I'm going to Portugal

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Tomorrow, all being well (snow & Ryanair), I'll be in Portugal.

I'm flying to Porto, staying there one night, then on to Lisbon, staying 5 nights, daytripping to Fatima, Sintra, Cascais, and then back to Porto for one last night.

I know little about Portugal, and I think I chose to go there simply as I'd not been before. So what to do?

Well, two tasks have sprung to mind. Itinerant Londoner has complained about Portugal's food, so I want to see if I can find some worthwhile and delicious food.

I've already read about açorda, a garlicky bread stew which sounds yummy but looks less so, and migas, fried breadcrumbs mixed with pork, which, apparently, is "life-affirming".

Secondly, until now, the only Portuguese I knew is Bem Bom, from their 1982 Eurovision Song. So I checked out other song titles, and given they are the only Portuguese I now know, I'm going to use them as best I can.

Bem Bom - very good, Baunilha e chocolate - Vanilla & Chocolate, Sol de Inverno - Winter Sun seem easy enough to manage, but I'm not sure how I'll fit these into conversation:

Uma flor de verde pino - A green, pine flower
Menina do alto da serra - High ridge girl
O meu coração não tem cor - My heart has no colour

Let's see!

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1 comments:

Anonymous said...
10:27 am  

Portuguese is a strange language: on paper it looks like Spanish spelt wrong.

Spoken (moreso when by the Portuguese than by Brazilians at least), it sounds a spanish person trying to speak russian with a cold.

Have fun though, I love Portugal, despite my terrible luck with the food so far. Seriously, if you have an even vaguely sweet tooth, it is worth making the pilgrimage to Belem to get the original Pasteis de Belem. I can forgive the country all its other culinary disasters for that alone.

 

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