#2208: Sunday, December 30: Food, and Faro in the afternoon

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Post 2208
- 7 years and 364 days since I started this blog -

  

Journal
(written 12/20/18)

Read this once (it won't change for the rest of the trip(s): I'll be linking this post to Facebook. If that's how you got here, here's some background: About 8 years ago I started this blog as a food journal. I had a medical situation and needed to lose weight. Initially, that's all I did here: Journal my food intake and my weight. It contributed to helping me lose 20+% of my body weight in 6 months, and continuing has kept me on track since then. I started adding commentary after a while, but lately it has become infrequent. 

While I'm traveling, I let go of the weight-tracking and food journaling, except for the occasional food shot when I've eaten something interesting. And that's where we find ourselves now.

My time in the Algarve has been quiet, and that's more than all right - it's good.

It's been centered around the tiny town of Montenegro (also, it seems, called Monte Negro in some places), which is part of the city of Faro, the capital of the Algarve state. The Algarve state is geographically the nearly horizontal Southern coast of Portugal. It is the kind of vacation place Florida is to the Northeast US.

But Winter here is definitely off-season, with temperatures topping out in the low sixties. The giant water park in Faro is closed. Around this time of year, Portuguese families stay home.

Which is awesome, for me.

While there's nothing to do in Montenegro, Faro, with its large-ish population, is still open for business, even if some seasonal businesses aren't. That's okay, I'm not interested in businesses related to vacations or tourism (and there are still plenty of these open, anyway).

Not that I ignore all the sights. But the cultural aspect of Portugal that's been most available to me has been Portuguese food.

My normal diet at home is based on non-starchy vegetables and protein, mostly from animal sources. I generally avoid 'empty' carbs and grains. A typical day almost always includes a really large salad and I'm big on eggs as well - probably my most frequent source of protein.

Not here.

As far as I can tell, in Portugal, vegetables are an after-thought. When requested, a salad is likely to be small and uninteresting. Even salad main dishes seem to emphasize the protein ingredient: Tuna dominating a tuna salad. In Lisbon, when I needed vegetables (and I felt I did), I resorted to Indian restaurants (always a section with vegetable dishes), but the vegetables were, of course cooked.

I don't feel like I'm suffering, but the large amount of rice, potatoes, and bread I've been eating, and the small amount of leafy greens is pretty much one-hundred-eighty degrees from my norm.

And then, there are the pastries. In Lisbon, there's at least one pastry-shop on every block. At least. I pass three on my three-block walk to Rodas from my AirBnB. And, man, these pastries are beautiful and tempting. The national dish of Portugal is a small custard tart or pie, called pastels de nata. People get into fights over who makes the best the way we do over pizza here (or bagels in New York City). I have never been big on custard, and I have been holding off on trying these out (even while I have a short list of contenders to compare for when I get back to Lisbon and the hold is off).

But... in the center of Montenegro, pointed out to me as we drove past the first time I came to my AirBnB here, is an epic pasteleria: Doce Sabor (Sweet Knowledge). It is larger than most of the shops I've seen, and it also serves great sandwiches. And espresso. It is an every day stop for me.

Mocha creme layers and cappuccino from Doce Sabor.

I've been trying, with the exception of my vegetable-seeking Indian food forays, to eat Portuguese, mainly fish and seafood, for which Portugal is renowned. It has been very rewarding. I love the octopus they eat in Europe. It is different-tasting than what I can get at home, when I can get it in the states. In Chiang Mai, there wasn't so much octopus as squid, and that was good. Here, there's not much squid, but lots of cuttlefish. I don't think, as far as the eating goes, there's much of a difference.

Anyway, I've had octopus a couple of times and it's been great. I've also had lamb. And really, really good chorizo sausage: On its own at Jam Club, and as part of a mixed grill, something I have seen at every Portuguese restaurant I've eaten at. And I can't forget the salt cod I had on Christmas Eve - that was splendid.

I've dined out at four different restaurants since I got to Faro, and haven't had a bad meal yet. Three have been within walking distance of my AirBnB apartment. Last night's octopus rice at MN Restaurante was excellent. More on that later.

I took a ramble through Faro (it's a big enough city for me to say I only covered a small percentage) armed with very little in the way of knowledge about what was on offer. The knowledge I did have, though, paid off.

My Uber ride in was interesting - as was the fact that I had to take an Uber in the first place. Faro center isn't that far from Montenegro. But there is no direct walking path through a river and some marsh land that separate the places. If there were, it would be a nice half-hour walk. Since there isn't, it is 2-1/2 hours!

My driver spoke excellent English, and he was very much an ambassador for Faro, the Algarve and Portugal. We ended up discussing why octopus is so good, and favcored, here, and not popular at all in North America, even though it is available. He explained to me how he used to work in a restaurant in St. Luzia, about a half-hour from Faro. This was known as the octopus capital of the world. At one time, he said, 60% of the octopus eaten in Europe came from St. Luzia!

No, I'm not going to fact-check him on that. I like the myth just fine, true or not.

I got out next to the Igreja do Carmo (Church of Our Lady of Carmo), notable for a few things. One, it was built in the eighteenth century on the exploitation of Brazilian gold mines, and everything that isn't solid gold is hammered gold leaf or gilding over intricately carved wood, and there's an astonishing amount of it. The other is a chapel made of the skulls and bones of over a thousand monks, Cappel do Ossos (Chapel of Bones). This is one of a few in Portugal, but it is the one in the best condition.

Igreja do Carmo

The church itself is pretty spectacular. There are many intricately carved altars, and I was surprised by just how intricate - rivaling the kind of thing I saw in Chiang Mai, Thailand, although stylistically completely different. And comparable in size to the largest wats I visited there. The dark wood and burnished gold interiors also gave off an opposite feeling from the Buddhist temples in Thailand, which were often filled with super-saturated color, and, in general, better lit.

Behind the church proper, is a little garden containing an open chapel opposite the main building. To the left of that, there's a small nursery and childcare center. Directly to the left as you walk out the main building is the Chapel of Bones. That is the big tourist draw, and it had the biggest concentration of tourists I saw all day (which, to be honest, wasn't all that big, this being off-season).

Cappel do Ossos (Chapel of Bones)

It wasn't as creepy as I expected. It was really interesting and the vibe was, well, what it felt like to me was ultimate commitment. None of the thousands of monks whose bones create the chapel knew this was the fate of their remains. It turns out, this was kind of a 'thing' in the European religious community in the 18th century, exhume the bones of monks and use them to build a new place of devotion. During this time, many of these things were built. Today, Portugal has the two best preserved, and the one in Faro is smaller and better-kept. I hear the other one has had most of the skulls ripped off by souvenir hunters, and also suffers from unsightly graffiti. (Which is a big problem in Lisbon).

Anyway, to me, it was just interesting. Obviously, very unusual. What was creepy was all the Anguish of the Passion on display in the main cathedral. This bloody iconography, which included a life-size Jesus, down from the cross, every wound detailed and bleeding, while a well-lit Mary is reflected from above, as is a statue of Him on the cross, again, with Tarantino-level bloodiness. That, my friends, I found creepy.

Leaving there, my walk took me to the marina. On the way I stopped for a beer and sat at a table looking out on a small town square. The day was beautiful. The marina, and the area around it were very pretty. People were strolling. Couples of all ages hand-in-hand, families walking together. Something of a novelty to me. You see this sometimes in a park back home, but this seemed somehow more the norm here.

Just off the marina is the entrance to Cidade Velha: Faro Old Town. You enter through arches, passing through about 10 yards of stone walls that have been there for more than twelve hundred years. 

Entrance to Cidade Velha

The stones in these walls were set 1300 years ago. They've survived an earthquake that leveled the rest of Faro.

The cobblestone streets lead to a network of narrow alleys (streets) that seem to all end up at the Cathedral of Faro. aka Sé. I don't know why. I come through another stone arch and find a long row of fruited orange trees lining the square opposite the cathedral. 

The cathedral itself is pretty intense looking. I can see people taking photos from the bell tower, with its exposed bells and carillon works. I spend about a half hour in the Cathedral museum. The thing I like best is the red pipe organ. Make me some music!

Pipe organ of the Cathedral of Faro.

I take some pics of the intricate baroque pulpits (there are three), then make my way up the four flights of narrow and very steep stairs, having to stop and turn sideways and inhale to let people coming down pass me.

The view from the bell tower is pretty spectacular. The bells are camera-bait as well. 

When the sun starts to set, the good view becomes breath-taking.

Once the sun sets, it is as if somebody announced a sale at the Gap. In five minutes, I am the only person left on the bell-tower. Which is crazy, because dusk is equally beautiful from this vantage point.

But then I'm done. I walk back to the marina, where I now see a giant box made of little white and blue and red lights I hadn't noticed before. 

This leads to the nicely decorated shopping/tourist/restaurant area of Faro. It is kind of attractive, with clothing stores, shoe stores, hat stores, all of which seem to be right next to one or two pastry cafés, and/or gelato slingers, but I'm not really hungry or in the market for, well, anything. I've been on my feet for about five hours, had my pic taken surrounded by human remains, seen a gorgeous sunset from the best vantage point, and I'm done.

I am tired. I queue up my Uber, and thanks to a minor car accident, the twelve-minute ride home takes forty-five minutes instead.

I get back to my room, tired and happy.

And grateful for the good day I've had.

Food Comment

Next night, I found the MN Restaurante, only two blocks from my apartment. The restaurant has great, friendly service, and very good food. I had  sardine paté and olives on home-baked bread,  vegetable soup, octopus rice (pictured above). a carafe of the house red wine, and a vanilla cream pie with an espresso. All very good to excellent. It was 14 hours before I thought about eating again.

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