Partied out ..... and it's not over yet !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Last week our village, Montes Da Senhora, held its annual August Festa, a 4 day event which had a programme of two nights with pop bands, a traditional music/dancing night then ending with the Open-Air All-night Summer Dance Party! Quite a hectic schedule for two ageing "have been" party animals!!! (hahaha). Mid-week we invited our good friends John and Luisa, and Julie and Barry (who are from our neck of the woods in Nottingham) round to ours to have a walk down to the village to watch the religious procession and then back to ours for a good old curry supper!

Sunday last saw us round at Luisa and John's with Julie and Barry where Luisa (a wonderful cook) made us a tradional Portuguese dish of Bacalhau which is cod fish. You may have seen this fish which is sold in supermarkets in Portugal and Spain in its dried out form, stiff as a board and salted, which looks very unappetising! When bought like this this fish has to be left in water to soak for many hours to remove the salt. It can also be bought "frozen" which makes the job much simpler. According to the Portuguese there are as many as 1001 recipes for Bacalhau, many are simply recipes made up by the cook of the house! Luisa used her own recipe which is bacalhau, onions, potatoes, spinach, (a secret ingredient), topped with breadcrumbs and is baked in the oven. It was simply delicious! Luisa is also famous for her deserts, this time we had stewed pears soaked in red wine and cinnamon with ice cream and also her own-style traditional Portuguese rice pudding. Very creamy and very scrummy!!

We had planned on taking a full week's rest from work but did that happen? No!!! The slave-master (Rob) could not resist the lure of the cement mixer and had to crack on with laying the marble footpath in the garden so a few hours were achieved, the results of which you will see later.

Things are so laid back here that as you would expect when an event is scheduled to come on at say, 11 pm, you can be sure it will be at least an hour later when they appear! Not good news for us I'm afraid so we never got to see much later than 1.30 am in the morning, which is quite disconcerting when you have to crawl to bed leaving young children and the older end of the spectrum dancing and having fun! Tuesday night featured a band called "Friends of the President" who were very good. The following night was another band called "Banda T" who got the party going! We did, however, manage to pull out all the stops for the finale party nite, and stayed out jigging about to the music till 4 am in the morning (with the help of copious amount of you know what).

Thursday night's entertainment is a very traditional night. Lots of families were out, enjoying the ambience of meeting up with their friends and families who they maybe only see at Festa time as they live in the cities, it was lovely to see the children having a ball running round and having fun.

We kicked the night off by having dinner in the square which was a simple fare of bread, salad, chips and chicken (but absolutely loads of it and lovely). Later on (after midnight) were a group of dancers from the village dancing to the music provided by the village's musicians! There was lots of very traditional dances and music and they had everyone up on their feet dancing the night away. We are absolutely stunned at how many hours of partying the Portuguese can put in on a night, with the music still on till sometimes 8 am in the morning! Late night open-air dance parties with good DJ's on (which do go on all night) are very popular here, which does seem bizarre to us deep in the heart of rural Central Portugal.

I did take lots of photographs but sadly they didn't come out too well so have only posted a few.

And just when we thought it was all over, we have an invite tonight to a Portuguese friend's party who lives in the next village who are currently having their Festa and a birthday party on Friday at some English friends, so for us another week of eating, drinking and making fools of ourselves!!!!!!!

Garden Photos

At last we can now see the results of all our hard work in the garden, and to say we started out with just a basic idea of how we wanted it to look, we are well pleased with the way we have created it just by developing the design as we went along! Garden landscapers we are not, but we think we have managed to create our outside living space quite tastefully.

We have just had delivered 30 metres of marble at a cost of £100 which will be more than ample to pave a footpath from the front gate centrally dividing the garden, coming round the front of the house to the front entrance of the veranda and to the other side of the house to the rear entrance onto the veranda. Earlier in the week we dug out the footpath and laid the concrete footing for the path in readiness for laying the marble, which in this heat was no fun at all!!!

Still to be finished is the pergola. At the moment we are making a second planter in stone (the first one is already completed with two passion flower climbers planted) and the remainder of the wooden crossbeams need to be erected. The wood (which is eucalyptus) has been collected for us by a neighbour at no cost. The concrete bases housing the main wooden beams are being tiled in tradditional portuguese tiles (mainly of a blue and white design). The sitting bench has been built out of concrete blocks, white ceramic tiles with a stone top. On each side of the bench we had added a table, perfect for resting the glass of red wine!!! The soiled area in front of the bench will be grassed but at the moment it is way too hot to be sowing grass seeds!

Our later plans are to build a table and BBQ area next to the footpath and the remainder of the garden with the fruit trees will be ploughed over and become our veggie garden.

Don't forget to single click the photos for them to enlarge!

August .... Festival month!!!

August appears to be the main holiday month here in Portugal. We are seeing lots of new faces in the village, some are tourists but mainly it sees the return of locals who grew up in the village have now moved with their families and are working and living in cities, (Lisbon and Oporto) but still have homes in the village (or their parents' homes). The villages are bursting into life with festivals (festas) after festas. Quite often these festas are 4-day events with a programme of activities which include parades (some religious) some beauty contests, arts and crafts, musical bands, dance parties, street parties, market stalls, food stalls and plenty of wine and beer tents!!!!

These are the flyers for our village "Montes Da Senhora" and a nearby village "Conqueirios"

Adega Nights!!!!!


As almost everyone locally grows their own vines for winemaking nearly every home has a wine cellar which is known as an "Adega". We have vines in our garden and plot and also have an Adega but unfortunately don't have the knowledge to brew our own wine so we will pass on our grapes to those who do!!! We obviously have to address this, but as wine seems to be in "abundance" anyway it may be a wise move for us not to address this!!!

Last Friday and Saturday nights we had invites to Adegas. Friday night saw us at Jose's (a good neighbour and friend). We had the usual vinho tinto (red wine) and was treated to Wild Boar (hunted and killed in the Alenjeto area) by Jose himself. The meat had been braised in a delicious spicy tomato sauce and served with bread. Followed by bread and cheese.

Saturday was an earlier evening event in an Adega up in the mountains (about 4/5 kilometres away. It was hosted by our friend (Joe Padairo) known as "Joe the Baker" who had freshly killed two chickens which were cooked on the BBQ and served with a salad of freshly picked tomatoes and onions, freshly home-baked bread with home-made cheese to follow. It was delicious but we were left "hanging" the next morning as the home-brew wine is poured into you in copious amounts!!!! (and you are not allowed to refuse any when offered)!!!!! The original party consisted of 6 people but gradually as word spread the party grew to about 12 or 13 (can't remember exactly). One was a good friend, Dino, who turned up with his mate to play their accordians and gave us a few renditions of their made-up songs (Portuguese rapping!!!)which allows them to poke fun at each other in a harmonious and humourous way!!!