Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable.
Christopher Howse: A Pilgrim in Spain
Spain- A new 'Spanish practice'?
- The Portuguese - unlike the Spanish - don't shout when they talk. On the other hand, they don't smile as much either. Service can be rather desultory. And slow. I waited 20 minutes before the waitress came out onto the terrace yesterday in a bar/restaurant in Sines.
- One cultural difference is that here in Portugal - as in other countries - they put the salt on the table so that you can decide for yourself. Not, as so often in Spain, liberally douse your chips with the stuff.
- Another is that Portuguese, like the English, eat their words. So Setúbal become Stúbal. Actually, Shtúbal. This is not supposed to happen with Romance languages . . .
- Richard North takes into account the views of 2 prominent columnists - one from the Right and one from the Left - and sums up Boris Johnson as: A habitual liar, a cheat, a conspirator with a criminal pal, a cruel betrayer of the women, an idle man who is a philanderer, an incompetent, self-obsessed and intellectually vacuous. Not surprisingly, he concludes that: His election to leader would be the most devastating political miscalculation the party ever made. This is a mistake the nation cannot afford.
- The Italians are angry. They see themselves as good Europeans who are being punished - by Germans - for things that France and Germany have got away. They might well have a case.
- Yesterday, I drove for quite a time through the Alentejo Region south and east of Lisbon. I had no idea there were so many cork oak trees in the world. Little else, in fact, until you get to the wine-growing areas up near Estremoz and Elvas.
- Estremoz is famous for its marble. On the city limits there are huge dumps of the stuff. Inside the city even the pavements and surface of the huge fair ground/parking area in the centre are made of granite. As, of course, are the floors and pillars of Sao Francisco church.
- It's hard to avoid tolls in Portugal but I managed it yesterday for a while, eschewing the fastest route to Estremoz and taking old roads on which mine was usually the only car. Irritatingly, Google Maps kept telling me they'd 'found a faster route' and obliging me to say I wan't interested in it.
- Portugal's prices shouldn't by now amaze me but they still do, with coffee at less than a euro and food similarly less expensive than in Spain.
- Ironically, both my lunch and dinner yesterday - grilled sardines and prawns in garlic, respectively - were things I can easily get in Pontevedra.
- In the tapas/pestiscos bar I ate into last night, I ran into another wine problem. No, they couldn't give me a glass of either white nor red wine, nor even a half-bottle. Only a full bottle. But the waiter took pity on me and went to see if they could oblige me. Which they did, at the expensive (for Portugal) of €2.50. But it was at least twice as big as what I usually get for that price in Pontevedra.
- Elvas has a truly impressive fortress, the ramparts of which stretch right around the old quarter:-
- I quote: The Elvas fortifications are the most accomplished of 17C military architecture in Portugal.The sombre, well-armoured merlons contrast with the white facades of the houses within. Fortified gates, moats curtain walls, bastions and glacis[?] form a remarkable defensive group, completed to the south and north by the 17C Santa Lucia and the 18C Graça forts, each perched on a hill.
- It also has an impressive aqueduct, which I was surprised to come upon as I drove into the town. I wondered why it wasn't as famous as Segovia's but later read it'd been built in the 17th century and not by the Romans.
- Elvas gets a lot of tourists from nearby Spain, which explains why the text in explanatory plaques features Castellano ahead of English. Not normally so in Portugal, I believe.
Now to tour the old quarter and then on to Lisbon for tonight and tomorrow.
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