Braga - sun, stairs, Romans and bacalhau

As I've been to Braga before I will not get deep into details concerning it. However, this time it was totally different due to the extremely sunny weather and the Braga Romana festival.

Going to the church of Good Jesus of the Mountain was obligatory. We were not cheating, we didn't take the funicular so while going up we came across crowds of Polish seniors going down.

Can you see the resemblance between Kasia's skirt and all the flowers behind her?

Finally at the top! "Let's eat ice-cream and sit in the shadow." It turned out that behind the church there is a great park with pounds, boats and stuff. Really cool on such a hot day.

The plan was to experience some Portuguese cuisine at lunch time. We went to the restaurant I've been to before with Sara and ordered "bacalhau com natas". Portuguese people have 1001 or more recipies for how to prepare bacalhau - codfish. They love this kind of fish sooo much that, as I was told, they don't have it anymore in their ocean area so they have to import it from Scandinavia.

We've visited every single place that could be interesting for tourist according to the very nice map from the Tourist Information. As to me, the building below was one of the nicest.

In the afternoon we were in serious need of things to drink, shower or anything that has something to do with water.

The fountain can be refreshing but not for too long...

... after finding the supermarket and making supplies we were full of energy again!

On that day the whole city was filled with market stands - Mercado Braga Romana is a kind of fair with market/bazaar with art&crafts, food and so on based on the motives from the roman times. The guy below might have been even more thirsty than we were....

This time, I've faced more touristic side of Braga but it was fun!

Roadtrip Alvão-Mirandela-Bragança-Chaves

Meeting Kasia and Daniel means just one thing: adventure!
At the evening of their arrival to Portugal, we've planned a trip for the next day, went to the car rental office and found two more never-tired and never-complaining people who'd like to join us. Luckily, Sercan and Nadir, whom we've invtited to go as first, didn't hesitate long.

On the next day, our extraordinary Polish-Spanish-Turkish crew, after picking up the car and doing shopping for the trip, went straight ahead to Alvão Natural Park. Most of the frequent visitors probably remember that I've been there one month before with girls. This time the water under the waterfall was warmer than previous time, so it was possible to swim there a bit longer. For me, this is the best place I've been to in Portugal - there are no other people, no civilization, only the sound of water going down, greeness of nature and heat of the rocks.

After hiking, swimming, hiking again and driving came time for a lunch break. We've stopped in Mirandela, which is famous for its bridge from the Roman times. The compagnion of our lunch was a brown dog that seemed to have some problems with leg so Nadir, future vet, tried to help it somehow.

The thing that I've found interesting was a monument of a giant girl, which we decided to call a monument of a Polish Girl. No idea what could be the official reason for making this kind of statue.

The next stop was Bragança, named after the celtic goddess Brigantia. The main attraction of the city is very well saved medieval castle. We were surprised by it's size and interior, which was available to enter.

The most famous building of Bragança is Domus Municipalis, a mysterious Romanesque building used in the pastg as a cistern and later as a city hall. Nobody knows what was the first reason for creating this construction.

On the city's outskirts, we've found an interesting monument showing the kind of road, pointing the castle of Bragança, with donkeys and farmers walking along.

After visiting every possible place in Bragança we still had a lot of time until the sunset so we decided to take a very curvy road to Chaves. It was a real trauma for everybody, especially for Daniel who was driving, but at the end nothing bad happened.

Chaves literally means 'keys' in Portuguese. It is the most famous for being a spa since the Roman times becuse of its hot termal waters. The city center is very picturesque together with the medieval castle.

The most characteristic pieces of architecture of Chaves are Roman bridge and Igreja Matriz a.k.a. Santa Maria Maior Church from XI century, which is reflected in the window below.

Oh, and "sapataria" is a Portuguese word for "shoe shop" and Mariazinha is a cute version of my name in Portuguese. I guess it's a very funny coincidence... I'm little Maria with shoe size 42!

This post would not appear if not pictures taken by Kasia, Daniel and Nadir.
It was another lesson that my camera doesn't like water because it stopped working after the time by the waterfall.

Kasia and Daniel conquer Portugal

Last weekend of May was incredible! The best couple in the world, Kasia and Daniel, came from faraway Toulouse to visit me. Their journey took 13 hours by bus but when I saw them in Vila Real on Friday noon they were as joyful as always.

Before they arrived the only thing I asked them to bring was French cheese. By the way, in the nearest supermarket here - Pingo Doce - most of the cheese comes from Poland. So while I expected Kasia and Dani to bring 2 or 3 cheeses, they've filled one of their backpacks with cheese! It made some of my flatmates very unhappy - after opening the fridge the only sentence I could hear was "uhhhhhh something stinks!". To avoid any kind of tragedy that could take place, we decided to eat the most smelly ones as soon as possible and did an evening picnic.

The consumption of cheese was supported by Calem's Ruby Port wine. It matched just perfect!

First cheese we've tried is called Valencay and produced from goat's milk. It used to have a pirdamide shape, but after Napoleon's unsuccessful visit to Egypt, the top of it was cut off not to remind him about the failure. It tastes much more delicate then it smells. It really smells!

Second cheese was Forez, made of mixed milk (goat's and cow's) and brick shaped. It is very soft and somehow similar to Camember.

That's all folks! I got hungry...

May I show you...

The month May is not, as most of the people think, a month of picnics and admiring flowers. It is a month when every student hardly sleeps and is followed by deadlines, no matter if awake or asleep, while being surrounded by great possibilities of having fun. And here I go with some daily shots...

Queima de Vila Real

Queima das Fitas is a traditional festivity of Portuguese students. The most famous ones take place in Coimbra and Porto. In Vila Real it started last Thursday.

That evening Iva, with a support of Paulina and me, prepared Czech dish called knedliki. She served them with chicken and as a salad prepared cucumbers with yogurth (in polish: mizeria, in turkish: cacık). As you see below we had a big variety of people with different eating habits: a vegetarian, non-pork eaters and also a person who eats mostly junk food. Despite of that, everybody enjoyed the dinner and we have to repeat it!

After having a coffee we've moved to the Camara Municipal - the main square, where crowd of students gathered for the Monumental Serenata. During the Serenata fado and historical songs were performed. However, I was personally positively distracted by the general atmosphere and students dressed in traditional outfits. The picture below shows me and my classmates (from the right: Nelson, Simon, me, Armando and Filipe). As you see, two of them are wearing praxe and two of them not.

Praxe is a traditional outfit of portuguese student and its history reaches 14th century. It consists of a long jacket, trousers, black tie and vest and of the long coat which has many patches on it.

The patches on each student's coat are different. Those that you may see at Armando's coat symbolize his university, his faculty and his favourite football team.

Nelson has a patch of his faculty and many patches of cities that his friends come from. Interesting rule is that the number of patches must be odd (1,3,5,7...101).

Felipe, who studies biochemistry, has not only patches with his country, city or faculty but also favourite bakery, his parents, valentine's day. He told me that it is also common to wear a round black hat with the whole praxe.

Inseparable and main part of Queima are music concerts and even if you are not paying attention to what the band is playing it is still fun. The biggest stars so far this year were Rita Red Shoes and Blasted Mechanism. The week is not over yet!

Alvão Natural Park and the Douro Valley road trip

One extremely sunny Wednesday my adventurous friends - Iva, Olka, Seher, Sena and I, took few maps, many bottles of water, good moods and went for a road trip.

Our adventure started in the North-West of Vila Real, in Alvão Natural Park. To be more precise, our first target was Cascata de Galegos da Serra, which is a waterfall!

At first we left our car in one of the villages and followed the route that the map showed us. As it usually happens with most of good looking maps, the map failed us. Luckily, thanks to the shepherd-lady in a Mercedes, that we met on the way, we've reached the waterfall without getting lost.

When the waterfall appeared, it turned out to be bigger than we expected. It seems to be 3 or 4 floors high. We went down along the rocks and couldn't resist having a bath there.

As you may see, we were more or less prepared for it. Thanks to the great Czech-Turkish-Polish cooperation Iva, Sena and I managed to swim in our pants sharing 2 bikini bras. The feeling of swimming in the freezing water after a while of hiking in the sun is the most pleasant thing that could've happen and surely unforgettable!

Afterwards we went back to Vila Real for lunch! Is there any better place for a stop by the road for having lunch and going to the WC than McDonald's? Of course not. After the break we continued the trip but this time took the road to the South, in completely opposite direction than before, to take a ride along the Douro Valley and its famous vineyard route, which is one of UNESCO's heritage sites.

The views were incredible and we felt like taking more and more pictures of them behind each road serpentine. Iva is a great driver and we wouldn't make it without her.

The most picturesque town by the river Douro is Pinhão. That is also where we stopped for a while to visit one of the quintas, which is a portuguese word for "a little field". The one we've picked was Quinta de la Rosa. Thanks to the kindness of the owners we were able to taste some Port wine of different kinds and listen to the story how is it produced.

Last but not least part of the trip was Lamego, an ancient episcopal city. Its most important building is the pilgrimage church of Nossa Senhora dos Remédios, which is reached by a magnificent Baroque-style 600-step staircase. This piece of architecture is very similar to the one I've seen in Braga few weeks ago but for sure less taken care of. Hooligan's grafitti was visible on most of the walls. We couldn't make the way up in a high speed after all the tiring day, so we've made one or two small stops for having a sandwich.

The trip finished at 20:00. The only part that we've skipped was Regua, a city on the way from Lamego to Vila Real. Well, maybe next time.