Portugal

If you’re ever in Lisbon and you want to enjoy a good coffee, in a nice environment, go to Nicolau. We went there at the recommendation of a friend (“good food!”), but also because it is dog friendly, so our Westie was welcome, as well.

And how could it not be, when Nicolau is the dog of the owner apparently, and he has his portrait on the wall in the middle of the café? Even more, he has an entire family: Amélia (his girlfriend/wife) and Basílio (his cousin). Of course, Amélia has a café, Basílio has one as well. And they’re all in walking distance of each other, so you can visit all of them.

If you find yourself at Nicolau, try the Banoffee Lovers Pancakes (see above). You’ll thank me later.

Photos from Nicolau’s website

I was just walking today through Lisbon. I was talking (in Romanian) to my fiancé, when someone stopped next to us and said “Hey, Bobby, is that you?”. In Romanian.

I looked at the guy asking me and it took me about 10 seconds to understand who was looking at me from behind the mask. Not because I didn’t know who he was, but because he wasn’t supposed to be in a random – touristy enough – place in Portugal.

After recognizing him and finding out he just moved here a week before, we took the time to have a drink together.

At some point he asked: “What do you think this serendipitous moment is telling us?”

An interesting question, but such an unexpected meeting nevertheless.

Featured photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash

I didn’t know, but apparently the Formula 1 teams create posters for different Grand Prix races and, since this weekend is the Portuguese one, here are some of them.

Alfa Romeo:

Mercedes:

Ferrari:

via reddit

I love driving. While living in Romania I was part of a big online promotional campaign that took online influencers driving around Romania to see the great places in the country. It was called Rediscover Romania and I drove a lot.

Now, living in Portugal, I’m trying to do something similar, but the only “influencer” I take to these places is myself.

After being in lockdown for about 3 months (it’s April 2021 now), we finally can drive around and I looked at something close enough to be a day drive. Which is all the country, frankly, if you live in the Northern half, from Lisbon up, and you don’t want to visit the South (Algarve or Alentejo).

I wanted to go to Serra da Estrela, initially, which is the highest peak in continental Portugal, but as I was looking around on Google Maps, my eyes were drawn to something called Poço da Broca (GMaps location). When I saw that it was a nice cascade, I was sold. And the truth is it isn’t just nice, it’s quite beautiful.

Poço da Broca is a series of cascades above schist rock, on the river Alvôco. It’s close to Barriosa village, about an hour of driving from Coimbra, 2 hours from Porto and a little bit more than 3 hours from Lisbon. It actually makes even more sense if you go to some schist villages in the area, as well.

I was there during a Wednesday, on a rainy day, so there were almost no people around, but I heard that even during the peak season it’s not too busy. There’s a restaurant on location, but it was closed when I got there (again, outside of season and just out of lockdown). During the summer there’s a river beach (praia fluvial) around there, apparently, but I didn’t see any.

The place is really chill and I loved walking around, even if the weather wasn’t the great. The sounds of water falling make me happy, so maybe this has something to do with it as well.

This is the text on the tourist information sign:

The Alvôco stream is located on the Southwest flank of the Serra da Estrela Natural Park, representing one of the main tributaries of the Alva river. It flows in an embedded valley, being schist the dominant rocky material, contributing this way to a characteristic sinuous trajectory.

Downstream from the Mountain Village of Alvôco da Serra, the trajectory of the river is largely conditioned by the type of rocks through where the water flows, schist and metagraywacke, resulting in the sinuous profile from the schistosity and fracturing of the present rocks. Over time, the erosive action of water determines the formation of curves so pronounced that the stream can cross the bottleneck zone leaving the old bed as an abandoned meander. In the valley sites where the meanders of the Alvôco stream are tighter, this natural process can be accelerated by the action of the man who, through the opening of channels, diverted the course of the water to take advantage of the old bed.

Here are 2 videos (not mine). Actually, looking at these video I see I might have missed some of it, so there’s a good reason to go back.

And here’s the Google Maps location:

All photos made on an iPhone 12 Mini. What an amazing little phone!

I’ve been living in Portugal for the last 3 years or so. I genuinely like the country and, as a good citizen, I started to learn the language. From scratch.

While difficult, I’m lucky since Romanian, my native language, is also a Romance language and the grammar is really similar.

But the diminutives, OMG, the diminutives!!!

Portuguese people already speak really fast and it’s difficult to understand the words they speak, but they use SO MANY diminutives that I sometimes just stop making any effort to understand what they are saying.

I recently went with my car to get it serviced and, at some point, the guy asked for my “chavizinho” and I was confused as hell. “Chave” is “key”, so I thought I kinda got it, but I genuinely wasn’t sure that was what he wanted.

I’d love to have a dictionary that has both original word and the diminutive attached. You know, just to be there :)

Here’s a funny video (in Portuguese, with some English explanations) to understand how it happens.

The source of the video: these guys.

P.S.: just to get an idea of how fast Portuguese people speak and how much they “eat” vowels, this is how the word “Portugal” sounds to me when they say it: “prtgal”.

image source