Foodies’ Delight

Friday, October 31, 2025

Happy Halloween to those who celebrate. It is definitely celebrated here in Portugal, though not as universally and enthusiastically as at home.

Today is our first full day in lovely Lisbon, and it helps that we slept in a real bed last night. With a clearer head, I went to finish off the final stage of yesterday’s geocache. It was easy, but at the end a homeless man appeared out of nowhere just in time to see us return the cache to its hiding place. Oops.

I was still there a few minutes later when the homeless man returned and made a beeline to the cache to retrieve it. I tried to discourage him, but I really didn’t have the ability to communicate with him about anything that specific. I suspect he will be back in a few hours to get the cache. When he finds that it does not contain drugs or money he will probably throw it on the ground and the cache owner will have to obtain a new cache container and find a new hiding place.

Next on my agenda was getting a manicure. People coming and going from the salon were doing a lot of hugging and cheek-kissing with the owner and the staff. It seemed like a warm and happy place. 

Next, it was time to go to a church in the Alfama neighborhood to meet our guide, Gisela, from Culinary Backstreets, for a food tour. It turned out that we were the only two people on the food tour.

We started the tour with a visit to a nondescript little tasca (pronounced tash-ka). It means a small, no-frills neighborhood tavern or bar selling food.

Gisela and Ken discussing the role of the tasca in a neighborhood’s life

Arroz malandro (naughty rice) is a Portuguese comfort food. Gisela served us two types: arroz polvo (octopus rice) and frango assado (roast chicken). I have never been willing to try octopus because the thought of it makes me gag. I decided to be brave and try it this time. I ate one small piece. It wasn’t rubbery as I expected - but I only wanted one piece. Now I can say I have tasted it.

Octopus rice, roast chicken with rice

Plus, salad and wine in traditional pottery carafes

On the way to our next stop we tried castanha de ovo. It was a very sweet custard dessert shaped like an egg. Traditionally, this treat was made in a convent. Next, we tried a wonderful donut called bola de Berlim.

At a school started by a labor union in a poor neighborhood we took a break at a coffee shop. We were schooled by Gisela in how to order coffee. Uma bica means a shot of espresso. It will be served in a tiny cup. Pingado means “with milk.” Bica garoto means “with foamy milk.” Meia de lette means half-milk and is similar to a flat white. Galão is comparable to a latte.

At another tasca we tried tremoço, or lupini beans.

I was very surprised to learn that they come from the lupine flower. Wild lupine grows abundantly in our part of Alaska.

Lupines
Photo by schnuddel, at Getty Images

The important thing to know is these beans are poisonous, unless cooked first. I really liked the vinho verde (green wine) we had with the beans. It was very light.

And while we were eating the tremoços, a dish of Portuguese clams arrived (amêijoas à bulhão pato) arrived. Very garlicky. We sopped up the sauce with the ubiquitous rustic bread.

We had some small shrimp, too - gambas à guilho (garlic shrimp). Scenes from the 2nd tasca:

After our “dinner” we stopped at a neighborhood bakery for queijada, a type of traditional cake made with cheese. We couldn’t eat any more, so we took it with us in a bag. We ate it the next day and it was nice, though very sweet. The cheese was quite mild. We also drank some fresh-squeezed orange juice at the bakery. The Portuguese grow a lot of oranges, and they are rightfully very proud of them. 

Saving the best for last, Gisela finally took us to a small , beautiful reastaurant called Garum. (Garum is a fermented fish sauce that was used by many of the ancient Mediterranean cultures.) We met the chef/owner, Phillip,  who had spent several years working in Japanese restaurants in Portugal. Phillip has developed his own versions of garum, using sardines and other local fish. He placed a drop of a clear liquid on the back of each of our hands and we licked it off. It was light, but rich and complex. Just amazing. Then we were served shots of a gorgeous fish soup. You can’t tell from the photo how captivating this soup was.

Then came a drop of a tea-colored garum, followed by a nigiri sardine. Phillip blasted the sardines with a blow torch at the table, and then put a little bit of chunky sea salt on the fish. Oh, my!!!

The small bottle in the background contains garum.

On our way out , Phillip showed us his prep room in the back. It was spotlessly clean, of course, and full of various kinds of fish that he was drying. 

This tour lasted for 6 hours! It was phenomenal!  Thank you, Gisela, for a memorable tour.❤

Back at the Avenida Palace, we found some Halloween chocolates and a useful tote bag on our bed, gifts from the hotel. 

Today’s fabric is Sardines Portuguese - Big by ewa-brzozowska for Spoonflower.

Leaving on a Jet Plane

Wednesday and Thursday, October 29 and 30, 2025

Welcome, or welcome back, to my travel blog. We have some new readers, so I think I will go over some of the blog fundamentals at the end of this installment of The Traveling Blogcrastinator. 

About 3 weeks ago an unwelcome visitor made its presence known at our house. (This doesn’t have anything to do with travel, but stay with me. We will eventually get to the travel connection.) Our visitor hid in the garage for a while, but then found its way upstairs. If you haven’t guessed yet, it was a scream-triggering mouse. It scurried out of the kitchen one evening when I entered and turned on the light. I was outraged that this creature, that had no right to, had broken into our house and made itself at home. It brazenly sniffed around in our living quarters, popping up randomly to scare me. I stopped going barefoot, and had to sleep with a nightlight. 

The horrible little thing showed itself one time too many and we were able to sequester it in an unused bedroom. By the time the exterminator arrived, the invading mouse had nearly expired - due to lack of water and food, we think. For those three or four days while it was with us, I was feeling terrorized. And for a few days after, until we were reasonably sure the problem had been solved, I had a little bit of PTSD. We are now the proud owners of many mouse traps.

A few days later I flew to Boston to attend my 50th law school reunion. I don’t plan to blog about the reunion much, to respect the privacy of all the folks I interacted with there. I will just say that it was fabulous, and I’m so glad I went. Nearly everyone who attended the reunion has grown up to be a decent, honorable, thoughtful, and kind individual who has done much good in the world, and I am so proud of my class.

After a long weekend of awesome reunioning, I went to Cape Cod with several of the women from my class to spend some unstructured time together. Cape Cod is so lovely, even in autumn. It was a fantastic gathering, despite the fact that I came down with one of my trademarked super-bad-cold-plus-sinus infections.

On October 29, we all left Cape Cod, feeling a wonderful glow - and this is where today’s blog post really begins.

I took a Peter Pan bus from Cape Cod to Boston’s Logan airport, clutching a good-sized brown paper bag of OTC cold medicines, prescriptions, and Kleenex packets. The bus trip was convenient, cheap, and uneventful, and Ken and I met up at the airport according to plan.

After we checked in, we went to one of the airport lounges to wait for boarding time. As I relaxed in a comfortable chair to read an interesting book, I glanced up, and what should I see, but a nasty little mouse running right towards me from under the seats directly across from me. I scared the little creep away by screaming shrilly.

Shortly thereafter I decided it would be a good idea to leave the lounge forthwith and proceed to the gate. I mentioned to one of the lounge hostesses that I had seen a mouse. She was aware that there were mice there and said that there were many mice at the airport. (And there are also some roaches there - I know this for a fact.)   I was shocked to think that the airport had mice, but after thinking about it more, I thought, “Of course they have mice. How would you ever rid an airport of mice?”

I was so discombobulated by the mouse sighting that I left the lounge, leaving my cellphone behind at one of those little charging stations. A very heroic woman chased us down at the gate and returned my phone to me. This blog might have had an unhappy ending if not for her.

As we boarded our international flight we had to show our passports twice to airline employees. But, what made this flight different, was having to then show our passports to two Customs and Border Protection agents, who took our photos to compare them with the passports. 

Did you ever wonder why airplane water tastes funny?

The pilot (not the co-pilot) was a Portuguese woman. She did a nice job. We encountered a lot of turbulence over the Atlantic. During a lull, breakfast was served, but then it got rough again, and most of my coffee sloshed out of the cup and onto my tray. I was glad I didn’t end up wearing it. 

Along with the usual movies, there was a podcast called “Practice Portuguese.” I watched several episodes. It was fun and now I can say “I don’t speak Portuguese” in Portuguese. 

The plane was an A321LR. I didn’t like the configuration of the business class seats and I thought the service could have been a little more attentive. I don’t think I would fly TAP Air Portugal again, but it was a better value than Delta, and it wasn’t bad, just less good than it should have been.

At first they thought I had pre-ordered the beef dinner, but when I said I had ordered the ravioli dinner they were able to give me ravioli and it was delicious. It was listed as “ravioli with squash and kale,” but I am quite certain it was spinach, not kale. Ken thought his beef dinner was terrible.

Ravioli dinner

We landed in Lisbon at 5:30 a.m. and before long we were in an Uber on the way to our hotel in the Rossio district of Lisbon. The Hotel Avenida Palace is an elegant Old World style hotel, built in 1892 right next to a railroad station.

Rossio Railroad Station has some charming horseshoe arches at the entrance.

The staff was most welcoming and very efficient. It was not yet 7:00 a.m., so of course our room wasn’t ready. We were invited to partake of the breakfast buffet and were told they would call us when our room was ready and they would keep our bags for us. The breakfast buffet was excellent. I was excited to be able to try pastéis. A pastel (sing.) is a lovely little egg custard tart that is considered a Portuguese national dish.

Pastéis

After eating, we decided to go out and walk around. We also had a few items we had planned to buy in Lisbon. There weren’t too many people wandering the streets, so I decided that this would be a goood time to look for a geocache. There was a 5-stage cache that started across the street from the hotel, so I picked that one to do first. The directions were a little tricky, but I managed to get the first four stages (“waypoints”) done. I needed to go back to the hotel to study it more before attempting the final waypoint.

There is a lot to see here. I can’t wait to explore more of Lisbon.

One of Lisbon’s iconic streetcars

Two of Lisbon’s iconic tiled buildings

The iconic Santa Justa Elevator offers access to an upper neighborhood which can’t be seen in this photo. A walkway extends out behind the top of the lift and connects to the upper neighborhood. Yes, there are some very steep hills here.

The Castle of St. George - This fortification was built by the Moors in the 10th century CE and was conquered by the Portuguese in 1147 during the Reconquista.

We were in our room by 9:30 a.m. We started to unpack and organize ourselves.

That bed kept telling me I needed a nap, especially since I usually don’t sleep on red-eyes, so there was a nap today. Eventually we started to feel human again.

During the cocktail hour, the hotel always has live music in their bar. We went down to relax before dinner and I had a peach daiquiri. It was one of the best cocktails I have ever had.

The bar at the Avenida Palace

For dinner we went to a Portuguese restaurant called Pinóquio. People here eat at 8, or 9, or even later. We had to wait 40 minutes to get in. We ate outdoors under a big tent or awning. I had cod with rice and prawns. It was a generous portion of a rather bland dish with watery rice.

[Tip: In Lisbon it might be worthwhile to make a reservation for dinner.]

Today’s fabric is a soft wool or wool blend Filson blanket that I used on Alaska Airlines while flying to Boston a few days ago. The Filson company was founded in Seattle 1897 to outfit Alaska prospectors during the Klondike Gold Rush, and Filson continued to produce outdoor wear for loggers, hunters, and other outdoors types. 

Some Blog Fundamentals

This is going to be short. Maybe I will expand it another time.

1. Please feel free to comment through the Blogger app. I love getting comments.

2. This is a travel blog. I try to keep politics out of it. Do not assume I am unaware of current events just because I don’t mention them.

3. You are receiving this blog because you asked to be placed on my mailing list. If you wish to stop receiving it, let me know. I understand that reading about someone else's vacation might not be fun for you. However, before you quit, please look at “Why Do I Blog” for a better understanding of this blog.

4. Most of the photos were taken by Ken. I took a few of them. If someone else took one, I try to give them credit.

5. Unless you put your name in a comment or use a Google screen name, I can’t tell who wrote a comment. It’s ok if you wish to post anonymously, however. I also can’t tell who opens a blog post.