Favorite eateries

Although we spent most of our time in Braga, we took meals in many different establishments, from the northern border to the southern Atlantic coast. The best meal we had, though, was not at any restaurant. It was prepared by Rosamarie at the place she and Luis have in Afife. She served a wonderful cheese plate (with sausage, too, of course) and then had us sit for a meal of poached salmon with rice, potatoes, and more. Then there were deserts. Whew! I had to nap.

We went back to several places in Braga more than once, including Taberna do Felix, Silva, and [the easter place]. We’ll probably want to eat at these places when we visit again, just to see how they’ve changed or how our perceptions were out of whack. We also ate several times at Cafe Dianna, which overlooks the fountain in the central area. The town is quite active there, so sitting at the outside tables and watching the local part of the world go by was entertaining. The fountain runs on some schedule we never deduced. Pigeons drink from it when it’s not spraying.

By far, our most-frequented place was RotivMinho. Pat called this “the faculty lounge,” because the special education faculty routinely goes there for lunch. It’s a bustling spot at the back of a small shopping center near the institute. It probably seats 60, squeezed very closely together. Three men serve the meals, and they are all very kind and friendly. The kitchen cranks out food in a hurry. It helps, of course, that the house offers two quick specials each day (one fish, one meat), but permits one to order from the full menu; if you have one of the platos du dia, you can get your lunch in minutes. However, regardless of what they eat, perhaps half of lunch patrons take a bit longer, have a half-bottle of wine or a beer with their meal, and discuss whatever it is they were discussing in Portuguese. Lunch in Portugal is a very civilized event.

Favorite foods

Because we both enjoy good food (one of us too much, probably), we have a lot of fun eating when we travel. Portugal presented plenty of opportunities to sample the local fare and, although our experience with extra-American foods is relatively limited, I think we can say that we found the food delightful.

Pat probably had sopa du legumes at least once a day while we were in Portugal. It’s a potato-based soup that’s thick and yummy. It varies from place to place and can include Portuguese kale, cabbage, or other vegetables. With a piece of bread and a salada mista, it makes a good meal.

We also had many variations on Portugal’s national fish, cod. It was served in a minimum of three different ways in each establishment where we dined. Each has bacalhau (bo ka loa?)—dried cod rejuvenated and mixed with potatos, often scalloped, and cream sauce—prepared in it’s own style (“do casa”). I suppose I ordered this close to a half-dozen different times. It’s good, but there were other dishes that I preferred.

Portuguese cooks routinely serve grilled fish, and I enjoyed them often. I say
“them” rather than “it,” because the fish is usually a small, ocean denizen with a light flesh. One is called rebolo, another blah, and so forth. All are served whole, permiting one to practice his fileting skills while having lunch. The classic, of course, is the sardine; this is not like the sardines familiar to US supermarket shoppers, the tiny, briny, oily slivers bought in a rolltop can. Instead, these are 12-15 centimeter specimens that are grilled, brushed with olive oil, and server steaming hot. They’re available seasonally (opposite of oysters).

My favorite was the lulus grehaldo or grilled squid. Squid is a common dish and the Portuguese know how to cook it. On can get it served as a breaded, deep-fried apetizer, but it’s way better hot off the grilled, sliced, and served on a platter with boiled potatos and sliced tomatos. Yumm.

I have to admit that I had too few chances to sample another dish, arroz du mer. It’s a dish concocted of shellfish and rice that I really enjoyed in Alpunia.

The breads are usually quite good. There are honest, simple white rolls and dense, dark, intense breads that are served as two to four pieces, each piece about 1.5 bites.

Pastries galore. Plenty of fresh fruit.

Douro trip

View of area

8-9 May—

We went to see what puts the port in Portugal. The famous wine comes from the Douro River valley, a few score kilometers upstream from the port city of Porto, PT. True to the opportunity, tour companies offer riverboat trips from Porto to the wine region. We took one.

We took a morning commuter train from Braga to Porto, a wild cab ride down steep-and-narrow streets from the Sao Bento station and across the Douro to a chais from which the tour boats depart, and a 5-hour boat ride up river with 200 of our closest friends. Then we spent the night in a marvelous posada and took trains back to Porto and then Braga.

The river trip took us through gorgeous countryside. The river is wide and calm, making it possible to eat at a table without spilling the morning coffee or the noontime wine. Our stay in the posade near Regua was superb; located above a bend in the river and providing marvelous views, it was once the home of a wealthy local but is now a 27-room bed and breakfast.

Running in the neighborhood of the posada was a challenge. Well, on the downhills, I felt like my toes were going to burst through the fronts of my shoes. The uphills…? That was more like power-walking than running.

I’m working on a set of photos—selecting from the ~150 we shot—

to show the sights. There are many things worth seeing; we stayed too briefly.

Links: The cruise company, Douro Azul and the posada, Solar de Rede.

Change hurts

Our money just doesn’t seem to go as far as it used to go. The $ has fallen lower against the € almost continuously while we’ve been here.

There is a difference between the official exchange rate and the rate that some tourist gets; one buys euros at the rate of the “cambio” or change shop, which rate is lower than the international markets (but better than banks). (For traveler’s checks, there is also a fee; cash is exchanged directly at the shop’s rate.) I have to guess that the difference is pretty constant, though.

Of course, one can use the ubiquitous bank machines (Multibanco). Because I have not been able to negotiate them, I do not know what they charge. Given that they are affiliated with the banks, probably their rates are not as good as the change shops.

Date	Rate
18 Apr	.793
24 Apr	.783
28 Apr	.7745
2 May	.77
10 May	.76

We have consistently used the same cambio service, and it provides a record of each transaction. So, I went back through our records and recovered the data shown here. The accompanying table shows how much I got (before the commission) per dollar on the dates when I made an exchange. (Example: If I’d exchanged $100 on 18 April, I’d've gotten €79.3; from that, I’d pay a fee, if my $100 had been in the form of a traveler’s check.)

So, the dollar’s value has dropped about 3¢ while we’ve been here. As a percentage of value, that’s more like 4+%. Ouch!

Local entertainment

Two folk dancers

I do mean local, as we had a dance show appear right below our hotel window. On the afternoon of Sunday the 6th we heard some music, looked out the window, and there just two stories below us was an entire troup of entertainers. The tiny un-square at the east end of the downtown area was alive with ‘em.

There were musicians, singers, dancers, and hangers-on–perhaps 40 in all. They ranged in age from about 3-4 years to 20 times that. They were all decked out in the costuming one can see on these two. Pat says she thinks she say the statue of Pope Pius XII tapping its foot.

 

I hope to post some pictures from the scene.

Barcelos trek

6 May we took a day trip to Barcelos, just a few kilometers from Braga. We managed to negotiate bus tickets for a 10 AM trip. It was a Saturday, so we don’t know how representative of bus travel this experience was, but it was fascinating. There were about 6 people (not counting 1 for Pat and 2 for me) who boarded the bus in Braga. By the time we got to Barcelos, all but two of those folks had disembarked and another four had joined the party.It was a local bus. The path fit the travelers. People got on and off the bus, with the departers simply walking to the door and the driver stopping, or the embarkers simply waving from the roadside to get the driver to stop.I’m glad I didn’t have to drive it, because the roads looked too narrow for a pair of skinny sports cars to pass each other. We went through tiny villages, climbed steep grades, and passed lots of rural residential areas. Many of these neighborhoods looked like wonderful places to live. They were nestled in little valleys where people tended plots of a few hectare (most with some grapes) that were divided by stone fences with hills rising the background. Very photographic, though I had the camera stowed.Barcelos was “a whole different story” (as they say). It, too, is smallish and rustic in many ways. But it’s got tourism in its sights. The famous feature, according to the guidebooks, is the pottery cock that one sees just about anywhere in the north of Portugal. It’s a primitive with a story (what primative craft doesn’t have a story?) and a lot of hype that an advertising executive would admire to no end because the noteriety has been achieved for what appears to be nearly no cost.

Photos pages

I originally was posting photos to subordinate pages within this same blog site. However, I think it’s easier and less bit-consuming to post the actual photos to Flickr and link to them there. Thus, the photo pages listed in the accompanying menu now only contain a brief note and a link to the Flicker site. I’ve marked those on Flickr with [F].

Problems? Let me know, please.

Mistaken LD paths

I was honored to have a chance to talk to a meeting of special educators in Braga on Friday 5 May. They requested that I discuss issues in identification of LD. Because Portugal does not have a formal category of Learning Disabilities, I elected to discuss some of the mistakes I thought the US had made along the way to the current status of LD in special education. Here’s the basic outline:

Identificação dos Alunos com Dificuldades de Aprendizagem Específicas John Wills Lloyd, Ph.D. University of Virginia & Division for Learning Disabilities

* LD in the US
Recognized in early 1960s, got legal status in 1970s.
Provides services to children with most severe academic problems.
Includes about 5+% of all children 6-18 years of age (total special education ≈11+%).

* How U.S. LD Went Astray: Overview
Focusing on process disorders;
Emphasizing ability- achievement discrepancy;
Calculating formuli for identification; and
Accepting students who are casualties of faulty instruction.

* Context
LD arose because parents sought help for children who had severe achievement problems but did not have other disabilities (especially MR) or cultural or instructional deprivation.

* Processes
LD went astray by
Proposing academic deficits were related to problems in basic psychological processes,
Creating tests for assessing processes, and
Requiring that students have process problems to qualify as LD.

* Discrepancy
LD went astray by
Over-emphasizing discrepancy between ability and achievement,
Requiring that students have process problems to qualify as LD, and
Allowing measurement experts to turn discrepancy between ability and achievement into a measurable characteristic.

* Formuli
LD went astray by
Allowing policy makers to create formuli for identification and
Removing expert human judgment from identification.

* Instructional Casualties
LD went astray by allowing general education to recommend students whose problem was dyspedagogia.
Still given effective instruction, some students will need special education.

* How to Avoid Going Astray
Maximize effectiveness in general education.
Avoid relying on fancy tests for identification.
Use a simple, logic-based system of identification.

Pastries from Lisbon

This one is worth a stop.

On 1 May, as we drove from the Algarve back to Braga (more precisely: Paula drove and we rode), we took a quick detour through Lisboa. One of the primary purposes of this sidetrip of this sidetrip south was to sample pastries about which we’d been told, Pasteis de Belém. The place was jamming; that’s Pat’s light blue shirt in the doorway and inside people were standing 2-4 deep at the counter to order.

Part of the reason for the brisk business was because 1 May is holiday, of course, but we understand it’s regularly a happening place. The interior of the building, which is a catacomb of many connected rooms, was packed.

Each of the little pastries served at Pasteis de Belém is a soft-crusted custard cup. The recipe is a secret passed down many generations from the nearby monastery. There are others similar products, but these are reknowned. We ate two each in a nearby park while mirating the monuments to Columbus.

I hope to write more about the return trip: cork trees, the countryside, and a stop at Fatima….

Albufeira get-away

Our place in the south is a resort on the Atlantic beach at Albufeira. It’s called Grand Real Santa Eulália Hotel Resort & Spa and it’s something! (Beware: Flash heavy site.)

We arrived Saturday and, after a bit of wandering, left the compound and went to the city center, which is like a lot of tourist bazaar spots, with people selling flashing necklaces on the street, musicians of many-a-stripe (how about accordian and tambourine!) along the walkways, and lots of shops. After dinner we caught a cab back to the hotel. It was probably 10 PM, but the town seemed to be coming alive about then. Things are on a different schedule here. We are definitely early birds by these standards, though we probably are by most folks’ standands.

Today, we spent a long time after a huge and delicious buffet breakfast, sitting beside a pool watching people (lots of families). I slathered on lots of sun block and stayed in the shade of an umbrella. I was within 3 meters of N37°05.341′, W008°12.763′, for those who want to look it up. I took the photo from about 50 meters south of that spot at about 10:40 AM (GMT).