MUSCATEL; DINNER AT THE PALACE; TERMINADO

We had a quick breakfast at the hotel before boarding the bus for our return trip to Lisbon.  Although we boarded on time, the bus went nowhere.  Seems that a number of people had unpaid bills because they hadn’t thought to take care of them last night or first thing this morning.  So, they’re lined up at the desk while we cool our heels.  Actually, our guide, Jo, was venting a bit about the poor service we got at the hotel, with some room keys not working (ours among them), the desk not opening the gate for the bus to get in, late bills, etc.  Meh.  There’s a lot of nice but inefficient people on this tour who cause problems for themselves and others through laziness or dull wits.  Everything got sorted out, and we were on our way to Azeitao for a visit to a family winery that makes Muscatel.  Even with our late start from the hotel, it was still before noon when we got there, so a little early for the restaurants to be open.  But, this would be our only chance for lunch, so we all fanned out to take our chances on what we could find.  We settled on Casa dos Tortas, and it was a lucky-good choice.  When 20 or so of us descended on them, there was a lot of rapid-fire Portuguese being shouted about, and one guy went to the side yard (under the trees to the left of the building, behind the red-dot sign), and fired up the outdoor barbecue.  It would seem (no menus that we could find) that they specialize in al fresco grilled meats and veggies on a skewer.  Well, all right.  We had no idea what we were ordering, but a shish-kabob is what we ended up with.  It was quite pleasant eating outside under the trees, the meat was delicious, and the price quite fair.  Stumble around and luck out.  That’s our M.O.

Sorry, I ate most of mine before thinking to take the picture.

Our next stop was at a shop that makes azulejos, hand-painted Portuguese tiles.  This was a small, family-run operation, with the founder’s granddaughter now the chief designer/artist.  She showed us how they work the raw clay into a big tube-lump, roll it out, cut it in tile-sized slices, dry it for four months, then the first firing in the kiln.  After that, a glaze is applied, and the designs are applied.  Pieces of parchment paper have tiny pinholes in them that form the design outlines.  The paper is placed over the glazed tile, then it is daubed with charcoal dust so that the design is transferred through the holes onto the tile.

After all this, the artist fills in the designs with paint. 

If an error is made, the paint can be washed over and the tile restarted.  She said the paints are expensive, so they try to keep errors to a minimum.  After painting, there is a final firing to set the color. Some of the larger tiles go for up to 30,000E!!!

After the tour, we sat around in a pleasant patio and had tea and cakes, an exercise designed to keep the group around for awhile for possible purchases.  I didn’t see too much buying going on, but everyone took advantage of the free eats.

Leaving the tea and tiles behind, we boarded the bus for the short trip to the centuries-old Jose Maria da Fonseca Winery and its wine museum.  It was started by a Portuguese who made a fortune in the diamond industry in South Africa before turning to the grape.  This is the outfit that made the iconic (for our generation) Lancer’s Rose in the earthenware crock.  Truly awful stuff in retrospect, but back then we didn’t know wine from shinola and thought it was sophisticated plonk.  Considering the state of wine in America in the 60’s (think Gallo Hearty Burgundy), maybe it was a cut above after all.

The museum had some interesting stuff, including an old single-bottle cork press, and the first (in Portugal) multi-bottle (4) filling machine from Paris, circa 1840.  And, along with very high-end wines, they still produce some Lancer’s plonk for 3E a bottle.  The Portuguese 3-buck Chuck?

 

After the museum, we did a tour of the gardens and grounds where the family lived.  Pretty nice!

After wandering about, we ended up in the barrel room where they age the stuff.  Our watchful winery guide, at left.

Muscatel is a fortified wine, with the original sweet grape coming from Egypt.  Young wines are aged 3-5 years.  Longer aging yields a thicker, sweeter, and darker product.  The wines are usually blended with different ages, but the number of years of age shown on the bottle is always calculated from the year of the youngest wine in the blend.  If the wine is truly superior, the exceptional year is printed on the label as a vintage.  Robert B. Parker gave the 1955 vintage 100 points.  It costs 650E.  Since Muscatel ages in the cask, it is stable in the bottle and can be enjoyed over time after opening, from 6 months to a year.  Port, in contrast, ages in the bottle and once opened should be drunk within 48 hours.  Who knew?  In the Rare Collection Room they have casks going back to 1880!  The missing years are war years or from disease.

We didn’t get any tastes of the really old stuff, but they did lay out some more recent vintages for us to taste.  No diploma for just swigging.  Loni enjoyed them, but my faulty taster couldn’t detect any difference among them.

Everyone mellowed out, we boarded the bus for the trip back to Lisbon, where we would spend the night before flying out tomorrow for home.  We crossed over a high bridge that afforded a nice view of the port area of the city.

Also shot from the moving bus, we passed one of the marvels of 18th century engineering, the Aguas Livres (“free waters”) aqueduct, started in 1731 by King Joao V and put into operation in 1748.  The main artery stretches 18km, and the most impressive part are these spans that cross the Alcantara Valley.  The tallest of the arches is 213 feet, said to be the highest stone arch ever built.

The aqueduct delivered water for 219 years (!), and was taken out of service in 1967.  The amazing thing is that, while most all of Lisbon was leveled, the aqueduct survived the monster quake of 1755 that destroyed most of the country.

Our hotel for the last night was a generic Marriott, quite nice but without much character.  I’m glad we stayed all the rest of our nights in non-U.S. chains.  Our room:

Our view looked out over the city.  I don’t remember what the foreground building was, but in the background you can see the green, swoopy superstructure of the Estadio da Luz, Lisbon’s soccer stadium and major event venue.

Collette always has a farewell dinner for each of their tours.  Ours tonight was to be held in the former kitchen building of the Royal Palace.  Alas, if only the food had been up to the level of the venue.  Loni got gussied up to the best of our limited traveling wardrobe.

The long table was nicely set. The guy standing was a Stanford MBA.  He and his wife have taken many tours offered by the University.  Those are the ones we laugh at when the brochures arrive because they are fantastically expensive (think $1,800+ per day for 2).  We wondered why anyone who could afford those trips was slumming it with our Collette bunch.  They were nice folks, though.

The first things I checked out, of course, were the desserts.  Ah, yes, these will do.

I think I had three to make up for the lousy meal.  I had what was supposed to be succulent pork belly, but turned out to be a very well cooked sliced loin.  It was so tough and dry I could stomach only one bite of the 3 large slices, and left the rest.  The veggies were overcooked and the fried potatoes were soggy from the canned gravy.  My complaint to the server elicited only a shrug and something unintelligible in Portuguese.  I think my comment included, “I hope this doesn’t choke the scavenging dogs.”  This was the only genuine clinker of the meals we had in Portugal; it’s just too bad it was on the last night gala.

Remember I said in the first installment that this tour group was made up almost entirely of two groups of people who knew each other, and that we ended up bonding with the six (besides us) who were “unattached?”  Well, here we are, minus me, at our end of the table.  Clockwise from Loni: Wayne, Peggy, Marcia, Stan, Rick, and Rebecca, all nice folks.

Sorry about the cutoff, Loni.  So, this was the end of our Portugal and Spain trip, and we truly had a great time.  Kudos to Collette for a nice job.  All that is left now are the flights home.  In the morning, we were to be provided breakfast bags for the early flights out.  When we got down to the lobby, the bags had almost all been scarfed up (and not entirely by our group!), and we got two that were only partially full.  They had been raided by others.  We managed to piece together a couple of dry sandwiches, 2 bananas, one fruit bar, and two boxes of juice (which got confiscated at security).  Bah.  The airport was a zoo, with a lot of remodeling going on.  It took forever to find the customs place to get the duty-free stamp for our Lladro porcelain, then another 20 minutes getting to the place where you then actually got your duty money back.  You’d think they would put them next to each other???  I suspect the placement is intentional to discourage people from actually claiming their rebate.  Ah, well, it’s all part of the deal.  We took off from Lisbon and, umpteen hours later, we’re home (well, that’s actually Newark, our intermediate stopover, looking towards NYC).

Once back in L.A., Terminado!