In just 15 days, I took 1805 photos, an average of 120 a day. In this age of digital photography, 714 of them were culled and will never be seen again – about a third of those never even reached the computer screen.
From this remaining batch of 1091 shots I chose over 130, narrowed to 112 to publish online. I want to share my highlights from those – not necessarily the best, but those that call for comment, description or a short tale. Since I’ve been more than remiss in writing blog posts but have managed to get a few batches of photos up, I’m testing this out as a half-way compromise.
The following is from two weeks in Northern & Central Portugal, covering Montalegre in the traditional Trás-os-Montes region, Braga in the green Minho region, Coimbra, Luso & the Forest & Palace of Buçaco in Central Portugal as well as Porto.
After the rigmarole of getting to Montalegre from Barcelona (that’s another story),
…a small town in the quiet and traditional Trás-os-Montes region, our first trip out was to the site of some Celtic ruins, now also the site of an old church. Here’s some of the family exploring the ruins.
I found one of the most interesting features of the ruins a small building that was quite well intact which housed a baking oven and large pyramidal chimney.
And I can never avoid a good look at the local vegetation.
Our next excursion from Montalegre was just a couple of kilometres walk from our apartment – a Roman water mill – but on the way we met this guy who totally confirmed the view of Trás-os-Montes as an area steeped in living tradition. Here he is with his hand-made rake.
The walk also offered this little gem – a gorgeous wild flower with what appears to be an ant impersonating a Mission Impossible scene. That or dead. Killed by the flower would be the obvious explanation.
We also climbed the hill behind the town into the forest. Celia managed to catch my visionary side near the top of the climb. 
…and on the way back down, we found this dumped-car-cum-Spring-flower-bed.
A few days later, Mum & I took trip to Braga and it’s star attraction ‘Bom Jesus’. Unfortunately not nearly as funny translated, Bom = Good. Braga itself is a nice town with a bit of medieval, gothic & renaissance architecture, but Bom Jesus is really it’s most impressive feature, especially the staircase leading up the mountain through the forest & the gardens behind the cathedral.
In amongst these stairs above, we found ‘Our Lady of Perpertual Weeping’ (our name). See also, Our Man of Perpetual Sniffling.
Surrounding the main cathedral were some incredible ornamental gardens.
And here’s a taste of the forest, lake & gardens above & behind the main buildings.
Not the most attractive architectural view of Braga, but the one that fascinated me the most with it’s textures and symbolism.
Back in Montalegre, it wasn’t until almost the end of our stay with my family there that Celia & I actually ended up doing the walk up & around the castle you can see in the birds-eye-view of the town earlier.
Our last little trip in the Trás-os-Montes region was to a river valley where we saw this church perched out on a high spur.
Celia & I left my sister, brother-in-love & my two beautiful nieces in Montalegre and headed South with my mum, aunt and cousin to Porto. We were all staying in the same hotel but decided to split up to look round the city partly because mum, Celia & I preferred a more leisurely waking time & we were moving on sooner than they were. Porto is a great city for architecture and it was the buildings that really caught my eye here, from the grand Porto São Bento train station with it’s tiles depicting the crusades (I think)…
…to the local residences in the Ribeira district near the river.
However, the prize for the most interesting & bizarre thing was the installation artwork on the main square just round the corner from our hotel. I heart art.
Just had to put this one in – something surreal about a tram going over the roof of a four-story building.
We only spent two days in Porto as we were keen to move on South to Central Portugal where we were booked in to a hotel perched on the edge of the Forest of Buçaco (or Bussaco), a 380 year-old forest planted by monks. Hotel Alegre:
In the beautiful, quaint village of Luso.
Luso has it’s own natural spring, bottled & sold all over Portugal, and even though the town’s water supply comes from the spring, it’s treated before it’s gets to the houses. Result? People filing down with their battered water containers to the spring all day… and night. Right around the corner from that, the Dixie Kool Gang, an 8-piece homespun Portuguese brass band played merry tunes into the night to dancing children.
The Forest of Buçaco was definitely one of the star attractions in Portugal (thank you, Good Weekend). I’m going to have to share quite a few photos here, though I think most will speak for themselves.
Even the pathways were photogenic. Here’s another one.
It’s strange, coming from Australia, where there is so much more native forest, to imagine a whole forest planted intentionally, somehow unnatural, but the results are pretty stunning in this case.
In the middle of the forest is the Palace of Buçaco – originally a Carmelite monastery
…with a palace added by a King in the 19th century. It’s really a stunning piece of architecture. Judging by the size & intricacy of the place, the king was obviously an almighty bastard.
In case you hadn’t noticed, mossy rocks & trees really float my boat.
The forest was a full-day wander but somehow we mustered the energy to take an early train into Coimbra the next day – a surprisingly interesting & vibrant university town with a lot of history. The Se Velha (Old Cathderal) was probably the most fascinating building with a biblical garden & Portugal’s oldest cloister hidden inside,
some beautiful old (11th century) stonework (including a golem),
and really intriguing textures.
I find when I’m travelling, especially too fast – which is usually the case – I have a natural tendency to go for the broad, touristy landscapes. It’s important to recognise that and start looking at everything – even the smallest details – aesthetically. It’s when I can relax myself to this point that gems like this arrive.
It’s not my art process, however, that was most interesting in Coimbra, it was the street art with a decidedly radical anarcho-feminist tilt that really impressed me.
I think the lower one reads, “Every 2 weeks a Portuguese victim of domestic violence dies.” The university is the town’s main tourist attraction – impressively founded in 1290 – but you can check that out for yourself.
That was just about the end of our trip. A teary farewell to mum for another six months on the really early train back to Porto before changing for another train back North through Braga and on to a small village called Ponte da Barca. I’d seen a few billboards when we were last in Braga advertising a Celtic Folk Festival, which sounded far too exciting to pass up, so we changed from the train to a bus and trekked out there for the last afternoon – the reason we left so early from Luso. Big disappointment. Turns out the ‘festival’ was just one gig a night for three days, it didn’t start till about 9pm and the last bus back to Braga left around 5pm. Luckily, it was a really nice little town anyway with a Roman bridge crossing a clear river overhung by willows.
A really weird take on topiary…
and a group of local roving musicians who wandered around half the town playing bagpipes and drums. So we got a little taste of some Portuguese-Celtic music anyway and the band led us to a great little pub run by Germans which surprisingly served excellent vegetarian food (breaking with our previous culinary experiences in Portugal).
Our last night in Portugal was in Braga, where the stonework was still impressing me,
and we found a mouth-watering vegetarian restaurant, Gosto Superior, always a good way to ensure you leave a country with good impressions.
Reflections
- Interesting that the most common second language in Portugal was French, rather than English, as is the case almost everywhere else on the continent. There were also a noticeably greater proportion of French tourists.
- Portugal surprised me with it’s charm, beauty and strange mix of progressive & traditional ideas.
- For all the talk of Portugal’s culinary brilliance (and, ok, the one fish I had was amazing) vegetarian food can be really hard to come by and pretty sub-standard, but the cafés we found in Coimbra, Braga & Ponte da Barca were fantastic.
- The region in the mountains near Coimbra is stunning, quaint and warrants much longer than we had to explore the place.
- Portugal strikes me as a great European destination if you want something that still isn’t totally overrun by other tourists.
- I need to stop pretending I’m a travel writer.
So, what do you say? Have you been to Portugal? Got any top destinations to share? Can you put me completely to shame with a stunning photo of one of these places? See the rest of the photos here, and leave a comment.
So, now that I got myself here, what next? I’m following some of the same simple ideas that I do at home – buying seasonal organic and bio-dynamic food wherever possible (French supermarkets are pretty good on this front), favouring fresh food over packaged/frozen/processed foods, buying second-hand goods like clothes and furniture instead of contributing to demand for new and generally imported goods… and here’s the big one again – sustainable transport. 
