Portugal Part 3, Madeira

Portugal Part 3, Madeira

I apologize for the delay in writing this segment of the Portugal trip. I have had a busy summer and my garden has been producing lots of tomatoes. We have had some groundhog issues but he does not like tomatoes only the healthy stuff like broccoli and kale. We are preparing for our next trip already; back to Maui. I should have some good updates on one of our favorite places.
We also have really been enjoying Portuguese wines this summer. I highly recommend their white wines which are inexpensive and good. Fresh, good acid and not high in alcohol. My favorite producer of the week is Herdade do Esporao. They make a number of wines. The white Monte Velho is very good and I paid about $8. They also make a wine called V for Verdelho, which excellent and about $9.
Thinking about different wine from different countries I have begun to realize that the wines that we like come from areas where they drink their own wines. The Portuguese drink their own wines and very little wine is imported into Portugal. Whereas in California, much of its wine goes elsewhere and locals don't predominately drink California wine. If they did, I guarantee that the prices would be cheaper and the wines would have less alcohol. Napa produces for the world, not Napa. Something to think about.

Day 4-- We decided to go to Sintra. Sintra is about 45 minutes by train  from Lisbon. It i the place where the kings used to hang out. There are a couple of palaces and an old Moorish fort. We took the train from Rossi station. It leaves about every 20 minutes.

In Sintra all of the things to see are not near the train station so you need to take a bus that makes a loop and stops at all of the sights. There are also lots of private tours that will take you around. The train station is a bit disorienting so take your time and find the public bus that makes the loop.
First stop --- the Palace of Pena. This is actually the 2nd stop on the bus but it is an easy walk back to the Moorish fort. The Palace of Pena is not that hold as it was built in the 1800's.parquesdesintra.pt

 The Atlantic Ocean.

The   Moorish Fort in the distance.

The Moorish fort. There is a separate admission to this.

The fort is a 1/4 mile walk from the road and you need to be in good shape to explore the walls. On a nice day it is a fun activity. 

We took the bus back to Sintra and there we went to the Palace National of Sintra. This Palace is old and is like a museum inside with some fascinating rooms and works of art. It is located in the middle of Sintra. We ate lunch in Sintra in a Michelin recommended restaurant. We had some of the best food that we had in Portugal. I had cod on top of spinach on top of potatoes. It was amazing. It was enough  for 2 and lunch cost  20 euros. Restaurant Tacho Real. It is off the main street in Sintra up the hill. Somewhat tricky to find but a great spot for lunch.

 Sintra specializes in pastries. They were OK. I am not a fan of the custard fillings.

 The Palace in Sintra. This place was neat. Lots of old rooms and tiles. It did not take long to go through it and was very worthwhile. There is a separate admission for this Palace.

 Back in Lisboa we walked right into a communist rally straight out of a Woody Allen movie.

 We ate dinner at Sacramento. http://www.sacramentodochiado.com/pt/  Beautiful restaurant with good service  and reasonable prices. I had a pork shank and my wife and monkfish skewers. Dessert was creative and good.

This was a very good white wine. I have not been able to find it in the US.

Pork shank.

Monkfish.

 Yogurt cake.

 Day 5 -- Off to Madeira. Madeira is an island in the Atlantic, even with Morocco. It has a temperate climate all year round.We took a cab to the airport. This cab driver was honest and our fare was half of the fare when we arrived. We arrived in Madeira with no problem. The Madeira airport is along the coast and they have actually built the runway over the ocean. We later found out that the airport has a wind issue and is a tough place to land. Apparently in the days prior to our arrival many flight were cancelled to Madeira.

The airport is small and modern. It is about about a 20 minute cab ride to Funchal, the main city and where were staying. We stayed in The Cliff Bay,  http://www.portobay.com/en/hotels/portugal/madeira-island-portugal/the-cliff-bay/a beautiful hotel on a you guessed it,cliff, over looking the ocean. The upgraded us to the top floor in probably the nicest room in the hotel. We had a huge room and a large terrace. Breakfast included for about $200 per night. I booked it through Expedia.
Madeira is a really cool island. The weather is ideal. It does not get too hot or cold. It has some very good roads that go through some very impressive tunnels. You usually have a choice of going on the old road or the new improved road.
Prices on Madeira are very reasonable. We did not encounter any Americans; mostly British and Germans.
The hotel was beautiful with spectacular grounds.

View from our room.

Our terrace.

The hotel has pools down the cliff on the ocean level. The pool was a salt water pool and great for swimming. It was also just the right temperature. You can swim in the ocean by diving or taking a ladder off the dock. The water was not that cold but the currents could be tricky. I chose not to go in.

The hotel was in walking distance of Funchal. There are also buses and taxis. We walked into town and found the following flower exhibit. Apparently it is part of a religious ceremony. People make flower patterns all through Funchal. They were amazing. We understand that they lay down the flowers one afternoon and have the ceremony the next day and then remove the flowers. Wow.

The church where the ceremony ends.

The cliff that the hotel is on.

We ate dinner at the Il Gallo d Oro http://ilgallodoro.portobay.com/en/which was in our hotel. The restaurant has 1 Michelin star and supposed to be one of the finest restaurants in Portugal. The place was a joke and really awful. The prices for Portugal were crazy. It double or triple the price of other very good places. The wine list is good but very over priced. The food though is the real problem. Portions are minuscule and this is coming from someone who never complains about small portions. And the food stunk. My wife thinks that she got sick from what she had and my dish was so small as to be silly and hard to figure out if it was good. Certainly the food had no Portuguese influence
We have been to many top restaurants around the world and this place was a throwback to the early days of nouvelle cuisine in the US. I never saw such food in the great restaurants of Europe.

The wine was good but 36 euros, almost more than all of the wine we had on trip combined.

 Salmon sushi roll? They gave it some special name.

 My main course of pigeon. I ordered the 3 course special meal for 49 euros. Not a crazy price if the food was good. Not sure if you tell how small the food on the plate really is. Nothing tasted good.

 My wife's dish. We thought it was a main course but it turned out to be an appetizer. The food was cold which they said was intended.It did not matter as everything was the same small size.When they asked my wife how the meal was, she told them. They got annoyed and started arguing with her. To their credit they comped her dish.

 Dessert.

Day 6 We took a cab into Funchal. He very aggressively tried to sell us on tour of the island in his cab. We declined. We explored the city ourselves.Funchal has an old part of town. Nothing special. The city has a number of restaurants. One of the things to do is to take a gondola up the mountainside. There is a second gondola that connects to the first gondola.The gondolas are very expensive so we passed on the trip.
Funchal has an interesting food market with fresh fruits and a fish market. A specialty of Madeira is the black scabbard fish. It is caught thousands of feet down in the ocean.

 The market a number of different varieties of passion fruit. Many I had never seen before.

 We took a public bus up to the Botanical gardens, locate up the mountain. It was hard to find out ab out buses but we finally found a tourist office with some info. Once you figure things out, they are quite easy to use. Several different passes are available.

 

We ate dinner that night at Atlantic Restaurant down the road from our hotel. It is on the cliffs overlooking the ocean. We had black scabbard fish at the restaurant and it was quite good. The prices are reasonable and the view fabulous. Dinner cost 58 euros.

 A good red wine.

Black Scabbard fish.

Another local specialty of beef on wood skewers with fried polenta, which was light and good.

Day 7  We took a bus tour around the island. The prices are great because there is lots of competition. We paid 29 euros a person for the full day tour in a very nice mini bus with tour guide/bus driver. The tour took us to a lookout over very high cliffs, 580 meters up, with a glass ledge over the ocean below. Look carefully.

 A town we visited on the tour.

 We ate lunch at another small town, Porto Moniz on the other side of the island. They have built a beautiful swimming pool on the rocks of the ocean.

 Our lunch was amazing

Albacore tuna, paella type rice, steamed veggies and a large salad all for under 20 euros. And we were on a terrace overlooking the ocean. Orca Restaurant.http://www.madeira-restaurants.com/porto-moniz/restaurante-orca The food was great.

Wines of Madeira. They make regular wines as well as Madeira fortified wine.

 The tour took around the western part of the island. The island is lush with a high plateau in the middle. There are steep cliffs and valleys. They have built an intricate road system with very long tunnels.

For dinner, we ate a small restaurant in Funchal. We ate outside and the food was bad. It was cheap but not good. It had some good reviews on TripAdvisor.  Espaco Funchal. Our meal was 36 euros with wine. We had black scabbard fish again and it was inedible.
However the good news was that we were next door to a small wine bar that I had ignored on our way to dinner.Madeira Tapas E Wine. OMG, this place is awesome. They wines retail and as a restaurant and they serve light tapas. A young waiter who loved wine helped me navigate their wines. Their policy is to open any bottle they have and charge you 25% of the retail price for a glass.

We tried a Madeira regular red wine and then he recommended the  2011 Nunes Barata below. The Nunes was great. I have not found it in the US. 2011 was a great year in Portugal.

 The owner then offered us a glass of his favorite Madeira. They also served us special Portuguese ham that is like the Iberico Spanish ham. We also had some tapas.They charged us 11 euros for everything. I wish I had discovered the place a few days earlier as I would have tasted every great wine in Portugal. If you go to Madeira, go to this place.

 Day 8 We traveled from Madeira to Lisbon to Newark. Smooth sailing and came home. It was a very good trip and I look forward to returning to Portugal someday.

Enjoy. Hawaii is next.