Tomar and Sao Martinho do Porto, Portugal plus a SALTY Mistake - March 23, 2021

 

We were able to get out for our first little adventure further from our house sit near to Portalegre, Portugal. We took a two day adventure out to the Atlantic coast. The first night we stayed in the popular city of Tomar. The older part of Tomar is replete with reminders of its history having to do with the secretive and powerful religious order of the Templar Knights.

Aquaduct by the convent above Tomar




 The beautiful Nabao River runs through Tomar and there is a free municipal camper park area nearby. Everything still being basically closed, we took a gorgeous walk up and around a large walled park the Mata Nacional dos Sete Montes which wraps up into the hills behind the Convento de Christo. 

Convento de Christo

On our way back through the center of the older part of Tomar, we saw first hand how about half the stores have reopened this week. They are permitted to sell from the door. Open businesses had the doors propped open with a table and the requisite bottle of hand sanitizer, shoppers queue up make their purchases from outside the store. 


Back at the camper park, we enjoyed chatting with three other folks traveling in campers around Portugal. Everyone has really interesting stories and tips to share. In the afternoon, a 90 minute drive brought us to just south of the surfing mecca called Nazare. This town is know for huge waves called "Mavericks". We parked the camper looking out along a long sandy white beach for the night. 

         Sunset on the beach south of Nazare


Following morning we decided to explore a really interesting smaller town, São Martinho do Porto nestled in a cove south of Nazare. The small town is only one hour by train from Lisbon and was a popular resort in the 19th century. Below is an aerial photo of this scallop shaped bay which is protected by tall headlands from the wilder Atlantic Ocean. The narrow opening makes for a warmer, much calmer ocean bay.

https://www.reddit.com/r/portugal/comments/gpmjqk/s_martinho_do_porto/



On the headlands looking out at the Atlantic



A Salty Mistake!

We had a shock when we went to eat last night. We had made a lovely supper; local potatoes, broccolini, shitake mushrooms, lemon from the tree here and then we topped this mixture with some random fish we bought called "bacalau".  OMG 😳 our mouths hurt from the first bite of the fish (sad to say we both had to spit it out)! After drinking copious glasses of water and then laughing hysterically we still managed to enjoy the rest of the meal. Bacalau is salted cod! It is hard dry salted fish. It was the saltiest thing we have EVER tasted! Our tongues felt burnt from the salt! Today, the remaining ingredients were turned into soup with no salt added! 

This is the salted cod we ended up tossing out

Destined for the soup pot!

I watched a video about how to prepare the fish we bought (salted cod)...you are supposed to soak it in water for 24 hours, then boil it in fresh water and throw that water out before actually cooking it! Another cooking method is to boil the fish and discard the water. Repeat three times before cooking it with other ingredients! Talk about culture shock!

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