried to contact us hours before, right as we were getting on our flight (and not the day before as she was supposed to). She had apparently been waiting at the apartment all day for us, and passive-aggressively convinced us over the phone to take a taxi into town instead of the subway so she wouldn't have to wait longer. We obliged, not knowing the taxi would cost us €30 instead of €3 apiece for public transportation. Mazz, showing unknown restraint, resisted the urge to chew the woman out for wasting our money and being insufferable.
The first thing we always look up when researching a new place is what they eat there. The special food of Lisbon is a blue-collar steak sandwich called a Prego, and its pork counterpart, the Bifana. These sandwiches are thinly pounded meat served on a chewy, buttered roll, sometimes with grilled garlic, and always with a vibrantly yellow, semi-sweet mustard available on the table. The name Prego literally means, "Nail" in Portuguese. In the olden days, these sandwiches used the toughest, cheapest cuts, offering poor workers a way to buy a decent meal with some meat that they could afford. The tough steak was pounded heavily to make it chewable, and the sound of this hammering in the back of the restaurant led to the name. We had a list of places throughout the city we wanted to try these sandwiches, so we made O Trevo in the trendy Barrio Alto neighborhood our first stop.
Priced around €2 for a small sandwich, it was easy to order several types and see what was best. We ended up preferring the Bifanas over the tougher steak Pregos at O Trevo, though both were delicious. Each table had a bottle of hot chili oil as a condiment that matched perfectly with the sweet mustard. With small beers costing only €1, we were in love with Portugal right off the bat
After dinner we wandered around the neighborhood checking out the buildings and night markets until we stumbled on an interesting looking wine bar. We ordered a bottle of Vino Verdhe and looked longingly at the Spanish jamóns hanging from a pole above the bar. Some German baby boomers were getting stinko across from us, and they provided good entertainment while we sipped our tasty wine.
The next morning we meandered through our neighborhood and made our way down the hill to the metro station to look for someplace to have breakfast. The pastry of Lisbon is called a Pastel de Nata, a little custard cream tart in a flaky pastry shell. We found a café and ordered a pair of them, along with coffees and more Bifanas and Pregos. For the most part, whenever we were hungry and found a place serving these sandwiches, we ordered them.
Sintra is situated about an hour outside of Lisbon by train. This picturesque Portuguese town is brimming with palaces, extravagant residences, and decorative gardens, enough so that seeing it all in a day is virtually impossible. We chose to focus on the Quinta da Regaleria, A UNESCO World Heritage Site and the most popular destination within Sintra. Built between 1898 and 1912 by Carvalho Monteiro, these sprawling grounds are an opulent testament to having so much money that you can make your fantasies into realities. There's a palace, a pristine chapel, a lake, a labyrinthine grotto. Walkways go underground through caves and up empty wells to beautifully manicured gardens and stone forts. According to the brochure they handed us, "The garden, as an image of the Cosmos, is revealed through a succession of magic and mysterious places." With areas named, "Portal of the Guardians," "Promenade of the Gods," and "The Terrace of the Celestial Worlds," Quinta da Regaleria is the real-life manifestation of every prog-rock concept album ever created. Kirb heard birds cooing in the trees and could have sworn they sounded just like Geddy Lee.
After shopping for some gifts that were representative of Sintra's fantastic tile work, we made our way back into Lisbon as the sun was setting and enjoyed the view from the waterfront downtown. Along the way we found a store selling what we thought were fried cheese balls, called Pastel de Bacalhau. Fried cheese is usually cool, so we bought a few and brought them along with us to the water. We found out quickly that they contain a pungent mixture of codfish and goat cheese, and were so rich Mazz couldn't even finish hers. They were also filling enough neither of us wanted a proper dinner after, so we decided to gather ingredients for a nice Portuguese snack dinner instead. We stopped by a specialty shop on the way home that sold a huge variety of port, Portuguese sausages, and cheeses, asked for recommendations, took all the advice, and enjoyed a righteous spread back at the apartment.
Mazz had to start going to the conference the next day, so Kirb wandered abound the Alfama neighborhood looking at old buildings, reading a book on a cliffside overlooking the ocean, and eating steak sandwiches. When the conference finished in the evening, we met up in front of the Igreja de Santo António in Alfama and found a quaint little bar around the corner that was selling carafes of sangria. Sounds nice, doesn't it? We were unaware when we sat down though that this bar was directly across from the area where all the neighborhood garbage men corral all the garbage cans at that exact time of day and lock them up in a flimsy building so no one, I don't know, steals the garbage cans or something. Those guys sure had a lot of garbage cans!
From there we decided to make our way up to St. George's castle, which is perched on top of a hill overlooking the entire city. Some brilliant entrepreneurs were selling "wine with a view" inside the castle grounds, so we bought some overpriced Vinho Verde to enjoy while we soaked up the panorama. This wine came with plastic souvenir wine glasses that we carted around with us for most of the rest of our trip, thinking that we would definitely get some further use out of them whenever we wanted to drink Vinho Verde out in some spectacular nature. Eventually we threw them away because we weren't using them, only to find ourselves in the exact scenario we had saved them for with no wine glasses very next day. After getting our fill of the spectacular city views, it was time for dinner.
We had watched the Lisbon episode of No Reservations while planning the trip and both wanted everything to do with the seafood restaurant O Ramiro featured on the show. Knowing that the lines get massive and, fittingly, they don't take reservations, we showed up early and were able to make it in without too much of a wait. Though the prices are steep, especially compared to eating Bifanas all day, the quality of seafood served here is unbeatable. We started by ordering some clams in garlic and white wine and grilled tiger prawns, which were served with a large helping of fresh bread to soak up all of the juices. The people at the table next to us ordered a whole crab, which was served with the legs on the side and the shell open with all of the unappetizing-looking, soupy bathroom-brown "crab butter" proudly displayed as the centerpiece. Mazz saw this glorious mess and at that moment wanted it more than perhaps anything she has ever wanted in her life. It struck her to the core. She knew that she had to have that magnificent pile. She enthusiastically added it to our order, and while Kirb was a bit more skeptical as its criticalness, he happily kept quiet and let Mazz enjoy her brown crustacean goop spread over many, many pieces of bread. Mixed in with the pricey seafood fare, the menu had a €4 Prego, which we obviously had to try. When we asked for it to come out first, the waiter firmly informed us, "No. That is dessert." Honestly, we don't think there is a sweet in the world that would have been a better "dessert" after a barrage of fresh seafood than that steak sandwich was.
The next morning while Mazz was learning about more science things, Kirb set off to the other side of town to find Pastéis de Belém, the originator of the Pastel de Nata and supposedly still the single greatest version of the pastry. Their website explains: "In 1837, the baking of the 'Pastéis de Belém' began, following the ancient 'secret recipe' from the monastery. Passed on and known exclusively to the master confectioners who hand-crafted the pastries in the ‘secret room,’ this recipe remains unchanged to the present day." Kirb waited patiently in a line that went down the block until he was funneled into a crowded entryway, ordered a 6-pack of pastries, and was handed a paper tube full of goodies that were still warm from the oven. He took them to a sunny park bench, sprinkled one with the included cinnamon packet, and took a bite of pure bliss. Though we had eaten Pastel de Nata at several other places already, none of them held a candle to how perfectly flaky and creamy this one was. The hype was true; this was a singularly excellent pastry and worth the pilgrimage.
Gorged-out on custard tarts, Kirb walked to a park by the water and took a nap in the grass in front of the Torre de Belém for the rest of the afternoon.
This day of culinary delights continued unexpectedly when we chose a restaurant at random in our neighborhood to have dinner. Not far from our Airbnb was a small Brazilian restaurant called Terras Gerais Bistro, operated by a husband and wife team with him running the front and her cooking the food. We were stunned at how delicious our dishes were - even simple rice and black beans were exceptional. The feijoada, a black bean stew with every kind of pork imaginable, was one of the most immensely flavorful things Kirb has ever put in his mouth. We gushed to the owner about how much we enjoyed the food, and he had us write in an adorable book that explained how much he and his wife love sharing their food with the world. The book was filled with notes of diners from dozens of countries who were amazed by their outstanding, totally unassuming restaurant.
The days passed in a blissful blur of sunshine and steak sandwiches and Vinho Verde. The finest Prego we found in Lisbon was on our final night at Cantinho do Avillez, the Portuguese comfort-food restaurant of acclaimed chef José Avillez. His restaurant Belcanto has two Michelin stars and is listed in the top 100 restaurants in the world, so we were happy to eat any sandwich he offered. Served with an egg on top but otherwise no more gussied up than any of the other dozen sandwiches we'd eaten in Lisbon, the version at Cantinho do Avillez was Prego perfected. The idea for the sandwich is sound whether you buy it in a bodega or a fancy restaurant, but superior ingredients and a skilled hand can turn an otherwise cheap sandwich into something sublime.
Did you know that you can't buy beer inside of Portuguese soccer games? We didn't know that. Turns out, they stopped serving alcohol there because people were getting too drunk and causing problems, so it was a good thing we found some on the street before attending a match between Sporting Lisbon and Estoril Praia. Beers or no, the entire crowd chanted something to the tune of La Bamba for basically the entire game. The home team won! We took off with a few minutes to spare to try and beat the crowds and make it onto the train.
The next morning in a bakery we saw on TV that in those few minutes that we had left early 3 more goals were scored. Oops. We were in a bakery that morning, yet again, because by this point of the trip we had become really fond of Portuguese pastries. Berliners can't make decent baked goods to save their lives (so heavy handed), so we were really taking advantage of the wide variety of delicious treats available here. From the old town we hopped on a train and made our way south to the Algarve.
Once you arrive in Lagos, it's about a 20-minute walk along the water into the old town from the train station. Google maps was telling us that our hostel was another 20 minutes or so past there, but the busses didn't seem to be running with any frequency and the weather was gorgeous, so we decided to continue on foot. It was noticeably hotter on the Southern coast than it had been in Lisbon, and the sun was intense, so we stopped in a corner store to pick up some sunscreen. To our shock, the cheapest bottle of SPF 30 was around €30. We left it behind swearing under our breath and tried our best to shield our pale, sensitive skin.
When we finally made it to the address Google maps had sent us to, we found ourselves at a hotel that was very much not where we were supposed to be staying. The guy at the front desk was friendly and kind, and seeing how hot and sweaty we were, tried to call a cab for us back into the city center where our hostel actually was. For some reason though the cab company was not picking up the phone, so we begrudgingly strapped our bags on again and headed back the way we came.
Our hostel, Casa das Laranjeiras, was located in the exact center of the old town. We had walked pretty much right by it when we arrived and stopped for lunch. Though it's called a hostel, in actuality it is a large, classic family home run by its owner, and each guest has their own private, lockable room. The kitchen was enormous, with a beautiful wooden island and every cooking gadget imaginable. The host was warm and welcoming, and gave us access to all of the beach equipment we could need, including sunscreen, towels, and a large sun umbrella. She gave us a map with the best beaches highlighted, and told us her favorite restaurants away from the crowds, where the town's residents actually eat.
The closest beach to the hostel was mere minutes by foot if all you wanted was a quick dip or to lay out, but if you followed a trail along the eastern coast it would take you to several stunning locations. We were told the most beautiful beach was Praia do Camilo, which until a few years ago was still mostly a spot for locals until a prominent travel website named it one of the best beaches in Europe. Our host explained that you have to walk down hundreds of stairs to get to the beach, so until it became a specific destination spot, tourists were generally too lazy to walk all the way down there to see if the beach was worth it. Our host warned that the beach may be too crowded to actually enjoy ourselves, but now our curiosity was piqued, so we assembled all the necessary schlazing equipment and snacks, and made our way along the trail to Praia do Camilo.
From the marker at the top of the cliff, you make your way down a long wooden staircase until the beach reveals itself, tucked within cliff sides with rocks jutting out from the clear, blue water. If you make your way to left, there is a tunnel carved out through 30 feet of rock that leads you to a second, more secluded beach. Though it was a clearly popular destination, we found a spot without much trouble and made ourselves comfortable for a long and relaxing afternoon of swimming and sunbathing. On the way back we saw a donkey, and Mazz was thrilled to make a new friend.
The next day we decided to go on a slightly more challenging hike, and made our way by foot across the heart of the peninsula to the western coast. From the beach there, you can take a trail that leads you along the cliff tops to the southern most point of Lagos. As you make your way above the sandy beach, there are stairs carved into the dusty red rock, and some of the areas are a bit precarious, which forced Mazz to make a sound like, "Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh." She did a lot of walking with her bottom, and her shorts got covered in red dust.
Eventually the trail levels out, and you're met by intense cliff drops and rock formations, with the water changing between bright blues and teals and greens as the depths change. There are hidden beaches that can only be accessed by boat, and natural rock dome cathedrals you can peek into through the holes above them. There are natural stone archways and chimneys everywhere you look.
It was a pleasant surprise that all of the other guests staying in our hostel were nice and interesting travelers whom we actually wanted to spend time with. We made friends quickly with a solo Canadian traveler named Alex, and teamed up to make dinner together in the incredible kitchen space. Though we were generally trying to save money at this point in the trip by not going out to eat or drink too much, we couldn't decline the invitation to explore the nightlife with the rest of the guests, which included our new Canadian friend, a German guy living in Switzerland, an Aussie, and his German girlfriend. We made our way first to a British rock bar where we played darts and wagered shots until the surly British waitress shooed us out at closing time. From there we made our way to more pubs, egged on to be irresponsible by the 21-year-old Australian guy. Against our better judgment, we stayed out until past 4am, and woke the next day with an all-encompassing reminder never to try and keep up with the young Australian guy when it comes to partying.
Tuckered out from the night before, we slept in late and took it particularly easy the next day, rustling up a day pack and heading back down to the eastern beach trail to lay around for an extended period of time. We had taken the trail that went along the top of the cliffs our first day, but this time we walked along the beaches and found that all of them were interconnected via caves and stone arches, and you could make your way all the way down coast this way.
We didn't know a whole lot about the Algarve before booking our trip, so we split our time between Lagos and Albufeira, one of the larger towns on the southern coast. Not really knowing what to expect, Lagos had blown us away. Albufeira turned out to be a completely different sort of city, and not for the better. Where Lagos was laid back and homey, Albufeira was a full-on tourist town full of awful spring break jocks all year round, and after getting exactly what we wanted in Lagos it was a bit of a letdown to end our trip there.
It also didn't help that after staying in the single best "hostel" we had ever been to, our Airbnb in Albufeira was a dump. All of the furniture looked like something a cheap college kid cobbled together, and it was lacking basic necessities like hand or dish soap. There were two small towels for showers, but nothing for the beach. Our "host" Nelson picked us up from the train station, which was about 20 minutes outside the actual town, and told us that he manages 40 properties. This place got about as much special care as one can expect from a single guy taking care of that many rentals.
Still, one can't complain too much when you can walk out of your apartment and be greeted with a 180-degree view of the ocean, even if the bed does fall apart in the middle of the night. The old town of Albufeira was much larger and livelier than Lagos, with tons of tourist trap bars and restaurants. The beach was a massive stretch covered in loungers and umbrellas. We were perfectly happy to buy some Vinho Verde at the corner shop and enjoy it on a dock as the sun went down. Kirb had strongly considered getting the Portuguese Vinho Verde logo that appears on the label of every bottle tattooed somewhere on his body by the end of this trip, but there was definitely nowhere in Albufeira he felt comfortable tattooing something permanent on his body.
Nonplussed by the dining options in the old town, we consulted the internet for some intel on legitimate food in the area, and found that if you left the resort area and made your way into the strip-mall area of town you could find some excellent piri piri chicken. We walked the 30 minutes or so to O Jorge and were instantly relieved to find the restaurant filled with Portuguese blue-collar workers, with no tourists there aside from ourselves. Pretty much all they served was spicy chicken and ribs, and both were very tasty and cheap, with good cold Super Bock beer to wash it down. Implausibly, sometimes you have to go out of your way to a strip mall to find the real, good food.
Kirb spent his last full day in Portugal body surfing in the ocean. For hours he threw himself up against the waves and let them thrash him into the shore. Later that evening, he felt an odd sensation building in his sinuses, and bent over in the living room at a 45 degree angle. A steady stream of ocean water proceeded to come out of his nose and splash over the tiles on the floor for a continuous 20 seconds. There was a very large puddle. It was bizarre and hilarious and we both wished we had captured it on video.
A cab picked us up at 7am the next morning to drive us back to the train station, where we would travel 3 hours back to Lisbon. We had just enough time in Lisbon before we needed to be at the airport for one final Bifana and Pastel de Nata. Portugal excelled in everything we enjoy most while travelling. We didn't want to leave, and now we always wish we were back there.