Portugal!

This past weekend, I spent my time in Portugal with a good family friend and his family. They live in a small town called Evora, which is about an hour inland from Lisbon and about two hours from Spain. I got in late Thursday night, and began touring bright and early Friday morning. Actually on our way back from the Airport, we drove by the two of the football stadiums in Lisbon, so my touring began immediately! I don't think I can even begin to describe the amount of things I saw this weekend. Fernando wanted to show me as much of Portugal as he possibly could. Needless to say I was exhausted at the end of the day! We toured around Evora on Friday, and saw a lot of cool things I didn't expect to see, like Roman aqueducts, or a Roman Temple for the goddess Diana! But Portugal is an interesting mix of things. It has been influenced by many different groups including the Spanish, the Arabs, the Egyptians, and the Romans. Making their cuisine, architecture and culture very unique. Not to mention they have a very unique language, although it is part of the Romance languages, it is difficult, and not widely spoken outside of the countries where it is the language. There are definite similarities to Spanish and French, but not close enough to pick it up well if you spoke either of those languages!
But the architecture there reminds you of something very Mediterranean or Grecian. The walls of almost all the buildings are a white plaster, and the roofs are the red terracotta tiles. It's really beautiful. The streets are lined with stones, and in some cities we visited, they are marble streets with beautiful designs in them. Marble is so common there, that they line their streets and sidewalks with it, while we pay tons of money for our marble sinks and counter tops.
While I was there I saw a ton of castles, and walled cities as well as the beautiful countryside and where Fernando works at Univerisity of Evora. My favorite walled city was Monsaraz, which was up on top of a hill overlooking farms on one side and a giant lake on the other side. The lake was actually a man-made lake that came about when they built a damn farther down on the river that used to pass through there. It was really beautiful and the city was very quaint. The houses were all washed white of course with the terracotta roofs, but the way the were laid out made it really charming. The view from the city of the lake and surrounding country side was really beautiful, I think that is what I liked most about it. We also stopped for lunch there and had lamb ribs, which were amazing. Lamb is really common to that area, and they fix it in all kinds of different ways. I got the impression from Fernando that eating Lamb in that area is like eating Pizza in Sicily. But hey, I'm it was great!
Speaking of delicacies, I also ate snails while i was in Portugal! That's right, I skipped the escargo in Paris, but had it in Evora. Why? I have no idea, but I had snails. It wasn't bad, its very salty, and with lots of seasoning, and they snails are hot when they serve them to you. The place we had snails at is actually a little cafe that really only serves snails and drinks. It is just like any small cafe you see with people sitting outside at the tables with drinks relaxing after a days work, except instead of enjoying a scone and tea, they are having a beer and a plate of snails! The weirdest thing was that they still had the antennas on them, and that instead of using a little fork to get them out, you just sucked them out of their shells! You only used a little toothpick to pry them out if you couldn't get them out. It was fun to sit at the cafe with Fernando, Noemia - his wife - and Margarida their little daughter. When they bring out the snails, it is just a small plate, with a pile of snails on it. It's a little daunting, but the snails weren't too big probably like 1/4 inch to 1/2 inch at the absolute biggest. However, you could order BIG snails - and those were HUGE they were like an inch big!! I definitely wouldn't have been able to eat those ones!
One of the really nice things about Portugal is the landscape. It varies depending on where you are in the country and no matter what it is beautiful. As we drove through the countryside, the fields were all in bloom with purple, and yellow wild flowers and red poppies. And among them were Cork Oak trees, which they use for making cork, olive tree vineyards, sheep, cattle and horses. Not to mention the occasional grape vineyard crossing the landscape. It was beautiful, I liked the driving and seeing the countryside as much as I enjoyed the cities, and towns we visited.