Author Archives: Miss Penny Black

Cambridge

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We’re back in England and happy to be, once again, at Andrew’s. Ensconced in our Bar Hill home-away-from-home. There’s not really much to report – England now looks very Autumn-y. There’s conkers and acorns and blackberries. So many blackberries! Andrew has some in his backyard.

Today Luke and I went for a walk up the road with a pail and picked about half a kilo and if Andrew doesn’t eat them all when he gets home I might even make a pie.

We’ve been watching tv (apparently I’d somehow missed the complete first series of The IT Crowd! Quelle horreur!)  and just generally slothing about and getting laundry done. Oh, and immediately messing up Andrew’s spare room. Poor guy. On the plus side, I have had a chance to do some cooking, from which I hope he feels he’s benefited, and he was kind enough to buy me this as a surprise. Click on the link, it’s wonderful. Both parental types and teacher friends will enjoy it, I think.

Today Luke and I mapped out our plan for the rest of our time in the UK, which I am very sad to see the end of. Still, we’re packing stuff into our last three weeks, with Nottingham, Birmingham, an ale festival (with cider, thank goodness), a friend’s band to see, Jimmy Carr (a comedian), a big night out in London, the Isle of Wight and hopefully Dorset on the agenda. Most of this hinges on Van Failen still being registered and operable but we’ll cross that bridge when Matt (the owner of our van) gets back to us.

 

Then I did make pie!

Delicious!

Portugal: Porto (Part 2)

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There is more to Porto than just port. It is a charming city of cobblestoned streets, terracotta roofs, intriguingly tiled buildings and magnificent churches. Not to mention more shoe shops than I’ve seen anywhere previously. If we hadn’t had a pitiful baggage allowance (thanks to Ryanair: the world’s most hated airline) I’d have easily spent half a day perusing their gorgeous selections. As it was I hobbled about in my new Adidas sneakers and layers of elastoplast around my blistered ankles.

We consulted our oracle, Trip Advisor, for somewhere nearby that was decent – we’d booked into an Ibis hotel on the northern edge of the centre of town and, it turned out, a few steps from a truly wonderful and authentic local eatery.

Ok, so it didn’t look like much, but this place was one of those establishments with an extremely small menu but they do what they do very well, and what they do is roast pork. On the counter as you walk in is a huge piece of meat and they carve off succulent slices then serve them in a slightly spicy gravy in fresh, crunchy bread rolls. They were perfect. We washed down our roast pork with a bottle of the local vino verde (green wine) the first night then stopped by for lunch the next day.

On our second day Luke made a list of landmarks to visit and we made our way around the city . First stop was a large building that housed a varied market where I bought a couple of tea towels (I’ve lost count of how many I’ve bought now) but there weren’t many stalls open so we moved on to our next stop, Porto’s most famous cafe, the Majestic.

A beautiful example of Art Nouveau architecture.

We enjoyed a breakfast of hot scones, jam and cream in the cafe’s gorgeous interior. My friends in Melbourne who enjoy dressing up for high tea would feel right at home here.

All original fittings from the 20’s.

Next we headed to a church – something I wouldn’t normally go out of my way for, especially not after the dozens we’ve already seen in Europe, but this one was special – the interior was almost entirely covered in gold.

Another place where we weren’t supposed to take photos. I assume because we’ll use our photos to build an exact model somewhere else and lure tourists away from their attraction. Obviously.

Next we headed down to the waterfront. The alleyways of Porto remind me of Edinburgh. Dark stone, narrow and many, many steps. But when you get down the the waterfront the colours of the buildings and the tiled walls shine in the reflected light from the river.

Many of the churches are covered in very detailed scenes painted on tiles.

I almost forgot – we also visited Livraria Lello, a bookstore with the most elaborate staircase you can imagine seeing in a shop. Apparently JK Rowling lived in Porto for a time and lived near this shop. It’s credited with inspiring scenes in Harry Potter. Another place where photos aren’t allowed so I borrowed these from another website.

Considered by many to be one of the world’s most beautiful bookshops.

Hooray!

I think we could’ve easily spent a few more days exploring this city but England was calling us and we had a plane to catch. Next stop: Cambridge!

Portugal: Lagos and Porto (pt 1)

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After wasting four nights in Seville we opted for two in Lagos, leaving our options open to stay longer if we liked the place.

Lagos is on the southern coast of Portugal, about five hours by bus from Seville along a rather dull stretch of highway. It’s a little town with an old vibe – and it’s not just the buildings. This is equivalent of Noosa to Europe’s Melbourne. Retirees from England, Germany and other richer countries buy apartments here, or just descend in motorhomes to soak up the sun and bake themselves gently on the golden beaches.

Although how they manage all the stairs I have no idea.

Lagos has a reputation for being a bit of a party town too, with a few nightclubs and bars for the younger crowd but the season was ending and we weren’t really in the mood anyhow. All the restaurants have menus in English and German and there’s a long promenade along the waterfront, lined with palm trees. It’s not a place that screams ‘culture’, but it’s certainly an easy spot to spend a few days. We walked around, ate some Portuguese food but didn’t spend any time on the beach because it was raining on and off the whole time. If it wasn’t for the Portuguese bogans (chavs/rednecks) screaming outside our window each morning and night we’d have had no excitement at all.

We thought about staying longer but the lure of England after months of not speaking the local language was too strong. However, we decided on one more stop – Porto in northern Portugal.

View of Porto, taken from the south side of the river.

We caught 3 trains that took us all the way from south to north. Irritatingly, no one seemed to bother about sitting in their assigned seats. This was only an issue for us because on an overnight bus in Turkey we’d gotten on and someone had been sitting in our seats but the man at the bus terminal had said ‘don’t worry, sit anywhere’. Then we stopped at the next place (very late at night) and the new guy made everyone get up and find their own seats and sit in the right place, which was a pain but should’ve been done at the first stop. Why bother assigning seats if you don’t care where people sit? Assigned seats are much to be preferred though – we caught a Ryanair (world’s most hated airline) flight back from Porto (trust me, if it wouldn’t have cost us several hundred euros more we would’ve happily spent 24 hours training it back to the UK) and watching everyone waiting for their unassigned-seat flight was ridiculous. People are much less relaxed, the flight staff have to cajol idiots who leave spare seats in the middle of rows when it is obvious the flight is full… GAH! I can feel my blood pressure going up just thinking about that company. Don’t get me started on their hidden fees, baggage restrictions, and their sly wallet-gouging techniques. A pox on their house.

But Porto! Porto is beautiful. Really beautiful. And I can say that unequivocally because we saw it in mostly crappy weather and it still made a great impression.

From above Porto reminded me of a very large Cesky Krumlov – all those red roofs and the river flowing through.

For the uninitiated, Porto is home to the drink, port. No surprises there. We went on a tour of a  port house (ignore me calling them wineries on the video when Luke gets around to it) and learned a bit about the history of the drink and the place. Turns out that when England and France went to war several centuries ago and the English could no longer get their hands on French wine, they turned to Portugal to satisfy this need. They discovered that adding brandy to the wine kept it in good condition on its journey across the sea and also produced a much sweeter flavour that appealed very much to the English palate – hence port being a ‘fortified wine’. Only fortified wine from this part of Portugal may be called ‘port’. Many Englishmen moved to Portugal to produce this new drink, hence the fact that the port houses mostly have English names. Some port houses are still owned and run by the same families that started them in the 16th century.

Most people are familiar with ‘ruby’ and ‘tawny’ port but there are also white ports and rosès. We spent our first morning in Porto walking around the port houses and doing tastings. We tried several ruby and tawny ports, two whites and one rosè.

Pronounced “Coe-burns”.

Here’s an article on rosè port with a good description of how it should (could?) be consumed and its history.

We enjoyed all the ports we tried; the whites were comparatively drier and my favourite was the tawny, with its more caramel, rather than fruity flavours. I have tasted port before but it’s certainly not my go-to after dinner drink. This might change now I feel a little more confident and knowledgeable about it.

Some of the more interesting facts I learned on tour was that ruby and tawny ports start off as the same grapes and it is their storage methods which change their taste and appearance. Ruby is stored in large oak barrels and tawny in much smaller ones. It is the greater contact with the oak that changes the tawny into a nice amber colour and the flavours alter as well. The barrels that are used for port are then sent to places like Scotland for whisky production as whisky cannot be aged in a new barrel, it needs the flavours imparted by aged and used oak.

A note on going to Portugal and doing the tastings – we stopped at only three port houses but there are quite a number on the south side of the river, all within a fairly small area. They sit at various levels above the river on a very steep hill. The best idea is to pick whichever you intend to visit, get the cable car up from the riverside or cross the bridge to the highest point and then wander downhill with a map and use a GPS device (like google maps) to give you the best route – there are some paths which cut through blocks and will save you slogging up and down huge hills.

This bridge is most convenient – you can get from the highest point on one side to the highest point on the other side, or cross at the river level.

The tastings were mostly 3 euros for three varieties. Each glass at each house was about 100mls, which looks like a small amount but most definitely is not when you have eight of them – and port is generally around 20% alcohol. My advice is eat a big breakfast (or lunch, depending on when you go) and then you won’t end up with a mid-afternoon hangover. Or you could, y’know, not drink over a bottle of port in a few hours. With all the port houses so close to each other though, it’s very tempting to try to get to as many as possible in one outing. Plus there’s plenty of other things to do and see in Porto, so don’t spend all your time there drinking. Although it is tempting.

Before I move on to other things, here are the places we visited and a few notes.

1. Taylor’s. This port house is fairly far uphill and styles itself as very upmarket (and is – one of the bottles on sale was 2500 euros). However it was still only 3 euro per person for a basic three glass tasting. You can pay more for tastings of their more expensive ports. Their English language tour goes at 2pm and we were too early so we read their little guidebook, tried the port in their very pleasant tasting room and watched a short video on their vineyards and history.

100mls for 100 euro? I’ll have two!

2. Cockburn’s. (Don’t forget, pronounced ‘Coe-burns’.) This port house had a much more casual air than Taylors and we joined a tour that ended up being only six people and took about 20 minutes. We looked at the barrels, a map of the Duoro Valley where the grapes are grown and then tasted three ports. They were nice enough to give us a glass of white for free while we waited for the tour to start. This house also offers picnic lunches in their pretty courtyard under grapevines, but at 15 euro pp we didn’t bother. Plus it was raining so an outside picnic wasn’t all that appealing. The guy who did our tour had excellent English, encouraged questions and the whole experience was excellent value.

Luke and our guide, Sergio.

3. Quevedo. Just back from the waterfront, we weren’t actually planning on having any more port because we felt quite… jolly from the seven glasses we’d already had. However, when we bought tickets for the cable car (5 euro each) up to the bridge it came with a free tasting at this nearby house. So off we went. Quevedo has a large room with explanatory panels around it so you’ve got something to do while you binge-drink. We chose two different ports, including a rosè, and shared – something we should’ve been doing from the start. Their port was ok – the rosè was quite nice and almost strawberry-flavoured. Just a note – their website is a blog and talks about what’s going on with the current harvest, which might interest some of you.

I’m a bit sad that we only did three port houses but if we’d kept going we’d have missed out on many of the other great things Porto has to offer. Which I’ll get to in my next post!

Tawny port barrels.

Quick post!

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just a place holder as I’ve been super lazy with blogging this week – and also I don’t have a computer to use, which is cramping my style severely.

We’re back in the UK tomorrow, throwing ourselves on Andrew’s mercy again in beautiful Cambridge. It almost feels like going home. Actually, it feels more like going to my parents’ house because he has this totally uncanny ability to immediately notice every tiny crumb I’ve dropped or utensil I’ve moved since he left the house previously. He and my mum would make great housemates. And yes, I know you’re both reading this.

Anyhoo, I’m buying myself a brand new computer when I get there and then I’ll be able to write up all about Portugal, which we’ve quite enjoyed, and the fact that today I saw a man PICK UP DOG POO. In a plastic bag. It was incredible. I kind of wanted to nominate him for some kind of environmental award because I’ve spent most of my ambulatory time in Europe avoiding the excrement of people’s pets and I’d *just* stepped in poo for the first time (knowingly, anyway) on this whole trip – and in my BRAND NEW WHITE SHOES – when I saw this guy and he restored my flagging faith in European humanity.

Thank you random guy with the two huge dogs and the tiny plastic bags. You’re a champion.

Spain: Barcelona and Seville

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We spent three nights in Barcelona and four in Seville and I’d love to say we did both places justice, seeing lots of sights, meeting people, having cultural experiences. But the sad thing is we didn’t, and I’m not entirely sure why.

I’ve been to Barcelona before and really liked it last time – in fact I was there right after the Millennium celebrations (which I spent in Madrid). At the time Barcelona, despite it being the middle of Winter, was a sunny 20 degrees C and a glorious change after the freezing grey of Spain’s capital. It also shone in contrast to Paris, which we went on to – also grey and miserable. So I was fully prepared to enjoy it this time.

We arrived at our hostel, conveniently located on the same square the airport bus terminated at and at the top end of la Rambla, the most famous and busiest thoroughfare in the city. We walked into the hostel and my heart sank. It had all the signs of being a party hostel – big signs behind the reception advertising different ‘activity’ (read ‘excuses for drinking’) nights for every night of the week, super cheap beers and an average clientele age of 19. It was also huge and our last experience of a hostel like that was in Munich where, although we had great room mates (hey Daniel and Maggie!) we also had to put up with drunken idiots bashing on doors in the middle of the night and a whole heap of noise in the street outside.

Oh, and it was also the hostel’s one year birthday party that night! Yay!

When we got up to our room we found that someone, despite the bin in the corner, had dropped a bunch of wrappers and garbage all over the floor. We cleaned up and I hoped it was someone who’d left. Still, each bunk was a good size, had its own reading light and, most wonderfully, had individual black-out curtains – something every other hostel sorely needs.

There were eight bunks and while we were there unpacking we met Luca, an Italian guy from Bologna who’d just come back from a trip around Australia and had just been approved for another working visit to Oz. When we told him we were from Melbourne and just come from Bologna and we all agreed that we loved each others’ cities and he took us out to show us where the nearest supermarket was. When we moved on a few days later I left him one of our business cards so that he could come couch surf if he made it back to Victoria.

So the hostel actually proved to be ok, after my initial misgivings and the fact that they gave away free earplugs helped with the good sleep we got there too. Especially since it turned out that it wasn’t just the hostel that was celebrating – the whole city was in the middle of Mercè, an annual festival that involves a whole range of activities and entertainment, some of which we were lucky enough to catch. It also meant that the city was completely packed with people – in fact they don’t advertise this festival at all because the city is stretched to capacity accommodating the numbers of people who come already. It was pretty lucky we found beds where we did.

One of the many stages around town.

So what did we see? Most of the cool stuff we saw was on at night. There was a huge colourful projection shown onto the front of one of the big buildings in the old quarter. We arrived a bit late and the square was packed. The projection was tailored to the building, so it looked like people were climbing up and going in and out of the windows.

We went down to the beach and watched a fireworks show, unfortunately we picked the end of the beach furtherest from where they were going off so I didn’t really get any great photos. Fireworks are one of those things that tend to be a lot more impressive in real life anyway though.

There was also a bit of a sideshow alley along the street near the beach. It was spectacularly crappy but made for good long exposure shots.

Wheeee!

We found a couple of street parades, mainly involving drumming and large sculptures being carried around. The last parade seemed to be mainly about setting off small explosive devices and fireworks attached to poles and then the crowd runs either towards the people holding them or away from them (depending on the level of intoxication of the individual, I guess) and dancing around while groups of laconic policemen watch and occasionally wave ambulances in.

Luke was loving it. Me – not so much.

This pretty much fits with my memories of the Millennium, where people threw fireworks into the crowd and almost set one of my friends on fire. This had led me to characterise Spaniards as somewhat insane… the mood in Barcelona was certainly verging on a riot at times, although since the police clearly weren’t worried, maybe the Spanish are actually less crazy than other nations – if you let Aussies get drunk, drum themselves into a frenzy and then walk into crowds with hand held fireworks the next step would probably be car-turning and looting.

Luke took a walking tour one afternoon while I explored Born, an area of twisty-turny alleyways and gothic churches where a website assured me was the highest concentration of funky boutiques and shops. I did find a bunch of nice shops but limited myself to buying one piece of clothing and just admired everything else. I also found a church with a unicorn gargoyle. All the gargoyles were different animals but the unicorn was the most interesting. And confusing.. although I haven’t read the whole bible and maybe I just missed the unicorn bit. It’s a big book.

Cute monster toys.

We spent most of our first full day in Barcelona in the hostel bar drinking sangria, talking to people from home on Facebook and just hanging out together. I think we were both (and still are) suffering a bit of travel fatigue. We’d seen a fair bit in Turkey, powered through Italy but hit a wall in Spain. I think it was a bit of hostel fatigue too. Being able to lay about in our room and watch TV shows late at night (downloaded obviously, European TV is to the world what the Eurovision song contest is to the world – trashy, badly produced, and confusing) is something we do to unwind and is really difficult in a room with 6 other people. When I don’t have a refuge to retreat to I get pretty antsy. Hostels are a great way to save money but they definitely need to be interspersed with hotels or B&Bs.

We moved on to Seville, where we’d booked four nights because Luke’s best friend Nick had told him that it was a great place and Nick had ended up spending a month there unintentionally on his own travels.

This time we had our own room – it ended up having no natural light and seemed to have been designed by King Tut’s decorator. It was stuffy unless the gale-force, ultra-noisy air conditioning unit was turned on. At least we were on the second floor and not the top – I’m getting heartily sick of hauling my bag up multiple flights of stairs.

Just… weird. Also, apologies for all the phone photos. I’ve been lazy about everything this last week.

We spent our first afternoon walking around the city centre and decided it lacked the charm of any of the Italian cities we’d visited (everything looked newer and yet more derelict) and was a lot quieter than bustling Barcelona – not necessarily a bad thing but we both felt quite deflated and realised we should’ve done our homework better. Seville is not a four night city. Still, we did catch up on Newsroom completely and most of Suits and we did eat some great food.

We also happened across a park that had food/bar places from around the world. Note that you can get a ‘Canberra’ or ‘Queensland’ meal and yet nothing from Melbourne. Also no meat pies but chicken on a stick. Fail.

On our first night we visited a tapas place recommended online and it was fantastic (also conveniently located about 5 minutes from our hotel). Everything was perfect – we got there early enough to sit at the bar, the waiter didn’t speak much English but he was really friendly, shaking our hands when we left and then recognising us the next night when we went back. The food was absolutely wonderful – each little dish was cooked perfectly and we tried half the things on the menu in our two visits. We ordered the pork cheek twice. The sangria was also superb.

Tiny weenie burger in its own little box!

Basically, we were ruined for everywhere else because all the other tapas we had was very much meh.

Although we did enjoy hanging out a couple of times at a very Brunswick-Street (hipster) establishment full of old couches and furniture around the corner from our hotel. The food there was decent, they had skateboard art displayed on the wall and there was always at least a few tables of people with their Macbooks out. Just like home!

So hipser it hurts.

So there you have it – our wasted time in Spain. We’re in Portugal now, in the little seaside town of Lagos. We deliberated very hard about where to go from Seville and settled on here to get in a tiny bit of beach time before heading back to the UK. The weather today was rainy at times so we might’ve missed our chance. We’ll see. Part of me wants to get back to the UK and do more walking – speaking of which, I finally bought new sneakers (yeah I know – fascinating! But bear with me), something I meant to do before I left Australia because mine have been falling apart. I kept putting it off, then going shoe shopping and prevaricating because I hate shoe shopping (heresy!) I mean – shopping for boring shoes like sneakers, plus the last pair were perfect when I bought them and super expensive and I haven’t been able to find anything anywhere near as good. So I bought a pair of Adidas sneakers in Seville and they immediately gave me the worst blisters I’ve had in YEARS. It’s GROSS.

So here’s a photo. Because blisters are gross but interesting. Luke doesn’t know I’m putting photos of my blisters on the blog and I bet he’ll say it’s inappropriate and people might be eating when they read this but I didn’t take a video of me popping them, which was also fun but even I have my limits. You’re welcome.

Notice I posted this small for all you squeamish types? Because I’m *thoughtful*.