Porto, Matosinhos and seafood experience

Thursday 12 September

Porto,  Matosinhos  and seafood experience

Porto riverside, Matosinhos, seafood restaurants, beaches and fishing area

So today we know where we are going and can enjoy looking at some of the old buildings on our way down to the square where we get on board our bus.

 

 Many of these grand buildings are empty and are looking unloved, what is surprising is that those buildings that are occupied with good businesses are being tarnished to some degree by their poorly maintained neighbours,

 

and there does not seem to be any overall management by the city fathers to ensure the general area looks inviting and is shown off to its best advantage.  This is not only obvious to tourists, but would encourage more occupancy of the other buildings.

This second tour took us on a similar route through the city and down to the riverside

same as the previous day except in reverse so instead of going over the bridge to the south bank it carried on along the sea front 

to the fishing village of Matosinhos.  This fishing village has grown in the past 70 years or so to include canning factories and other Industries related to fishing.  Some of the factories have been taken over by conglomerates and downsized, but they proudly told us that the best tinning factory still did it the 'old way' using their age old formulas and was still as popular as ever.  New housing areas have been built and infrastructures have improved to keep in line with the population growth.

Wikipedia: "The international Leixões seaport and a large oil refinery of Galp Energia, are located in Leça da Palmeira, Matosinhos. EFACEC, a leading Portuguese company in the electromechanics industry, is headquartered in the city. Pedro Hispano Hospital (after Pedro Hispano), is one of the most comprehensive state-run hospitals of Portugal, and serves the entire Porto Metropolitan Area."

Then the bus drove around the wharf where the fishermen come in and sell their catch in the fish market, such a busy area with cars and vans and people coming in and out of the gates carrying buckets of fish, etc,  along this narrow road were wall-to-wall 'restaurants' (to use the word loosely!)

 

and outside each tent was a brazier of some sort over which the 'chefs' were cooking their sardines.

 

 The smoke from these braziers filled the street and the smell was a little overpowering!  However undaunted David and I hopped off the bus and decided to have sardines for lunch.  Now I have to add that the closest I have got to a sardine is out of a tin and is nice mashed up with a little vinegar and spread on toast.  These sardines were about 10cms long and one would certainly be enough on a piece of toast.

So we walked back up the street trying to avoid the entreaties of the various restauranteers to sit, eat!  How to choose? Most of the tents were empty, I tried to look at the plates of those with customers to see just how you ate a sardine, I imagined it would be full of very small bones.  So we got to the end of the street without having been tempted!  We were a bit cross with ourselves because you just have to do these things, so we turned right into the next street and low and behold, more 'restaurants' in tents.  Not so many though, and not so much smoke hanging over them.  So this time we got half way down the street and made ourselves make a decision, no we couldn't take this one because their customers were smoking, and one of them had a dog with her!  

So we turned around and headed back for the one we had just refused, much to the delight of the guy standing outside, and we were shown to our table, a bit wobbly underfoot as it is hard to secure a false floor to the curb on a roadway!  We sat down, and then saw the customer in front of us was smoking a cheroot at the table!  Still, there were no dogs!   We also noticed that in order to protect the plastic roof from the edges of the bracing poles they had put coke cans over the ends. Ingenious!

 We were given a very lengthy menu that set out in Portugese a grand selection of entrees, mains and deserts, and a wine list!  Fortunately they had a Chef's recommendation, BBQ'd sardines, or filleted sardines.  So we went for that, David chose the whole sardines and I had the fillets.  

While we waited for our mains, we were served (again not ordered) bread in a basket and some soft cheese, a bowl of olives and a plate of octopus cut up into chunks with olive oil and herbs.  I am not a fan of octopus alive or dead, but I did my bit and David finished the rest!

Then our mains came, so many dishes, baked potatoes, dish of rice with red beans and tomatoes, six sardines served to David and six fillets served to me.  My fillets had been crumbed and fried, and I really enjoyed them, they were salty and the crumbs were crisp,  I had some of the rice and beans and enjoyed that, and a potato, and felt very satisfied I had gone out of my comfort zone so successfully.  David was amazing, he gently lifted the flesh from the bones and ate that, then lifted the backbone along with the other little bones off the other half of the fish and ate the other half.  He said it was delicious, and tackled the others in like manner.  He was having such a good time that I accepted his offer of trying some and he put one on my plate warning me that I should be careful not to eat the roe as they hadn't been gutted.  So I carefully scraped and prodded as if I had just found a Roman remain in the sand, and pulled off a nice piece of white flesh, yum it was good, so braver now cleared away a little bit more, and then OMG I saw a worm!!!! Yikes, ok it was small (I guess sardines do feed on worms) but it was black and there was no way I was going to eat any more.  So David took it back, discarded the worm and ate the rest.  I managed to finish my beer, but was quite glad to get out of there and gulp down some fresh air on our way down to the beach.

It wasn't far to the beach and it was very hot, we stopped once or twice to look at some buildings and and get some shade.  

Down at the beach there was a lot of activity, they were setting up tents and a jousting ring with tiered seating, obviously something to do with the Crusaders of old.  

It looked like it was going to be a fun weekend.  

There was a sculpture on the beach which depicted the wives of fishermen lost at sea during a great storm, it really moved me.

We had missed our bus by mere minutes, and as they were hourly we decided to walk to the next stop.

 

 It was still too early, so we wandered on passed another sculpture called 'She Changes' again a reference to their fishermen.  The waters around the coast must be quite tricky.

Wikipedia : "In 2005, the municipality funded a public sculpture to be built in the Waterfront Plaza of Matosinhos. The resulting sculpture is entitled She Changes by American artist, Janet Echelman, and spans the height of 50x150x150 meters.

She Changes :The sculpture is designed to reflect Porto's and Matosinhos's seafaring and industrial heritage. The three support poles are painted to resemble the smokestacks and lighthouses in the area. The net structure is meant to reference the city's fishing industry."

We reached a new swimming centre called "Sea Life", and still had about 15 minutes wait until the bus came.  Then we hopped back on and it took us back to the city centre and from there we walked back to our hotel.  

On the way we stopped at the local supermarket to buy some snacks for dinner, (big breakfast, big lunch, etc) and its quite a challenge finding things that you are familiar with in a different language.  As in France when you buy fruit and vegetables you have to weigh them yourself and then take the printed price tag and stick it on the plastic bag.  Sometimes there is a number on the item you have to punch in, other times you have to select the right picture.  We got into a bit of a mess with strange tickets not resembling what we had weighed, and within a minute there was someone there to help.  All good, off to the checkout to scan and swipe the card.  

When I was a kid growing up in Liverpool I would be sent off to buy the groceries at 'Berties', half a pound of cheese, 5 oz of spam, 4 apples, a bottle of shampoo and 20 Woodbines, so you'd wait in the queue, the shop assistant would cut the cheese and wrap it, weigh out the spam and wrap it, etc, then you'd put it into your shopping bag while the assistant added everything up by hand and you'd give her the money and wait for the change.  The language "off to the checkout to scan and swipe the card" would be unintelligible to people 50 years ago, I guess this is the 'Technical Revolution", I wonder what will be next?