Hola! (For about the last time, I think, as I believe it is spelled “Ola” in Portugal, which is where we’ll be heading today!
Side view of the Cathedral with Lions! 
Post Office - mail slots through Lions mouths!
At any rate, I wanted to finish our yesterday, our 40th anniversary day, after the bathroom flood and our inability to get out of the parking garage…About 5:30 pm we went out to see about wall walking. The walls – built during the 11th and 14th centuries - are 1½ miles in circumference but not 100% accessible, so you need to pick just what you want to do. As we have never walked any of it, we thought we’d just start at the closest point to the apartment and go from there. As it was Saturday afternoon and warm and sunny (threats of rain in the distance, which never materialized, in spite of thunder in the distance) I expected the walls to be packed with people, but they weren’t! I mean, there were definitely people up there, but it was by no means packed or even really busy! Yeah! (Maybe the fact that it was so late in the afternoon?). At any rate, we had a lovely walk around probably 2/3rds of the available space. We were able to find yet another verraco (yeah!) and revisit a couple that we had seen a few days ago. We got to “oversee” wedding pictures being taken in a garden, as well as the party that was looking to start right after the ceremony. Fun! The only difficult I had was the fact that I’m not that great with heights – and parts of this wall were REALLY tall, especially if you went up into one of the available towers … whew! Got back around 7-ish, and basically just waited until it was time to leave for the restaurant and dinner!
Cute little guy on the wall!
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| Verraco in the park! |
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| Great wall! |
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| Looks good on the outside, too! |
We went to Las Campiles, as it was rated #1 by Tripadvisor, and had some excellent reviews. It wasn’t too far away – within the walls, and just down the street from “Soul Food” (which we did not try!) And, while we really tried NOT to be the first people there … at 8:45 pm … we were. Fortunately, people did start coming in after that, but my favorite group was a couple who brought in their possibly 3-4 year-old child – at 10 pm!! (I’d tend to call that child abuse, but you know how I like my sleep!).
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| R's guacamole and my croquettes |
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| That is truly a HUGE piece of beef! |
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| R's mystery dessert |
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| My lemon mousse |
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| No idea what it is, but Robbie liked it! |
Seated at a nice table in a corner and provided with menus and wine list. I had been hoping to be able to find a glass of Prosecco or something bubbly, but they didn’t have that. Oh well, we’ll find some to toast 40 years at some point, I’m sure! Menu, all in Spanish (of course) was a bit tough to negotiate, but we finally decided on one of their two set menus, and we were on our way! My starter was croquettes with ham – they were yummy, and R’s starter was guacamole with shrimp, which was excellent. Our mains, cooked absolutely perfectly, were steaks [solomillo, which translates to sirloin] (without the bone), that R judged to be from a Brontosaurus; they were HUGE! Nicely plated with some pan- fried potatoes with some veggies. But truly? Neither one of us was able to finish our portions, they were that big – but oh, they were SO good! Of course, R has now declared that he won’t be looking for beef for at least the next month or so! Ha! I will definitely keep track of that! We had a lovely reserve bottle of tempranillo red wine as well. Oh! Dessert! I had their lemon mousse which almost floated off the plate, and while we don’t know exactly what R had, he enjoyed it very much.
Excellent meal to have for a special occasion, and we were able to get back to the apartment around 10:30 pm-ish. I basically face-planted as soon as we got back, and slept pretty much through until about 7 am this morning. Now we’re just wrapping up our packing, as we leave today to return to Vila Nova de Foz Coa, where we visited in 2019 to hike out to engravings that were out in the open. So, Portugal, here we come!
Much love,
m
xxx
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