For the first time in my life I didn't spend them with any member of my family. I missed them a lot and it was hard not to imagine what are the doing, what is the weather like where they are and most of all how my cousins painted the eggs and how does the cheese-cake taste this year!
During this year's Easter, one of my AEGEE friends - Sylwia - invited me to join her and her friends. I've arrived to Porto on Saturday noon and met Sylwia at the Bolhão Market. She kept on looking for chives, necessary vegetable for easter dishes, and I took some pictures of the place. The whole market was full of energetic and very convincing ladies trying to sell all kinds of food - fruit, vegetables, meat (including birds in cages) - the air smelled like a mix of fish and... strawberries!
After doing the shopping we still had a lot of time for further exploration of Porto and other side of the Douro river called Vila Nova de Gaia. It is there, where the cellars of famous Port wine are located. The wine is stored there after shipping it on special boats from the vineyards of the Douro Valley. Most of the tourists stop by the first cellars (caves) near the river bank and pay around 4 euros to try Sandeman's wine, while at Croft's they may get a guided tour around the cellar for free.
As soon as Sylwia and I went up the hill to Croft it turned out that we can visit its caves with spanish speaking guide or wait 40 minutes for english one. We've picked the first option, drank some white Port and the tour started. The guide was a lady from Panama and she lead us through the corridors of gigant barrels filled with wine and told about the procedures of making good Port. At the end the guide said that she has never seen such a quiet Spanish group. Well, none of us, neither Scandinavian guys, German girls, Itallian couple, told her the truth. We were just enjoying the second glass of Port...
The activity of wine tasting was very tiring so we went back to Sylwia's flat were her Indian flatmate - Qadir - was preparing Pav Bhaji, a typical dish from his country. It turned out that there is a shop with real Indian spices in Porto, so thanks to that he doesn't miss his mum's cuisine too bad. I've also found out that curry is a european invention. Qadir told me that he discovered what curry is when he left India. Curry is simply a mix of all possible Indian spicies but nobody uses them all together there. We ate Pav Bhaji with bread by the use of our hands. This dish convinced me that vegetarian food can be really tasty. Meanwhile, Qadir was looking forward to his first Easter Holidays!
As soon as the Sunday morning came we started preparing jajka faszerowane (eggs with top-secret filling) for the Easter lunch. Sylwia and I didn't boil eggs for a long time so it was hard to predict when should we take them out of the water. Other parts went without any problems and after approximately one hour the eggs were ready. Sylwia, Qadir and I took a bus and went to join the rest of our compagnions. Each person prepared a different dish, so the Easter table cosisted of: EGGS, chicken soup, 2 kinds of salad, chocolate cake... and a rabbit! At first we thought that rabbit is a typical Easter dish of Portugal but at the end it turned out that it's French. Still, everybody found it exquisite!
After the lunch we took a walk to the nearby ocean side. It was pretty windy but sunny. The Easter food and sun rays made us a bit lazy so we've headed up for a coffee...
Thanks to (from the right) Sylwia, Dorota, Qadir, Aga, Ada, Sara and Piotr, it was unforgetable Easter!
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