Portugal - Porto

As I alluded to in my first Portugal post, we liked Porto more than we liked Lisbon. For a start, we liked it immediately - already a step ahead! - with our arrival being characterised by the River Douro sparkling in dazzling sunshine. From then on, the city remained attractive, with a small but nicely set out centre and the twisting, steep roads that seem to characterise Portugal. It is not a city I could see myself living in, but it was a city I was pleased to visit.

River Douro, looking across from the Ribeira district that is the front of Porto's core centre

Porto is a port town in both sense of the word. It has a lot of port of the alcoholic variety, and historically it served as a ship hub. The town still revolves around the river, and we were fortunate to be staying right on it, in an apartment three floors up and only half a block back from the water. The above picture was taken from our window.

By virtue of being in the 'old' Ribeira district (a World Heritage Site), the apartment was not new but it was spacious. Given that Mr Bite had three days to fill independently while I was at my conference, we wanted something that was more than a hotel room and it definitely filled that requirement.

On our first afternoon, we walked through the main centre of the town, guided by only the vaguest of plans and being happy to take left or right turns on whim. We saw more tiled walls, impressive architecture, and scenic streets.

We were also amused to discover a rather quaint food hall within a shopping arcade (containing, you may note, our Porto Wok to Walk).

Wednesday was our one joint full day, and we were fortunate to have more sunshine. We decided to hire bikes, and had a hugely enjoyable three hours riding along the river and then the coast, before having a Subway picnic lunch and following bike paths back through the city. It was great fun and I will definitely keep bike hiring in mind as a holiday activity for future trips.

Coastline of Portugal

Subway salad wrap - carrot seems to be absent in Porto Subways, but corn and oregano were available

In the afternoon, we walked to the other side of the river, and then took a cable car ride up to the top of the central bridge.

More panorama playing - looking back at the main city centre

The cable car was long enough to be a ride, but not so long it lost novelty value before the end. The views were wonderful too.

The cable car route...

...and up the top.

My conference also went well, providing the sort of renewed work focus and energy I need every now and then, and had a worthy and full programme. Nonetheless, I am glad to be back on holiday! 

We are now into our second full day in London, and I am so delighted to be here, truly my favourite place in the world, that I am in a constant state of slight over-excitement. I shall try to moderate it into a coherent post eventually :-)

Those of you who loved Lisbon - have you visited Porto?
And has anyone else used biking as a way to explore a new city?

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European food I - a catch up

I am pausing from my sight seeing travel posts to try and catch up on some of the snacks and meals that haven't yet been mentioned. Squeezing food and sights into single posts has proved tricky, and the food side is easier for me to remember and post at leisure.

Before starting, I should mention our approach to eating on holiday. We tend to mix self-catering with eating out whenever possible, and definitely prefer picnic-style or casual cafe lunches to formal restaurants at lunchtime. We also carry snacks with us wherever we go (Mr Bite always has biscuits, for instance), because we have learnt through experience that we are liable to walk for hours and then think about lunch, meaning that by the time we actually find somewhere it can be 2.30pm with blood sugar levels dropping fast.

Yoghurt-topped, fruit containing Digestive biscuits. I ask you, why can't Australia have these?

For me, this is also the first overseas trip where I haven't eaten meat. Two years ago, I still ate chicken on occasion and fish and seafood quite freely. These days, my eating doesn't fit neatly into a category, but at home I tend to describe myself as 80% vegan. I don't really think that veganism is something you can dip in and out of, but that term is the best I have come up with to describe my eating preferences. The non-vegan 20% consists of dairy intermittently, about two serves of fish a month, occasional honey, and the odd trace of egg.

I decided ahead of this trip that I would be a vegetarian with vegan preferences for the purpose of travelling overseas. The idea of eating fish of unknown origin, unknown storage method, and unknown preparation method did not appeal. At the same time, I didn't want to complicate our eating efforts by strictly avoiding dairy and egg in countries with unfamiliar foods and languages. I know it is possible to do so, but as I am not strictly vegan at any time, travel seemed an occasion for flexibility.

I haven't tried this yet, but I am extremely excited to do so...

Mr Bite, who eats chicken regularly at home and red meat occasionally, also drops those products whilst travelling. This is due to some questionable experiences in the past with hygiene / food preparation, and means that he is a vegetarian who also eats fish when on holiday. It makes eating out slightly simpler, even if his food preferences tend to include tuna and cheese and egg whereas mine do not.

Enough, however, of words...here are some of our previously unmentioned, but nonetheless memorable, food experiences to date.

(More) Madrid frozen yoghurt.

This came from the same market-based store of my first Madrid frozen yoghurt. It included the same slightly tart base, this time with cherry sauce and chocolate coated sesame seeds.

Seriously good.

Pizza.

This is an easy fall-back for us and featured the night after our fancy vegetarian restaurant in Madrid. It was a sort of his and hers swap, in terms of dinner selection!

Mr Bite had a tuna pizza, which he declared to be good, and I had a vegetarian that featured artichokes, mushroom, zucchini, eggplant and tomato. The base was gorgeously crispy and whilst there was a tad too much cheese for my liking, the surplus was easily removed.

Lindt mousse chocolate.

I don't know why we don't have this in Australia (or perhaps we do and it's just not in Western Australia?). It contains milk, but the outer chocolate is dark enough to offset the milkier mousse within, and it had the truffle-like filling that I love in chocolate.

A bit melty when travelling, but that's all the more reason to eat it quickly.

Self-catering meal number 3.

Our first self-catered meal in Madrid, the night of our arrival, was soup and bread. We also had a tomato-based pasta with chickpeas (me) and tuna (Mr B) in the middle of our week there. 

On our last night, in an effort to use up food and try out newly found tofu nuggets, we had a slightly random combination that I will not even attempt to name - self-catering meal number 3 is as good as it gets.

Mr Bite's plate featured pasta in vegetable soup, with a side of a few tofu nuggets. Mine had more tofu nuggets, a smaller amount of pasta, and soup in a mug. We both had raw carrot eaten whilst the nuggets and pasta were cooking. Not exactly gourmet cuisine, but enjoyable!

The tofu nuggets were different to any I've tried in Australia, tasting ever so slightly of falafel in their flavouring and being nicely coated but still more tofu than crumb.

Kari's dress shopping purchases.

You may remember that I mentioned a shopping trip on our last afternoon in Madrid. I had vague ideas about a summer dress. Instead, I bought a scarf and then found a large supermarket and a smaller vegan-friendly food section within Madrid's largest department store, El Corte Ingles. 

Dresses were forgotten and instead I purchased these:

The Lindt chocolate, also pictured at the top of this post, is yet to be eaten. The 87% cocoa dark chocolate with vegan white mint chips has been eaten, and was delightfully dark as well as delightfully minty. 

The freeze-dried pineapple made me thirsty, as freeze-dried fruit is wont to do, but made for an enjoyable snack on our train ride to Porto.

Fruit.

This has featured all through our travels, with summer fruit being in season and just incredible. I have had peaches, plums, nectarines, pineapple and mango to date. Even the 'boring' fruit, like apples and pears, has tasted better than Australia's fading winter crops.

Wok to Walk

Oh, Wok to Walk. We first stumbled on this in Lisbon, and have managed to eat it twice in the past week. The company is a European-based franchise that started in Amsterdam in 2004. The stores aim to provide fresh, nutritious food quickly, made in front of you, and made to your specifications. It is a bit like an Asian subway, but better. We loved it and I would happily swap Australia's Wagamama stores for some Wok to Walk branches.

Mr Bite's egg noodles with tofu and vegetables in black bean sauce

The menu is designed to be a 3-step process. Pick a base, pick toppings, and pick a sauce. Mr Bite has ordered the same combination twice, with egg noodles with vegetables, tofu, and black bean sauce.

I have pretty much ordered the same thing twice too. The first time I had their vegetable base, which is number 7 above, with tofu and soy sauce. The second time I had the vegetable base with tofu, extra brocolli, and sweet and sour sauce. Both were amazing. In the picture below, it is ALL vegetables and tofu. I was in heaven.

One of the best dinners I have eaten on this holiday, despite it being completely un-European

I would like a spicy sauce that isn't super hot or coconut-based (their spice options at the moment) but really, I love the menu concept too much to complain.

Lemon and coconut sorbets.

These were a Madrid purchase, on a hot afternoon when we had walked for some hours. Mr B is quite a fan of lemon sorbet, and I was caught up in the novelty of a coconut variety - not something I had seen before.

Lemon sorbet

The lemon sorbet was very lemony, tart first and sweet second, and I think it has satisfied Mr Bite's lemon taste buds for some time.

My coconut variety was incredible, with the texture and consistency of sorbet but added creaminess from the coconut component and an eating experience that straddled sorbet and ice cream.

Coconut sorbet

I loved it and am keen to try and recreate it at home.

And there we have it - a lot of food! If you could pick one item, what would you pick?!

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Portugal - Lisbon

I expected to love Lisbon. My mother lived there in her mid-20s, teaching English as a second language; it was one of my sister's favourite cities when she visited Europe last year; and Heidi of Apples Under My Bed  has recently done a series of glowing posts about her time in Lisbon on her honeymoon.

The thing about expectations, of course, is that they can be let down. Shortly after our arrival, we were unsure if we would even like Lisbon, let alone love it.

These sorts of views gradually won us over...

Part of this initial lacklustre experience, other than the aforementioned expectation issue, was probably due to the time and nature of our arrival. We came by overnight (sleeper) train from Madrid, arriving at the central Lisbon train station at 7.30am on Sunday morning. Few cities look their best at a train station on 7.30am on Sunday, and Lisbon was no exception. It didn't help that the walk to our accommodation, in one of the older parts of town, was  graffiti lined and smelt of urine.

In truth, Lisbon is grubby. Many European cities are. It grew on us - it is that sort of city, really, the growing on sort - but it remained dirty and I never did fall fully in love.

I did, however, fall in like with Lisbon. I can also see that with time, it would get under your skin. Lisbon is full of surprise views and glimpses of beauty, but they present themselves in stages and around corners rather than dazzling you straight up.

Belem Tower, Belem, Lisbon - in mist

Belem Tower, Belem, Lisbon - mist cleared

We started Sunday at Belem, a world heritage site with a renowned fortress tower and monastery. The day started misty but cleared by mid-morning, allowing the sunlight to lift things from slightly gloomy to quite spectacular.

Belem Tower, looking down

The Jeronimos Monastery was popular enough to involve a queue for entrance (although it was also free entrance, given it was Sunday), and the popularity was deserved.

Truly beautiful architecture.

Belem is also the site of the most famous of Lisbon's pasteis de nata (custard tarts). Pasteis de Belem was recommended to us by my sister, Lonely Planet and the owner of our accommodation, and on arrival was sufficiently busy to drive home its reputation.

Mr Bite bought two tarts and proclaimed them good. I tried about a quarter of one, a serious vegan exception, and could see how they would be good if you liked egg-y custard and pastry. I have lost the taste for egg-based desserts and was never a big fan of pastry (a terrible thing to say in Portugal) so appreciated them in theory but not so much in taste.

Fortunately, Lisbon provided plenty of other food that was to my taste. Portugese cuisine is largely meat focused, but this is balanced out by plenty of fresh produce, including gorgeous summer fruit and vegetable dishes or salads at restaurants and even corner stores. They also have good bread, which Spain really didn't!, and wonderful coffee. Gelatine-free yoghurt is something Europe does brilliantly, and that was also the case in Lisbon.

Cafe lunch at Lisbon castle; salad, fresh mango, baguette.

Another pleasant Portugal discovery was the friendliness. Several times, people stopped to ask us if we wanted help when we were consulting our map on the side of the street. Smiling was common, people were courteous, and as a bonus - most spoke English. 

The rest of our Sunday was spent wandering, an activity that Lisbon is highly suited to.

Coloured tiled walls, a characteristic of the city

Praca do Comercio (central plaza)

More tiles...

On Monday, we did more wandering, but in the old part of town, the Alfama. The area incorporates incredible views, the castle, and roads that are even narrower and steeper than those in the main part of the city.

We loved that the castle could be explored independently. It has retained its walls and turrets and is open to public meandering, no museum or set route involved.

Castelo de Sao Jorge

Our accommodation in Lisbon was B&B style, at Casio do Patio Bed & Breakfast, and was picked by virtue of glowing reviews on TripAdvisor. The reviews and pictures were entirely accurate and it provided a great base, not far from the central shopping and transport stretch. 

Casa do Patio B&B

The morning courtyard breakfast, with freshly squeezed orange juice (note that Mr Bite has two, below!) and wonderful coffee, was an added bonus.

Lisbon was a short stop, and we moved on to Porto yesterday, which is 3 hours north of Lisbon by train. In contrast to Lisbon, we have already fallen half in love with this city...more on that another time.

Sadly, my focus now switches to work for three days from tomorrow. It sounds terrible to say you have a conference in the middle of your honeymoon, but the trip was originally planned around this conference (before we even got engaged!) and was turned into a honeymoon later. Three days of work seems a small price to pay for externally paid airfares, but I will be glad to return to a holiday focus after Saturday.

Have you visited cities that turned out differently to your expectations? Or done much exploring in Portugal?

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