Jeannine & Roger's French Cheese Odyssey

Nazaré, Portugal - 18th June

Despite the concert outside our window last night we slept well and woke this morning ready to tackle a Portuguese breakfast. The streets were empty and there was no evidence that a festival had even taken place. The overhead bunting and decorations had gone, two of the three stages had been removed (bar the one at the big church) and there was no rubbish anywhere - simply amazing. It is hard to believe but the street below was packed with people and equipment yesterday.

Breakfast today was a ham and cheese croissant. Unfortunately, like the French, the Portuguese do sugar overload so the croissant was not buttery and flaky but instead a cake-like sweet brioche. In true Portuguese style it was also covered in baked egg yolk.

Portugal is not a well off country, so just like Roger’s beer yesterday, breakfast was cheap. The entertainment was the local drunk buying his third beer of the day and having a loud conversation with a chap on the other side of the café. If you look loosely at the plate you can see we were served breakfast on their best plates, no less than 5 chips.

We took another stroll around town to capture some of its special features...
• Every square or round about in Leiria has a monument; this is Lobo the Poet with Napoleon just to show that he can get on with the Portuguese

• True Portuguese style, many buildings have coloured tiles on the outside

• What every kids wants from a charity store, a smoking, dressed teddy

Kate and Joaquim took us on a drive to the coast to see the beaches, without the children as it's way too early for them.

Again, it was invaluable having Joaquim as a tour guide as he knows all the history, does all the talking and translation for us (Portuguese is nothing like French), and he knows how to confidently drive among the locals. Apparently we need to watch out for women drivers and old men wearing hats; that’s Roger and I covered.

The beaches are on the west coast, the Atlantic Ocean, so they are surfing beaches. There are many people drawn to them as sunbathing beaches and resort destinations. They just have to put up with sea spray, wind and take their chances there is sand as it is prone to being taken away by the sea. The photo below is Soa Pedro de Moel Beach

The next photo is the same beach but looking out to sea, if you motored out to sea for the equivalent of two hours flying you would run into the Azores Islands. My Spanish ancestor I mentioned in a previous post had a daughter who married a Portuguese whaler from the Azores Islands, or so I believe. The whaling ships used to call into the islands for supplies and labour, he would have joined the ship, which then would have travelled via Peru to NZ.

Apparently the islands are nice to visit, quite large and the US have a military base there, while we were on the beach four F16 fighter jets went over several times. Joaquim, who is a pilot, gave us a lot more history of the Portuguese defence forces.

Cheese Experience No.58 - Portuguese Mozzarella As it is Sunday the beach resorts are crowded and so are the cafes. We went to a secluded area where there was a pizza place on a cliff top in the sand dunes, nice food, Margherita pizzas and homemade lemonade.

Last beach was the famous and very popular Nazaré Beach.

We had a lovely stay in Portugal, catching up with family and especially enjoying all the local history lessons from Joaquim, about corruption, poverty, unwillingness to work, no retirement payments, forests burn down and nobody replaces them, the roads are getting worse etc.
But they do make good cheese, wines and anything that extracts money from people. The only down-side was that the local airline runs like Jetstar, so we got home after one o’clock in the morning and even worse they seized my toothpaste.
My Portuguese ancestor was known to have been timid and shy, my Spanish ancestor a hot head, the unlucky guy at the airport who speaks perfect English, like most Portuguese, met the hot head. He couldn’t comprehend that I had used the toothpaste and it would have been under the limit. I don’t understand how the lady near me can take, on board the plane, an empty water bottle and 15 containers of cosmetics and not be stopped, surely she could combine them in the bottle and make a bigger bomb than a half spent toothpaste tube. Grrrrr....