That’s Brazilian Spanish (or Portuguese if you’re trying to be uppity) for “If you don’t take a risk, you won’t eat delicacies.” Allegedly. I typed it into google translate and it came back with something to the effect of “nothing ventured, nothing gained,” but I guess the point’s the same. Anyway the prior definition becomes somewhat relevant further down. We ended up spending over a week in Portugal and toured through three different cities – Lisbon, Viana do Castelo and Porto.
Lisbon is awesome. I am totally gay for it. I guess you could call me a full-blown, cod-licking, sweetbread munching Lisbian. It’s got a different energy and a more varied population than a lot of the places we’ve been, owed no doubt to being repeatedly conquered by a multitude of a vastly different empires (the Romans, the Moors, those other guys, etc.).
Viano do Castelo is a smallish town with a relaxed demeanor, so it wasn’t full of tourists (i.e. people like us) or people running to work and just generally getting things done (i.e. people completely unlike us). We ended up celebrating our one year anniversary here and in a lot of ways it was reminiscent of the honeymoon. That is to say, I frequently ate too much and Shefali had to rub my belly.
We finished up in Porto, which is smaller than Lisbon, but no less exciting. We hit the free tour, a wine festival and tried the local specialty (see below), and I wouldn’t shut up about how good it was. Seriously, I couldn’t keep it in my pants. I had four in like 3 days.
Some really great things things have been of portuguese origin (vinho verde, Throes + The Shine, chicken vindaloo) so it was fun to see the mishmash of society and culture from which they came. It’s hard to say which city was the best, but every one of them are definitely in the top three. Long story short the food is delicious but I’m pretty sure I got food poisoning. It wasn’t anything over the top, just feverish chills and goosebumps when I poop. And farts that can wilt flowers. BUT it’s worth it to experience some delicacies of which I’d otherwise have to just look at pictures on google image search. Speaking of which, you should do a google search for francescinha (or just look at the pictures in the gallery). It’s supposedly unique to Porto. It’s bread, beef, sausage, another kind of meat, another kind of sausage, ham, melted cheese, the other slice of bread, more melted cheese and a fried egg with the whole jawn smothered in sauce (allegedly made with beer and tomato as its base) resting on yet more sauce and a bed of fries. It was probably the first really unique regional delicacy we’ve come across that we had never experienced before. I wanted to stay another two weeks for the francesinha alone, but that would have easily lead to another Wawa Gobbler situation (that is to say I’d have had to buy all new pants after two weeks of undisciplined gluttony. True story.). So in short, Portugal was kind to our bellies, if not our figures. We packed up and headed northeast, since we have some friends we have to meet up with soon.
Vijay