Rota do Petisco.

One of the most interesting ideas to know the cuisine of Algarve is happening till 12 of October in five towns in this region – Portimão, Silves, Alvor, Mexilhoeira Grande and Ferragudo. It's called “Rota do Petisco” and it consists of a tour by restaurants to try a “tapa” with a drink, for only 2,5 euros or 2 euros if it is a dessert.

“Rota do Petisco” is happening for the 4th time and since last year has us as big fans. In the first we tried fifteen places with fifteen different dishes and on the second edition only in one evening we already got six stamps in our passports that guide us through this gastronomic journey.

Last saturday we started in Ferragudo, one of the nicest fishermen towns in Algarve. In a place like this the food that comes from the sea has to be in the menu. We started our trip this year with a tasty fish soup in Sueste restaurant. A nice way to start the evening.

Looking at the suggestions of the passport, we decided to go to a place called Q Café, that we already knew from last year. This time the suggestion was a mini-liver francesinha, called Francesquinha. Martyna had a non-meat version with salmon and fresh cheese. At this point we were joined by Nuno's sister and brother-in-law, that were our journey partners for that evening.

We were in the mood to try new things and a shrimp burger in a place called Café Duplex seemed a good challenge. It was. Even though it was small, the shrimp burger, served with mini-toast and ruccula was really tasty and made us wonder why is that not more common to find in restaurants.

Then we decided to cross the river to go to Portimão to continue our “Rota”. We went to the “heart” of this event, in Portimão downtown, where the restaurants are really close to each other, so it's usual to see big groups walking around trying to get stamps to their passports.

We wanted to go back to one of our favourite places from last year, where we tried “bucha de bacalhau”, a kind of a cod sandwich with onion, but many other “roteiristas” had the same idea, so we would have to wait to get our stamp and our meal. And we admit – we were still hungry..

Thinking more with our bellies than with our brains we decided to go to a place that would fill up our stomach a bit more, so bean stew with conch – Feijoada de búzios – in Meco restaurant, seemed to be the best option. And it was, because it was tasty and we had a place to seat. Looking again to our guide/passport, we found another meal that we couldn't miss. Taberna Cool 33 had an octopus toast, that made us walk for 10 minutes to get there. It was worth it, and the place, that we knew from last year made it taste even better.

We couldn't finish the evening without a dessert, and we were decided to eat it, because it wasn't easy to find an available place. After two unsuccesful stops, we decided to check if one of the places where we ate a figg and almonds ice cream last year was in this year Rota. It was, and the ice cream with carob and figg was a great way to finish the night.

If you are near Algarve we recommend at least one evening spent on Rota do Petisco, because for sure we will come back before it ends again!

Before a castle, then a fort, now only the chapel remains

Today we present you one of the places in Algarve that is worth a visit. In Lagoa Municipality, more specifically near Porches there is a chapel in top of a cliff, entering the sea and separating a beach on the left and another one on the right. In medieval ages, it was castle, then in the XVI century it was a fort, but the waves damaged it. Now only the chapel and white walls remain in the place. Says the legend that the chapel was built in the medieval times because Our Lady appeared in that place, and Portuguese king D. Dinis commanded the construction of the fortified walls to protect it. Last week we were there, and these are the pictures that Martyna made of the place. Plus the pictures she took on her first visit there, in February 2013.

Why should people take helmets to the beach?

Do you know when is that warm that the only place that seems right is near the water? Algarve is like that since the first days of June. So, where to go on a saturday afternoon? The beach seems obvious, but the problem is that it is so obvious that everyone else thinks about the same. So, to avoid the line and the parking problems in Faro Beach we went East, and we stopped in Fuzeta. A beach in the heart of Ria Formosa, in a small fishermen town, seemed a good choice to avoid the crowd. But it wasn't. It was actually the stereotype of an afternoon spent in the beach in Algarve in Summer. Almost no place to place the towels, noisy "neighbours", and the worst of all violent ones.
We didn't find any reason for the 2 square meters free in the middle of the croweded sand so that seemed a good spot for us. Not even five minutes after we were regreting our decision. A group of male teenagers with their testoterone on fire thought that the beach is a great place to create a "royal rumble" event. After some pushing and grabing one of them just woke up the "karate kid" in him - not likely that he knows who is Daniel-san or Mr. Myagi, but still - and applied a flying kick in the head of the smallest one in the group - what actually makes it less impressive, couse changes the attack onto a low-flying kick. The kid - he regressed to the past with the impact - cryed like a baby, and the "friend" ran to him apologyzing and compensating him with the solution to end the war in the world: "You can punch me in the face to make it even" - what a genious!.
The man - he grew up from kid to adult in a moment - denied and left. "Everything will be ok now? Wrong...". A family next to us got inspired by the fighting scene and decided to do the same. Four grown-ups started to fight their kids in a painful game. Some slapping, some grabbing, some punching - nothing that we didn't see before it that beach minutes before - and a Hello Kitty ball... BAM! in Nuno's face. Intriguing the fact that the adult that threw it was trying to hit a one year old baby that was participating in the familiar WWE event... Time to leave the beach before the "plague" started to contaminate more people and the older ones armed with canes can be really dangerous when becoming violent. The sun was still up, so we walked near the boats planning the one that we will buy in the future - some for sale but we didn't find "the one" yet. In the middle time to eat grilled octopus, delicious for Nuno, too salty for Martyna, and perfect to throw it to the face of the guy that throws balls at peaceful people on the beach :).

First day in Andalucia's "must see" - Ronda

Ronda was a place in our minds to visit since march last year, when Martyna went to Andalucia and didn't have the opportunity to go there.

The pictures from the Internet show a city built in top of a mountain divided by an abiss, and connected by three bridges. In fact we didn't know what to expect. It could be even a place to be there some hours, take some pictures and leave. But... it wasn't.

After the first hour spent there, we cancelled our plans of leaving right away in the morning of the next day. There was to much to see, too many point of views to admire that architecture work, those landscapes, those narrow streets.

Even though it is a touristical place, Ronda is not asfixiated by the tourists. You can visit all the places without feeling that it is too much croweded.

After we arrived to the city, we noticed that it was too big for our expectations. It is an historical place, with an historical centre, but also a city with 30,000 inhabitants, with the shops and facilities that they need. We arrived and we went straight to the tourist information center. We discovered right away that our reservation made in the previous night was a catch. Our hostel was in middle of the action. 50 meters from it there was the landmark of Ronda, the New Bridge, that took more than 40 years to be built - between 1751 and 1793 - and that is 120m tall, above the impressive canyon that divides the city.

Ronda is an El Dorado for History fans. There are historical landmarks since the roman ocupation, and a lot more to discover, as we could witness in some backyards of the houses where arqueological sites were still active.

The evolution of the civilization in that city is marked by the bridges. The smaller and older is called Roman Bridge, or San Miguel Bridge - even though that the historicians say that it is not roman. The second one is the Arab Bridge, built during the arab occupation of the place, and the third, the New Bridge is the one that we already mentioned above.

We started from the younger bridge to the older one. The younger is by its height impressive, but also by its architecture. We walked around it, checked the viewpoints, and then we went to the Arab Bridge, climbing the stair on the oposite margin. Then... it started raining. We ran to the hostel, but the rain stopped right away and we could go back to the sightseeing part. Then the hunger took over us. In Spain, you should eat tapas, and so we did. With so much choice to eat those, till now we are sure that we chose the worst place that we could, so bad that we left it still with our bellies rumbling. So we decided to give a try to the restaurant that was connected to our hostel. There we didn't have reasons to complain about the food, or about the great sangria :).

Praia do Barril by accident.

Imagine a sunny sunday after weeks of rainy and cloudy weather... First thing we thought about: leave the house, and so we did. After lunch we decided to go west, without any specific destination, only the direction was defined in our heads.
In a place like Algarve, is difficult to know all the beaches from Sagres to Vila Real de Santo António but the best places we thought that we knew... Lie...
Before arriving to Tavira, we saw a sign to "Praia do Barril". Nuno heard about it before, but never went there, neither Martyna. "Let's give it a try", we thought, and we stopped there.
First interesting thing: the access. The acess is made by a narrow floating bridge where is not possible to walk aside other person. Bridge crossed and we saw the second interesting thing: a train station with a really funny small train. We thought that in winter it would be deactivated. Wrong. It was working and transporting people through the railroads to the beach. At this point we found out that we would have a quite long walk in Ria Formosa.
After 15 minutes walking, we arrived to the beach, hundreds of meters of sand only with the ocean in the horizon. Looking at one of the maps of the place, we read that there would be somewhere a anchor cementary. We could imagine by the name what it would be, but we didn't knew what to expect. We walked a bit more on the sand and we saw what was it about. Around one hundred anchors on the sand, reminding a cementary. That place was used as a tuna fishermen shelter that now is deactivated. From those boats capturing the tuna migrating from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean sea, only these Anchors stayed.