Dear Readers - this a bit late hitting my blog but I wanted to share it with you!
Next time I’m looking for a bottle of HP sauce I’m going to simply fly to Portugal because the store shelves are just sagging with the stuff. What a shock! Biscuits, Quality Street chocolates, anything that wouldn’t be out of place on any High Street in London. Portugal is sadly not far from the maddening crowd. Fortunately for us however our hotel (Hotel Casabela) was in Ferragudo and not in Portimao. Ferragudo is a small village with a beautiful beach and fishing village while Portimao is like Atlantic City populated by drunk Brits FORTUNATELY seperated by a wide estuary which you must drive around. Even though I’m dying for a full English Breakfast I know that my stomach would be dragging in the sand at the end of the week unless I pay close attention to what I put away so it’s fish and salad most of the way. The salads are amazing and you really must try one because they are almost exclusively a sort of greenish red beefsteak tomatoe, very large and thickly cut with onions and balsamic vinegar and then there is a lot of garlic. The fish you can get cheaper anywhere BUT in Portugal - funny that because they’re scooping them out of the ocean at the edge of our table and whacking them over the heads before our eyes but there you go eh? a warning: do be careful of the plates of prawns and other delicacies they place on the table while you're deciding what to order because these are NOT free. It's just like when you’re in Paris when after dinner you notice a few extra bucks at the end of your bill because of the table cloth or in Germany because you ate a pretzel from the basket which you thought was ... bread? Same thing as the plates of lovely fried fish in Portugal. But I digress - right well, just pump that up a notch and you have the Algarve. If you’re not sure don’t eat it okay? We made especially sure we didn’t crack any of the packets of sardine paste not just because it was absolutely disgusting I am sure but you are going to get nailed for each cachet of butter you open. So you’ve been warned! :O)
The fish was REALLY good and so was the the sun setting behind the guy at the grill and the kids tootling by on their electric scooters adding extra charm. Even the girls ate without complaint. If you aren’t sure, then order the King Fish with the huge eyes. Start with some prawns sauteed in garlic and don’t forget the salad. Wine. Forget what you heard about the scary Algarve wines fondly know to the locals as “Dog Throttler”. No matter how hard we tried we only found wine from the north of Portugal on offer and they were all very good. The whites especially from around Porto where light and tasty.
So I’m wondering, what’s with all this we hear that the world’s ocean levels are rising each year? What about the water carved 10 story high cliffs I’m seeing here on the Atlantic coast? Where did all that water go then? If it’s rising on the east coast of the US it must be because the world’s tilting and all the water from the west coast of Europe is getting sucked away. Wasn’t the water level then once much much higher? Where did all the water go? Hell, the grand canyon was full of water once. And WHO are these people who bring inflatable wading pools to the beach!?
ola! :O) katrin
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