It requires time sorting out all the impressions affecting you when entering the Herdade da Matinha. Although, it starts harmless with a trivial drive over three kilometers of dirt road, which then all the sudden ends in a green part of the valley. Our first thought: it looks like Costa Rica, Guanacaste, dry north. Through …
The beaches in Sao Torpes mark the beginning of the “Parque Natural do Sudoeste Alentejano e Costa Vicentina”. Arriving from Lisbon, leaving the IP-8 you hardly can believe that, as you have to pass through horrible landscapes of refineries and camps of all sorts of various tanks, one more ugly than the other. The last …
Shortly before we left the “Herdade da Martinha”, we asked Suzanna and Alfredo where to go so as to get the best fresh fish in Vila Nova de Milfontes. The only two recommendations we had so far, were “Tasca do Celso” and “Conversas com Sal”. Both not really dedicated fish restaurants and furthermore only opened …
The Casa da Dina is one of those mysterious insider’s tip about which you hardly can find anything in the Internet. Although there are a rather spare homepage, half a dozend enthusiastic comments on tripAdvisor as well as some mousy web pictures, but nothing more. However, the little you get to see is still teasing …
It chilled down, the typical July heat gave way to damp-coldish sea air and you already could guess the early morning fog of next day. You’d like to hide yourself and simply enjoy some nice food. The “Sitio do Rio” is exactly the place for that. Low built into the dune landscape it’s a perfect …
For the first time during this trip did our search procedure for the nightly spot not work out as expected: The “Monte Velho Resort” was fully booked for the whole week because of a yoga seminar and the “Monte da Vilharina” could only offer a room for a single night, and that was not what …
It was a windy day in October, back in 2002 and Aljezur was our last destination on our way back to Lisbon, a last stopover full of atmosphere after a nearly two months trip through Portugal. We were sitting in the restaurant “Ruth o Ivo”, we had enough to eat and felt content and were …
With regard to recommendable restaurants in Odeceixe, we actually could cut the long story short as in all the recommendation lists of Portuguese travel media and restaurant guides there is only one tip: the Taberna do Gabao which is located almost secretly in one of the numerous alleys of the old quarter of Odeceixe. Yet …
That’s exactly how we envisaged it: there is a new restaurant, down by the Tejo river, in a rather sloppy neighborhood of Lisbon though, named Cais do Sodre, a former red-light district, a station area and ferry terminal. The “Restaurant Ibo”: old brickworks, reconstructed, stylish renovated, with generous facilities, a little terrace, directly at the …
The Oitavos is quite a block. A monumental solitaire built of steel and glass; a monolith, thrown nonchalantly into the sand dune. As we navigated our little rental car towards this giant, we must have felt like Will Smith in “The Independence Day”; sitting in his ridiculous jet fighter, while approaching an intergalactic spaceship of …
One of the hardly explainable curiosities of travelling is the potential longing for places in which you feel like home. At first glance, this looks like a paradox contradicting any travel logic. But stronger than travel logic is still human nature itself: constantly feeling like a stranger is definitely an undesirable condition. All the more …