Residencial Bom Sucesso Braga

... static caravans pitched up for the winter) all for the princely sum of Euro 8 per night! The surf in Ancora looked rather too frothy (pollution or a good head??!) for our liking and so we headed a few km down the road on the 6 Nov to Agucadoura, yet another deserted beach, where both of us donned our wetsuits, dived in with our boards and were unceremoniously dumped back on ...

We drove through the rain and Jessica (sat nav) took us up into the mountains. When she wanted us to do a sharp hairpin bend that was impossible with the caravan we had to carry on to a dead end in the road. As the rain got heavier we had to unhitch the caravan, turn round and rehitch and retrace our route. Unfortunately we did it very ...

Een gevaarlijke haven volgens de Nederlanders die hier al 5 jaar liggen met een Etap 32: de mensen zijn aardig en het is niet al te duur: je blijft er zo maar liggen. Ze konden zo nog een aantal mensen aanwijzen waarbij dit was gebeurd. Wij hebben ook nog geen neiging weg ...

... me - I lost interest at the discovery of the egg. It's never good to find the unexpected addition to food. Be it a bug, tuna, or an egg. Surprising taste is one thing, but not having full disclosure on the menu is off-putting for me. Adding "surprise" ingredients is like bringing someone flowers on a first date - they may be allergic or offended and that's it for the first impression. On the other hand, they might also delight and make the date go well. In the case of the ...

... t find the campsite on the Garmin, so we entered in the GPS coordinates provided in the campsite book.  The route took us through the Spain plains (the only part that was sunny, funnily enough) and then we passed through the old passport control area* into the National reserve Peneda-Gerês, which had quite a few streams and waterfalls that were really gorgeous so we were highly looking forward to a hike the next day.

 After we exited the park, Garmin took us to some ...

... border between Portugal and Spain. Our campsite was idyllically sited in wooded dunes on a promontory right at the river's mouth, with sandy river beaches on one side and the Atlantic waves breaking onto the sands on the other. So far in Portugal we have had alternate weeks of good and bad weather. In Porto it was cloudy and cool with a bit of rain, so we were due a spell of sunshine - and in Caminha we got it. It was ...

... is where people from Spain travel to buy towels (not sure why but they did have lots of towels for sale) and Em & Eric did get a set just to follow the tradition.  Tui was a much nicer place and the cathedral was lovely. On the way home we stopped in Baiona an old port city with a cool old fort.  We took the walk along the top of the walls (a 3 km walk).

... amigáveis). Gente de todo lugar! Lituânia, Letônia, Polônia, Alemanha, Itália, Espanha, França, Grécia, Turquia, Cabo Verde, Serra Leoa, El Salvador e, é claro, Brasil.. E são muitos brasileiros. Todo dia é dia de festa nesse lugar. A residência de Santa Tecla nunca mais será a mesma depois da passagem desse povo estriquinado por aqui. De resto tudo corre bem, apesar da saudade (que nas primeiras duas semanas foi bem pior, mas agora já está devidamente administrada).

... ries, plump artichokes, mountains of beans, of trestles of fresh baked bread and countless inventive custard pastries*, of forest caught rabbits and duck, of sampling sausages and salamis made from inh**ited recipes, of jewel-like jams and bottled peaches, of delicate hand-knitted laces and earthy, functional hand-painted c**amics. If high quality stainless steel cookware and curtaining is your thing (or CDs and Taiwanese tee-shirts) then Barcelos is your feira. The ...

... She and her friend picked me up in Porto by bus. For the first hour, we drove through rain and rainforest and I couldn't but admire how green and nice the country side looked. Once in Braga, though, I began to feel the hostility that Uli had been talking about, the sinister looks you get for being foreign, for looking different and dressing differently. We cooked in the common kitchen and decided to get out of Braga the very next day.