Where Next? Travel with Kristen and Carol
Where Next? Travel with Kristen and Carol
Portugal - Travel with Mark (Part 2 of 2)
In this episode we are visiting Mark from Portugal. This is a Part 2 of our 2 part interview. In this episode, we talk about expat life, digital nomads, lots of discussion on local foods, music and gems outside of the city.
Be sure to check out Part 1 to hear Mark's back story and highlights of living in Porto, Portugal . Recorded May 2022
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Hosts
Carol Springer: https://www.instagram.com/carol.work.life
Kristen: https://www.instagram.com/team_wake/
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Hi, welcome to our podcast when Next Travel with Kristen and Carol. I am Kristen and I am Carol, and we're two long-term friends with a passion for travel and adventure.
Speaker 2:Each episode, we interview people around the globe to help us decide where to go next. In today's episode, we are visiting with Mark from Portugal. This is part two of our interview, so please be sure to check out part one, where we learn about Mark's backstory and how he found Porto. In this episode, we talk about expat life, digital nomads, lots of discussion on local foods, music and gems outside of the city. We really appreciate you joining us today and we would love if you could support us by simply following, rating or reviewing our podcast in your favorite podcast app. Enjoy.
Speaker 1:Also about like careers and expat.
Speaker 3:The expat community here is growing. It's really interesting there's, you know it's when I was in my 20s I moved to Seoul we mentioned that briefly at the beginning of our conversation and when I was 22, 23, whatever the heck that was and I moved to seoul, I had nothing to go on, right. The internet was in its infancy I don't even think I had emailed that point in time and um and so you really only can gather information via like guidebooks, like lonely planets was my, was my bible at, and so here, now that we have so many resources, particularly with Facebook groups and such that we basically have all the information at our fingertips. So if you look on Facebook groups and do a search for Porto or Portugal expats, you're going to find 25 different groups. So one of the groups I belong to is called Porto Expats and it's all the expats that you're going to find 25 different groups. So one of the groups I belong to is called Porto expats and it's all the expats that come to Porto, they join us, they all have a chat, they all talk about whatever they talk about, and so it's interesting because the expats have to work a little harder than the locals, so the expats don't know everything around and they have to ask questions. And inevitably they'll ask questions that the locals sometimes forget to ask. And then the expats are the ones who find cool things at the end that the locals don't even find. So, for example, on porto expats I'll find, like this vietnamese woman who's making a home-cooked vietnamese food. She doesn't have a restaurant, but she'll do this thing where she'll, like, you know, she's got her dish of the day and she cooks a bunch of it and then she packages it up and kind of sends it out as carry out, like on Uber Eats, but there's no restaurant and it's this little Vietnamese woman making this super authentic food. And I found that from Porto expat. So I find that there's some really cool ways of connecting with the world with these different expat groups and Facebook groups. Ways of connecting with the world with these different expat groups and facebook groups.
Speaker 3:But, um, back to the more nuts and bolts of expat life. Here I feel portugal is becoming a um. Portugal especially is becoming quite a, a nomad destination. I mean it's, it's affordable to live here, it's very pleasant. I want to say um, it's a timeout magazine that they rate. They're one of the magazines that rate the quality of life in places. Porto is way up top to you know, top 10, top 20 cities in the world to live in and you know you could be like a digital nomad and do very well here. You know. So one of my friends has a web marketing agency and he's tried living in like a dozen cities around the world and he actually called me last month asking me about portugal because he wasn't too happy with where he was living now and he has employees all around the world all virtual, and it doesn't matter where he lives. He's he's, he's going to live where he's comfortable. So I think portugal is a great place for that, because it is a comfortable place to live.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, I'm sold 100%. What?
Speaker 1:was the website or article that you sent me on a specific city in Portugal that had a very large digital nomad population, or something like that. Did I send you that? I don't think I did. Carol did Carol sent me something you that I don't think I did? Carol did Carol sent me something?
Speaker 2:Oh, I don't know, I don't remember, oh, but there's Madeira Island, just like also like.
Speaker 3:So there's two groups of islands there's Madeira and there's Azores. The Azores is the in English we would say Azores, but azores is a bastardization of the real pronunciation, which is azores. So the azores is a uh, a chain of volcanic islands in the middle of the atlantic, and madera is an island. It could be one or several, I'm not exactly sure. I don't know much about madera. I think it's off much closer to africa than the. Az. Azores is kind of central Atlantic. Azores are volcanic islands, good wine production it's like a Hawaii kind of situation and Madeira I don't know much about Madeira, but I heard good things. So those are both Portugal, but they're quite different from mainland Portugal.
Speaker 3:As side note, check out the wall behind me. Do you see this wall? Yeah, so this studio that I'm in is a 200 year old building and this building is used to be an ironworks. They didn't. It wasn't the foundry, they didn't pour molten iron, but they did something with like fabrication of iron and the. They divided the space and made it into kind of like black color. So there's a lot of like architects and artists and stuff like that. So my space here for this wall is super typical a stone wall. That is, uh, that is huge granite blocks and on the other side of that is there's nothing else. It's like there's granite here and the other side is more granite and that's it and that's the other space, and so that's really cool. That's kind of a super portuguese thing. I mean, in america we have drywall and I don't know studs and wall boards and different things, but here's just a big block of stone and then the next one is someone else's space, and it's pretty cool no insulation needed.
Speaker 1:Can you hear them? Oh no it's unbelievable.
Speaker 3:Like my studio space, it could be really hot outside. It stays cool in here. The whole place is granite. In the winter time, though, it's freezing, yeah, and there's and there's no heat. So I have like a little tiny guest space heater yeah, how do you spell azorish uh? Azorish a-z-o-r. No, a-c, a-c, gosh, I don't even know.
Speaker 2:I googled a-z-o-r-e-s islands and then I got a, I got a bunch that's.
Speaker 3:That's it. I think azorish is a-C, with the little at the bottom, the little C-D, a-c-o-r-e-s, but you'll find it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh yeah, a-c-o-r. Yeah, I don't know, they both came up. It has, like Santa Maria Island, san Miguel Fallal.
Speaker 3:Island, yeah, the Azores, they have quite a few.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a lot.
Speaker 3:I think Madera is just the one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, few, uh, and whereas madera I think madera is just the one. Yeah, oh my gosh, it sounds so cool. Well, um, I think we need to move to our rapid fire questions. So what is that? What's the popular religion in portugal?
Speaker 3:catholic catholic.
Speaker 3:Okay, and for me I'm, I'm unabashedly atheist and uh, zero religion for me. Uh, much to the chagrin of my mother, who is a Catholic and she thinks she failed me here the predominant religion is Catholic. However, I have to say, on the periphery, as someone who's not interested in religion and just observing on the side, I noticed something interesting the people here are not heavily practicing. So if you go into religious areas in America where there are lots of parishioners who spend time going to church every Sunday, here it's not so much. Even though this is a Catholic country and the religion is supposedly ingrained in the culture and, like 99% of people are Catholic, you go to a church on Sunday. It's almost empty.
Speaker 3:So I don't know that, you know, draw your own conclusions. Maybe it's an idea that religion is losing its importance in the world. I don't know. I don't want to offend anybody, but I feel that kind of is the case. My mother is a staunch religious zealot. She adores her religion. She's Catholic, she's, you know, really really strong um religious person. But when she goes to her local church here, she told me, she's like you know, it's really strange. You know, I go to my church at home in Chicago, back to the walls, and here there's like 12 people in the church.
Speaker 2:Uh, for sunday mass, so okay, you should go there and meditate then take that information as you wish.
Speaker 2:I'm not going to draw any conclusions, but there it is okay, now I'm like I want to move there, you know, um, and have my mom come too right and uh, yeah, so my mom's very, she loves her church every day, um, okay, so yeah, you talked about the food a little bit. Is there like a favorite dish you have? It was so interesting. We've talked to someone in Singapore. She's like chicken rice. I'm like what she's like? It's actually a thing. It's a very famous dish called chicken rice in Singapore. But is there like one dish that you just love, Of course.
Speaker 3:Well, if you think about it, you know, ask an Italian what's a famous dish? I mean they can name dozens, right. So in Portugal you have. There's a very strong connection to cod, so codfish. I don't know, first of all, why it's called codfish, because cod is fish. You don't call it salmon fish, you call it salmon. It should just be called cod as far as I'm concerned, but they call it codfish.
Speaker 3:Anyway, cod dates back a long time ago to before refrigeration, and before refrigeration the way to preserve it was to salt it. So you take the fish and you fillet it or butcher it or whatever, and then you would salt the heck out of it so it didn't spoil and it would dry, and then, if you wanted to cook it, you would rehydrate it by soaking it in water for a couple of days and then you would make a dish with it. So, even though times have progressed and we have refrigeration now and that's not longer necessary, that is still a thing here. So you go to the supermarket and this is super weird when you first move here, you go to the supermarket and there'll be a section where they have half carcasses of cod, which cod's a big fish Cod's, like you know.
Speaker 3:I don't know like a meter long fish and they'll have half a cod with the bone and everything it's fine, salted and dried, and they'll stack them up and they smell like a dried, salted fish. It doesn't smell that great and they smell like a dried, salted fish. It doesn't smell that great. So you go to the supermarket and there it is, and you'll take that home and you'll cut it and you'll soak it in water for a couple of days and then you'll make a codfish recipe which is a typical Portuguese codfish recipe and there are famously some. There's famously like a thousand codfish recipes. So there's one of my favorites is called bacalao, so codfish, salted cod, is called bacalao. Bacalao it's a difficult word to say Bacalao, so bacalao a brush is shoestring potatoes, olives, eggs and cod cooked together. It's really delicious if it's made well. But then there's a thousand recipes for cod, so that's probably the most famous of all the Portuguese dishes is salt cod dishes.
Speaker 3:Beyond the salt cod dishes, a couple of my favorites stick out. Let's see there's two fish that rise to the top of prominence. One is called cobalo and one is called dorada. So cobalo in America you've probably never heard that term in a million years, but you probably have heard in restaurants branzino. And branzino is the Italian word for Mediterranean sea bass. And Mediterranean sea bass if you go to a good restaurant they're going to have branzino and it's absolutely fantastic, and they cook it in different ways.
Speaker 3:Oftentimes they'll take the whole fish and they'll sear it, so it's crispy, skinned and you'll have half of filet and it's really nice on the inside. So branzino is amazing. So branzino is exactly the same as robalo r-o-b-o-l-o, robalo, robalo in portuguese and robalo is super common here, so we eat a lot of that. The other one is dorada, which is in english. I believe it's called sea bream. For some reason all the fish names in the world are all different language by language, but sea bream is also very common in england and um and dorada is sea bream. So a lot of times they'll cook the fish here, but they cook them whole, which in America we're so used to getting boneless, skinless filet of fish.
Speaker 3:When we go to a restaurant or even cooking from home, we go to Whole Foods. There's no skin, there's no bones, it's like all perfect. But here when you go to supermarkets, it's a bunch of whole fish, head and the whole thing, guts included, and so when you go to the fish, when I go to the supermarket, I'll go there and I'll order a hobala, which is the branzino, which is a mediterranean sea bass, and I'm buying the whole fish. I'm not buying filet, I'm buying head to tail, and the lady behind the fish counter will remove the scales and remove the guts but still give me head to tail. And so then it's up to me. I'll take it home and I'll either cook that on the barbecue or in the oven completely whole, or I'll filet it myself and I'll cook a filet like sauteed in a pan. So fish is a huge part of the diet here and we do way more whole fish than you're used to in the States, which takes some getting used to.
Speaker 1:But once you're used to it in the States which takes some getting used to, but once you're used to it it's really nice. I had that experience in Costa Rica and I was sitting and I ordered fish and the guy brought it from my shoulder over and put it down and it had the eye looking at me with the tail and I jumped up and he felt so bad I need to get back and prepare and just put the filet.
Speaker 3:I love it. I love it and I'm a cook. So I I actually took it upon myself to try to learn more about fish butchery and I'm super into like Japanese cutlery. So I have really nice Japanese knives and I actually have one knife which is specifically meant for Japanese fish butchery it's called a Deba, and so I bought this knife trying to learn how to use it. So I'll go to the fish market and I'll buy like a whole salmon, I'll take it home and I'll butcher the whole thing and, you know, cut it and you know.
Speaker 3:I feel it's a way of connecting more with who we eat. I feel like in America you go to Whole Foods and you get a perfect filet. You don't really think of that as an animal anymore and I feel that if you take a fish and you learn how to butcher it yourself which it's almost like a, like a coarse term to butcher the fish but I feel that's a way of I don't know, respecting the protein more. It's like you know, here's this animal that we're consuming. We should know more about it and also we should probably eat less of it than we do, and so on and so forth. But fish here is a huge thing, and other food here.
Speaker 3:Let's see, I've had some of the best sushi I've ever had in my life here and I've been to Japan more than a dozen times. I got to tell you I'm really impressed with sushi here. California gets great sushi, so you guys are in no short supply, but there's some really wonderful restaurants for sushi here. There's great places for italian food. There's great indian food. You know all the, all the food cultures that kind of export themselves around the world. You're going to find here, um, but portuguese food is more mediterranean style, and so on okay.
Speaker 2:So now I want to plan a tour. I don't know what this is. Plan a tour. Have you be a guest chef to entertain the tourists at some point? That would be amazing and teach them this. This is so educational. It's like, oh my gosh, I love it. Okay, what did you have for breakfast this morning? What's a typical breakfast out there?
Speaker 3:Fruit and yogurt. That's my breakfast is fruit and yogurt. I make homemade granola at home, so I'll make homemade granola sprinkle on top of fruit and yogurt and I'm good Sometimes if I'm hungry, or I'll have toast, fresh squeezed orange juice and coffee.
Speaker 3:Fresh squeezed oh that's the other thing. You know it's a funny thing is we don't buy orange juice here, and I never did this in America. I don't know why things just slow down in Europe and things just like change, but we buy oranges. I always have, you know, the drawers in your fridge where you keep produce. I have one full drawer of oranges at all times and every morning. I make fresh squeezed oranges every morning for my family. And you know what the funny thing is? It doesn't take more than three minutes, it takes no time at all and the taste and the quality of fresh squeezed orange juice is so much different than buying bottles and whatever else, and it's not a luxury.
Speaker 2:You just go like is this the thing? Yeah, I have a little electric you know A little electric one, okay, whatever Okay.
Speaker 3:You know, and it couldn't be simpler and so, okay, it adds a little more time, but we're talking two, three minutes that you can budget for.
Speaker 1:That you know it's not a big deal, and so we always have a bucket of fresh oranges in our fridge my, my, my family growing up, my, my dad and my stepmom. Every, every night, she would put bread in the bread maker, and so you'd wake up just fresh bread for all of us, and then you in the morning, you would hear her doing the oranges. So we had fresh, fresh orange juice and fresh bread every morning. It was. I have to thank her for that.
Speaker 3:No, that's amazing. I don't make bread. I mean I have made bread but that's a rare occurrence. And here there's, you know, great bread available. I have to draw the line somewhere. But if I made my own bread I'm sure I'd be appreciated.
Speaker 3:But there are lots of bakeries on every corner and and we get this. There's this one bread called Pão da Vó. So Pão is bread and da Vó means of grandmother, so grandmother's bread, and there's this particular style of bread called Pão da Vó. It's kind of like sourdough San Francisco bread, but not sourdough. So if you had the boudin bakery, typical sourdough bread, but it wasn't sourdough but it had that same kind of crust and same kind of feel, minus the sour, that's pav de vin, Absolutely delicious. And you pay about a buck, a loaf For a euro you get a loaf of the stuff and I'll buy it. I'll buy two loaves at a time and I'll take one and a half of the two loaves and slice it and freeze it and then we'll eat the other one fresh. But then I take the sliced, frozen one and pop it into the toaster for my breakfast, to go next to my yogurt and fresh fruit.
Speaker 2:Very good All right. And then is there any like typical musical culture there, or there's a lot of local music, or is it just normal western, whatever world music?
Speaker 3:yeah, I find actually now I might not be the best person to speak with this, although I'm a big music fan, coming from Chicago. Chicago has um of all the places I've lived or even traveled to, and that is my home, so I'm biased. Chicago's got a really solid music culture, a live music culture. You'll find lots of jazz, lots of blues, lots of rock, lots of indie rock and available at all times of the day and night in all places in the city, and so it's really part of the culture here. I don't find that as much, unfortunately Now it might mean that I just haven't tapped into the smaller offerings yet, but certainly not as much. It doesn't mean that people here are music lovers, just means that you don't see as much gigging of smaller bands. There's plenty of you know music festivals and big concerts that come in from overseas and stuff like that, but the the small, really simple venues I I find that's a little lacking, unfortunately yeah, you can find it if you want it, but it's not as much.
Speaker 3:there's a typical. There's a typical portuguese type of music called fado, f-a-d-o, and fado is this. Um, how do I describe Fado? Fado is like a. It's a vocal music. It has usually a like 12 string guitar to go along with it. It's very vocal and lean when it comes to the music itself, when it comes to the instrumentation, and it's usually quite a longing like mournful music, quite a longing like mournful music. I think Fado's origination came from, like, the wives of the sailors who would go off to sea and not come back, and they'd be missing them for the rest of their lives, that kind of thing. So it's very mournful, but it's quite good, it's quite powerful and really good stuff. It's more common in Lisbon than Porto, but then there's also some music that is taking a touch of Fado and then lightening it up. So I'll give you one Look up on your internet, because I'm sure you're connected to the computer right now.
Speaker 3:Look up Antonio Zambujo. Antonio spelled like it sounds, zambujo, z-a-m-b-u-j-o maybe, if I'm not wrong. And Antonio Zambujo is a really famous Portuguese musician and he has a record called Quinto Q-U-I-N-T-O. See, if I'm right, if you're searching, the album cover for Quinto is a hand showing five and Antonio's Embujo. Quinto is such a spectacular record. It's kind of like a mix of styles. You have a little bit of like Brazilian Bossa Nova and a little bit of Fado. So it's not so heavy like Fado but it's much more enjoyable Because Fado can be really kind of heavy and not to say you shouldn't listen to it. Faro's great, but faro could be heavy. But this antonio zambujo really does this nice blend and that record called quinto or quinto, whatever it's called q-u-i-n-t-o quinto so
Speaker 3:that record. Listen, I'm telling you, listen to that for sure. It's so good. It's so good and you know what's nice about it. It's sung in Portuguese. So to the American ear, the voice because I'm more than likely not you will not understand the language right. So the voice becomes an instrument which I found I find really interesting in music in general. If you don't understand the language of the music, the voice becomes not a storytelling instrument but an instrument more purely. It's. It's more just like a song part. You know it's. It's just like it could be a trumpet or piano and so because you don't understand what he's saying anyway, so in in this particular record you you'll find that very prevalent and this is a beautiful record, so definitely check it out All right, so that was interesting.
Speaker 2:The rapid fire questions just go down these different paths. This is awesome. So we talked about surfing. We know Nazare is there and you mentioned the other one, but what is the money? Do they have their own? Are they in euros?
Speaker 3:you've mentioned euros pricing yeah, yours for sure, nazaree. By the way, nazaree, as far as I know, is an anomaly.
Speaker 3:I mean don't go there unless you're no I mean go there for sure, but nazaree is like that's a crazy thing. That's like you know the hurricanes in florida, you know it's a, it's a special thing. You don't go there for surfing. Maybe you do, I don't know but you're not going there as a casual surfer, no. So, uh, I haven't been. I haven't been a couple of places about. I'll just rapid fire a few places that I've been that I really liked, um, and you can play it back and see what the hell I'm talking about. Okay, one one is called Marialva, m-a-r-i-a-l-v-a. Something like that.
Speaker 3:Marialva. It's in the east of Portugal, closer to the Spanish border, due east of Porto, and there's a castle there and this castle's in ruins and the castle is surrounded by a little village and the little village has places to stay and there's this one place that, um, I don't remember the name, but we stayed there. It. They bought like four or five or six little houses or in Marialva village, and they converted it into a hotel. So it's almost like a renting a house situation, but it's really kind of a hotel. So one of the houses is like the lobby and the restaurant and one of the houses is you rent that one, another one, you rent that one, whatever. And so you're in this tiny medieval village, marialba, and uh, there's this castle and there's nothing. There's not much there at all, but it's so quaint and interesting. And then here's the cool part you go to the castle and you feel like you just discovered it on your own. Like there's no walls, there's no guardrails. If you fall, good luck, good luck, not killing yourself, just don't fall. You know it's like that, like it would never exist in America. There'd be huge guardrails and cables. But here's this like old castle you can climb over and who knows how old it is, I don't even know 500 years, thousand years, whatever. And it's unbelievable. And then there's this little hotel with this great restaurant and amazing food and you wake up early in the morning. It's a little village, awesome. That's marialba.
Speaker 3:Another place I love is check this out on your google search. There's a place called troya peninsula, so look up. Well, the main town nearby that's worth looking at is called oh, my goodness, my mind is escaping me what is it called? Troia Peninsula? Okay, so look up Troia Peninsula and you're going to see, because you're going to see. It's like a little finger sticking out of the land, right? Did you find it already. I saw right t-r-o-i-a. Okay, good. So now look at the bottom of the peninsula not the top, where it goes by the water, but the bottom of the peninsula and you'll see a town. It just it just came to me called comporta, c-o-m-p, comporta, c-o-m-p-o-r-t-a. It's at the bottom of the Troia Peninsula.
Speaker 3:Okay, now, this is super local stuff. This is not touristic stuff, this is cool stuff. So Troia Peninsula and Comporta you don't see many non-Portuguese tourists there, but it's brilliant. So the Troia Peninsula itself is like a big wildlife refuge area. So there's like no construction anymore and there's this like eco lodges and the places where you stay have to be super, I don't know, like similar to the nature environment and the beaches are absolutely spectacular.
Speaker 3:Comporta has a little village At the bottom, has this huge stork population. They have great food, great restaurants, but it's super small. It's like a little small. You know, it's kind of like in America you'd have an area that's popular with the bigger cities, like, for example, in Chicago. If you want to go to Wisconsin to the north, there's a couple of areas of Wisconsin that are popular Chicagoans. They're like small little areas. It's like that. It's like the locals know, or the people know where to go, but it's not so common. For example, if you're Japanese and you're coming to America for the first time, you're not going to the Wisconsin Dells, you're going to New York and Los Angeles first time. You're not going to the wisconsin delts, you're going to new york and los angeles.
Speaker 3:So if you come to portugal, you're probably not going to find comporta unless you really dig. Comporta is the thing that's known to the portuguese people, so comporta is really cool. There's not that much to do there, but it's really special. Um, so we have marialva. Oh, there's a place called Obidos, o-b-i-d-o-s. Obidos is. Have you been to Italy? Mm-hmm, yeah, have you been to Tuscany?
Speaker 1:No so like Tuscany.
Speaker 3:So we're talking about Florence and Siena and San Gimignano and those places Florence I've been to Florence, so just outside of Florence because Florence isn't Tuscany, so just outside of Florence because Florence is in Tuscany, so just outside of Florence, you have some towns. One's called Siena, which is a walled city. It's quite famous. One's called San Gimignano, which is really beautiful tiny little village, walled, whatever. So Obidos is kind of like a little Tuscany, but I'm just trying to explain it in terms of things you may have seen before. And Albi Doge is like a cute little walled village that is kind of just in the middle of nowhere. It's adorable. It's a great place to go spend the day. You don't need to spend much more than the day. But if you're traveling through that part of the country, which is it's actually not far north of Lisbon, it's like an hour north of Lisbon you could like do a road trip to Portugal and say, okay, we're going to stop for a long lunch in Abidos, we're going to show up at 11 in the morning and get out of there by 3 in the afternoon and move on to the next place. That's enough. You'll have a killer lunch and find some little shopping and get some good wine and move on.
Speaker 3:Abidos is super cute. It's a nice little spot. Nice, let's see Marialva Abidos. Ooh, here's a cool spot. There's a place called Pedras Salgadas, so Pedras Pedra, it means stone, p-e-d-r-a-s, which means stones. In plural, salgadas is salty, s-a-l-g-a-d-a-s. Look up Pedras Salgadas and there's a town there. It might even be called Pedras Salgadas, but there is a brand of water called Pedras Salgadas, which means salty water and salty stones, and there's a kind of like um. Imagine san belgrino from italy. We have better, so god, it's a mineral water here in portugal. And that little um place, they have a, a small eco lodge hotel in the forest with awesome architecture. So if you search for pedro, so goddish you should these.
Speaker 3:You should find some like crazy angular wooden structures on stilts.
Speaker 2:Did you find it? I found it in the map, so it's like northeast of Porto.
Speaker 3:But yeah, it's true. But look, forget the map. Look at like Google search and see like the hotel's website and you should find some, some like like wooden structures on stilts, like from our interesting architectural elements the spa and nature park yes, that place is awesome.
Speaker 3:It's awesome. They have some, uh, ancient trees and forests. They even have some giant sequoias that they imported from california, and, um, you know, it's limited in its scope. It's, like, you know, it's not like some built-up place, but it's just beautiful. You go there and you get this cool spot and you could get away from the city for a few days, and there's a good restaurant and there's good hiking through the forest and and stuff like that.
Speaker 3:So, you know, here's what I find is really magical in portugal, in the united states, if you want to leave one place and see something different by car, it takes like 10, 20 hours before you actually see anything different. Like, if you leave Chicago in a car, good luck on finding anything different anytime soon, and you know so. In Portugal, though, you can leave and drive an hour away, and everything looks different. If you leave Porto and drive an hour to the north, it looks completely different. And then, if you go two hours to the west or to the east, well, you can't go two hours to the west, that's the ocean, but two hours to the east, towards marialva, it's a completely different landscape, everything's different. So it's really cool.
Speaker 3:Uh, let's see where else? Um, there's an area called Serra da Estrela, so Serra is in California speak we would say Sierra, like Sierra Nevada, so Serra is the Portuguese, sierra is a Spanish word, so Sierra Nevada is all Spanish, but Serra is Portuguese. Serra da Estrela is the mountains of the stars and Serra da Estrela is on the eastern edge of Portugal, near the Spanish border, and Serra da Estrela is the highest mountains in the country. And in Serra da Estrela are some wonderful places to explore and stay, one of which is called Mantegas, which sounds like butter. Mantega is butter M-A-N-T-E-G which sounds like butter. Mantega is butter M-A-N-T-E-G-A or something like that Mantega. But Mantegas M-A-N-T-E-G-A-S is a little village and in that village it's so cute. It's like you're in a little Swiss mountain village. It's fantastic, and there is a hotel in Serra d'Estrella and there is a hotel in Sahara, Australia.
Speaker 1:It's a place it's called S-E-R-R-A-D-A-E-S-T-R-E-L-A. It reminds me of like you're hiking the mountains in Hawaii and looking out. It's gorgeous.
Speaker 3:That sounds proper. It sounds correct Sahara, australia. So there's this brand here. That is, they make these great woolen blankets, and it was an old factory in Serra de Estrela, in the town of Mantegas, and the owners revitalized the factory and they made a hotel. So hold on, I'm going to tell you what this is, because this is a gem.
Speaker 3:This is something you need to see Burrell, burrell, burrell, b-u-r-e-l, b-u-r-e-l, portugal. So burrell, portugal. And then they have a hotel in. So burrell is in sahara, distrella, in the town of mantegas. Where do you see their factory? In their website? They're, they're, if irela, in the town of Mantegas. Where do you see their factory, their website? If I was living in the States and I came to Portugal, I would buy a Borel blanket for sure. It's like a really nice blanket you can keep on a sofa to throw or something like that. They're absolutely gorgeous woolen blankets with this beautiful style. The factory is super old school. If we look for Borel factory and a hotel, we should be able to find it Burrell Mineral Hotels. Let's see what that is. It's got to be it. Kazis, depenis, dorades, is that it?
Speaker 1:Penhas Dorades.
Speaker 3:Yeah, kazis, depenis, dorades, that could be it. Let me see, let me click on that. Oh, it's awesome. If that's the one I'm thinking of, it's unbelievable. So it's right at the top of the mountains in Sahadistrella, the Kazis. So look at the images for that place, this place, it's right at the top of those mountains, it's in a completely snowed-in area and it it's in a completely snowed in area and it's so beautiful and everything about it is fantastic. So that's a great day, not day trip, that's a great excursion. So you go to the burrell factory in montague, which is the town. Then you go to that casas, whatever the hell, it is the radish, whatever and it's so beautiful, so so nice. And then you go for a hike through the forest in the middle of snow, go there in the middle of winter time another gem. So you have, like the um, the place I mentioned before about the uh, the marialba, the castle, and the abigosh, the little medieval town, and you have different places along the coast, like um uh, troya and comporta that mentioned, and then you have this place in Sierra Estrella, which is fantastic.
Speaker 3:The last place I'll mention is there's an area on the border of Spain and Portugal, in the north and the border is the Minho River, m-i-n-h-o River. The Minho River is a natural land border between Portugal and Spain in the north. River is a natural land border between portugal and spain in the north, and all along that river, from the ocean all the way to the inland, are cool little villages and towns. That whole mino river is a fantastic region as well in portugal. Uh, there's a couple of little statistics that are interesting. With wine production, portugal has the highest number of acreage under vines. That's a super wine term. So if you're in the wine industry you know what I'm talking about. If you're not, what that means is acreage under vine means how much of a percentage of a country is planted with vineyards. Portugal has more vineyards planted per square kilometer or whatever, than anywhere in the world. Portugal's wine consumption is second only to France, so wine's a big deal here. Now, the cool part of that is this All the wineries here, many of the wineries here, have hospitality built in, so it's not so common in Napa.
Speaker 3:I mean, you can go stay in Napa, but usually if you're in Napa you're staying at a hotel, you're not staying on the property of a winery. It's possible, but it's not so common here. The wine land is typically not as ridiculously expensive as Napa is, so the people who own the wine lands could afford to use some of that wine land for hospitality and not only for production of grapes. So if you look in the Douro Valley, which is the most famous part of Portugal wine production, you will find a huge number of wine hotels which are basically small hotels, like small boutique hotels on wine property, and then they've done a lot to improve or make interesting the properties that they're on. So, for example, check out this. Check out Quinta Q-U-I-N-T-A de Ventizolo, v-e-n-t-o-z-e-l-o. Quinta de Ventizolo. This place is absolutely gorgeous.
Speaker 3:And this is super typical of wine hotels in Portugal. You'll find them all over the country, in every region, but Quinta de Venzolo I love this one because I went there once for lunch and I was blown away. The food was incredible, the wine's amazing, the landscape is spectacular. So you go to Quinta de Venzolo, you stay there for a weekend and you have spectacular food, amazing wine, and the landscape and the lodge and everything about it is just to die for and the prices are very reasonable. So, um, that's one of them. Another one is quinta pacheca, q-u-i-n-t-a, pacheca, p-a-c-h-e-c-a and pacheca, they've done something kind of clever and they've taken these huge wine barrels and made them into hotel rooms.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 3:But, there's another one called Quinta. No, I'm sorry, herdad H-E-R-D-A-D-E, herdad H-E-R-D-A-D-E, sabroso, s-a-b-r-o-s-s-o. Herdad Sabroso is a much smaller place. Smaller place, it's in alentejo and it's a beautiful, uh, wine hotel with like nine rooms or something like that. So a spectacular restaurant with unbelievable food, like nine hotel rooms, talk about intimate. It's unbelievable and so, and these places are reasonable. So for anybody who goes to portugal, for me I would say absolutely spend some time at a wine hotel. No question, you don't spend that much time. Just do two, three night stops. They're usually going to have a gorgeous pool, some activities. You can get a little small canoe and go on a river or a hot air balloon ride or something, something to occupy your days, and then you spend time at the pool and you'll drink, drink great wine and have a wine tasting, visit the winery.
Speaker 1:But two nights at a winery is is fantastic, amazing I'm so glad you remembered or put that in there, because that's now. I want to like that sounds one more, one more.
Speaker 3:I'm sorry you're gonna cut me off. I'm sure look up pipa doro. P-i-p-a-d-o-u-r-o. P-i-p-a-d-u-r-o-u-r-o. So pipa doro is the name of a boat operator. They have one boat. It's a river boat. It's really nice and the people this is not cheap, by the way get prepared to spend some money on this.
Speaker 3:Pipa doro is a boat cruise in the doro region. So you're already in the wine area, you're like in the napa valley area, you're in doro and you can get on the pipa doro boat and you could take a whole day cruise where they make you a lot, where they make a spectacular lunch. So if you do the whole day cruise, like I said, don't get sticker shock. It's going to be expensive. But if you have a group of like 10 people and share, it's maybe like $1,000 minimum, but you go on there with a bunch of people, it's worth it.
Speaker 3:And so you go on this boat and they have a boat captain and a chef and the chef is going to make a spectacular lunch. There's tons of wine, tons of wine to taste. They take you along the river with the most spectacular views. You go up the lock system where you go into these things where they flood, and the boat goes up to the next thing, the next level, and so you do the whole day from, like you know, 10 am until sunset, and Pipidoro is unbelievable Pricey but unbelievable, and you'll have a really great experience. Oh, that's awesome. It's not for two people once you want to spend tons of money, it's more for a group. If you have, like you know, people together, it's perfect.
Speaker 2:That's fantastic. Very good job.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you very much. I'm certainly enthusiastic about where I live. I love it. There's so much to see and do here, and I feel that there's so much beneath the surface that you have to dig deeper to find, and that's what I've learned from being here. Like, my mother-in-law is super adept at finding all these wonderful things and she's quite good at digging deep into her own country, and without her I wouldn't even know about half these places that I mentioned to you today. So I feel that the typical tourist checklist is only on the surface. You have to dig deeper and, you know, really spend some time and it's just that's on you, you know so, but it's worth it.
Speaker 1:Awesome.
Speaker 3:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you. You're such a highlight. This is one of my.
Speaker 3:Oh well, thank you very much. I hope you enjoy it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no.
Speaker 3:I wanted to go to.
Speaker 1:Portugal. But uh, you know, carol really wanted.
Speaker 3:Now I really want to go Well if either one of you come, please call me first, cause I'd love to have uh, I've got some wine at minimum, or a nice meal.
Speaker 1:Awesome.
Speaker 2:I'd love to.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for sharing everything. Really appreciate it.
Speaker 3:You're very welcome, thanks for having me Take care.
Speaker 2:Ciao, thanks for listening. If you enjoyed the podcast, can you please take a second and do a quick follow of the show and rate us in your podcast app? And, if you have a minute, we would really appreciate a review. Following and rating is the best way to support us. If you're on Instagram, let's connect. We're at where next podcast. Thanks again.
