La Gastronomia de España: parte 2 [the gastronomy of Spain, part 2]!

Hello family and friends!

It's been a while since I've updated you on the crazy foods I have tried while I've been here, and sitting here, staring at the cookbook I purchased for myself of Spanish foods is reminding me about the culinary roller coaster I've been on this semester.

I know I've written another entry for you all to see some of the food I've eaten, but it's been a long time..and I've surely eaten some STRANGE food since then!  So this entry is going to be a lot of pictures with descriptions!

(I'll warn you now...some of them are REALLY crazy...those with weak stomachs should probably stop reading now..)

 Let's start off with some more tortilla española, this time filled with red peppers!

Eggs, potatoes, onions, red peppers, all tossed together on a toasted bocadillo bun (sub sandwich bun).

You absolutely cannot go wrong with this!  Throw a little mayonnaise on it for some extra flavor, and down the hatch it goes! 

 In Sevilla, we went to an Italian restaurant and ate some delicious pasta, and what you see here is a cheesy pasta with salchicha (sausage), mushrooms, and garlic.

Delicious!!

And fair warning...here is where things start to get a little off kilter...

We were in Salamanca, and we wanted to try some good looking tapas, so we went to a cafe, and we all ordered, and we shared food between the group...

 This is what one girl got.  It's called  callos, here in Spain, and we had no idea what that meant.  None of us had a dictionary on us, so she got it, and ate it.  I tried several pieces of it, and to our surprise, it tasted delicious.  It had the texture of what I would imagine a starfish would feel like on your tongue...bumpy, but it was cooked, so it was tender. 

 Here's another photo of the callos.  It was in a red juice with peppers, onions, and lots of spices.

Drum roll, please! 

We asked the waiter what it was after we had eaten it...and he explained to us that it was the cooked stomach of a cow.

Oh..I'm REALLY glad I didn't know that before I ate it.

 Also in Salamanca, another girl ordered chipirones en su tinto, not exactly knowing what it was.

But when it came out, it was much more obvious than the previous dish...

Baby squids, cooked in their own ink!  I actually thought this was delicious!  The ink sauce was flavored with a lot of garlic, and other spices, and it gave the squids a nice flavor.   

 Here's a photo of the underside of the squids - the tentacles!  You just pop the little guy in your mouth and eat him whole!

In fact, Maria (my host mom) made us chipirones en su tinto for my birthday about a week after this experience! 

 So that's all the really weird stuff...from here on out it's relatively normal food.

Here's a giant pan of paella from Valencia - the origin of paella.  We couldn't make it a trip without eating some of the delicious saffron, vegetable, chicken casserole that has made the city famous! 

 And this...well, it's food I got in Spain..Barcelona to be exact...but it's not really Spanish food...

I ate NACHOS!  It was the biggest plate of cheesy chips I have had in such a long time, but it tasted wonderful!  I had to include it in this entry, because, well...it was so delicious.  And every time I look at this picture, I can just taste the nachos.  mmmm.  I can't wait for some good tex-mex food when I get home!

  These last five photos are all from my trip to San Sebastian.  It's know to be the culinary capital of Spain...so I wanted to put them last.  They're all tapas.  My friend Sarah and I went to a few different locales to try some tapas, and this is what I ended up with! 

 The one above is bread, layered with green peppers, mushrooms, garlic, and onions, all covered with a garlic spiced olive oil sauce.  It was served hot, and delicious.

 This is a hot dish as well, and it's a piece of white meat (some sort of poultry).  It tasted very similar to chicken, but when we asked the waiter what was inside of it, he said it was poulty, like chicken.  So we don't think it was actually chicken.  But it had this sesame cream sauce over the top of it with fried strips of potatoes.  Mmmm.  Delicious! 

 I think I can say for SURE that this was my favorite dish I tried all night.  It's eggplant, layered with cheese, layered with more zucchini, and another piece of eggplant, served hot.  The cheese had melted between the layers of vegetables, and it tasted absolutely amazing.  I would pay to go there and eat it again in a heartbeat, it was that incredible. 

 For those of you who know me, this one may seem like a strange choice, but I assure you, it took second place only behind the cheesy eggplant.  It's a piece of french bread.  And on one half of it, is a few chunks of bleu cheese with a walnut on top.  On the other side of the bread (facing the camera) is cream cheese with a half of a cherry tomato on top.  The whole piece was then drizzled with balsamic vinegar, which I have discovered to be a very powerful tool in the kitchen.  It was so delicious, and so easy to make!  

 And last but not least, the bacon wrapped salchicha.  It's very similar to bacon wrapped bbq weiners, sans the bbq sauce.  It's a mini sausage (with spices already in it) cooked, and wrapped in bacon.  You literally can't go wrong with it! 

 The last five photos you see here are some of my favorite foods I've had while I have been in Spain.  They were absolutely delicious.  I guess there's a reason why San Sebastian has it's claim to fame as the culinary capital of the country...and there's no way after my experiences I could dispute it.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this brief update on the crazy Spanish food I've been eating!  Oh, and I've also been enjoying my fair share of churros con chocolate, too!  (And don't worry, my cookbook has a recipe for them!)

 Well, that's all for now!  I hope I didn't make you too hungry!  (or disgusted...)

Something I've learned here:  When you get the chance to try something you haven't before, you should take it.  You never know how it's going to end.

besos y abrazos,

Erin  

Mis aventuras Portugueses! [My Portuguese Adventures!]

Welcome again, to my wonderful Spanish semester.  As you read this blog entry, you'll notice I wrote it actually about a week and a half ago, but I'm just getting around to publishing it now...so please, disfruta! (enjoy!)

 Oh the end of the semester is bringing about quite the travel plans!  I’m currently sitting on a bus from the Madrid airport to Valladolid.  It’s Monday, April 23^rd, and it seems like I was just traveling, and here I am, going at it again!  Truth of the matter is, we have a lot of long weekends at the end of April, so I’m taking full advantage of them and getting a few more travel plans in before I come home on May 20^th.

Boats that used to be used to transport wine to Porto

So, to jump start my last month or so of the semester, this past weekend (April 20^th-23^rd) my friend Katie and I headed to Porto, Portugal.  Our flights left from Madrid on Friday and we came back on Monday (today!).  Once again, the country of Portugal has me smitten.  We left Madrid's airport around 3:30pm and after a very short flight, we arrived Friday around 4:30pm and checked into the Garden House Hostel (which, on the contrary from my last experience) was the most wonderful hostel I have ever been in.  We were greeted by a Portuguese man named Rui, who showed us to our room, gave us a tour of the hostel, maps, and any more information we needed.  We headed to the supermarket to get food for the next three days and then bummed around town for a bit.  It was supposed to rain all weekend while we were there, but we got lucky.  When it did rain, it was mainly a drizzle here and there.  Friday night we made ourselves some dinner, along with a group of 25 architecture students from Vienna, Austria, and planned out our weekend.   The group of students was quite intimidating to be around, and only a few of them spoke English, but they were all really, really nice and offered us their leftover food (too bad we had already cooked dinner!)

First you pick your chicken...

Then she butchers it for you!

Anyway, Saturday we got up, enjoyed breakfast (included in our hostel) and ventured around the city.  We went to a market and got the sweetest smelling and tasting strawberries I’ve ever encountered, some zucchini, green pepper, and dried red kidney beans.  The market was incredible...on one end, there was a bread shop, and on the other, you could pick out your chicken and have it butchered right in front of your eyes!!  


This is the market - it was raining, but we made the best of it!  We walked in on street level, which was actually the second level, and we wandered around looking at all the delicious vegetable and fruit stands for a long time before deciding what to get!  There was everything you could imagine, from flowers, to chickens, to parrots, to wooden toys for children...seriously, it was a phenomenal market!  We got some great tasting food for cheap!
 
Anyway, we headed back out to the city after the market and made our way across the Douro River to where the famous wine cellars are located.  Portugal is known for their production of Port Wine.  Well, I guess I should rephrase that.  Porto has the wine cellars in which the Port wine is stored...but the grapes are picked and the wine is produced along the Douro River in the northern provinces of Portugal and shipped to Porto for storage.  We enjoyed a free tour and tasting at Taylor’s Wine Cellars which included samples of both their white Chip Dry Port Wine, and their red Select Reserve Port Wine.  We learned that port wine is sweeter and a much stronger wine because the fermentation process is stopped after about 4 days, and then a grape spritzer is added.  By stopping the fermentation, you preserve more of the natural sugars of the fruit, so it’s a naturally sweet wine.  We also learned about several different types of Port wine, one called a Vintage.  The Vintage wine keeps aging once it’s bottled, and the longer it’s aged, the better wine it will be.  Because of that, on their menu, they had a bottle of their Vintage wine that dated back to the 1800s (it was bottled before the American Civil War) and it cost 2500 euros per bottle, or 100 euros per glass.  Needless to say, we didn’t try it, but it sure sounds interesting!

Wine cellars at Taylor's

After the tours, we bummed our way around the city.  We saw the picturesque Riviera village near the river, and the beautiful train station.  The city also has a ton of churches.  After wandering around all day, we came back to the hostel to make ourselves some rice and beans for dinner.  We had meant to cook the red beans for lunch…but we discovered you have to let dried beans soak for a long period of time before you cook them, so we made them for dinner.  That night, Katie and I worked on our final papers for the semester - we had both brought our laptops along with us to Portugal because we knew we had this daunting paper looming ahead of us, and due to our travel plans, we really had to finish it soon! (See?  We study too...)  

This is the old Riviera town along the river front.

But, the next day, we took a free walking tour organized by our hostel, which was really interesting even though we saw a lot of the same things we saw the previous day.  We were able to learn more  about the buildings as well as the history behind a lot of the places in the city.  We learned about a church that was built a very long time ago - circa the 1000AD, and our tour guide informed us that the first mas was given in 1120AD.  Quite old if you ask me!  The church itself was quite impressive, and ahead of it's time.  Some decorations on it appeared to be very similar to Gothic cathedrals, but my art class has taught me they came much later in time. 

Very old church in Porto, Portugal

This is the cafe where JK Rowling wrote parts of the Harry Potter series

 On the tour we got to see some really interesting things - including an old book store that was JK Rowling's inspiration for Harry Potter's staircases, as well as the cafe she used to sit in and write the Harry Potter series.  We also saw the train station, which had a ton of beautiful tile work inside.  Everywhere you look in Porto there are buildings with blue tiles on them.  In fact, just down the street from our hostel was a church completely covered with beautiful blue tiles.  The buildings here are beautiful, the scenery is beautiful, and the people here are so wonderful!

The inside of the train station!

 After the tour ended, we went back to Taylor’s Wine Cellar to purchase some souvenirs (after a long discussion on how we could fit them in our carry-on backpacks).  Porto is an extremely hilly city (something I didn’t know until we got there!) so we were walking up and down and over, and down and back up and every which way to find these wine cellars.

The church with the incredible blue tiles

After visiting Taylor’s one more time, we walked past another wine cellar that had free tours, named Croft.  We actually took a Spanish tour there, and we understood almost 100% of the tour!  We even explained it to an Indian man who was on the tour and only spoke broken Spanish.  It felt pretty dang good to be able to explain it to him!  After that, we came back to the hostel, cooked lunch at about 5pm, and watched a movie.  We made dinner at 9pm, and sat in the kitchen drinking wine and tea with a few people we met in our hostel until 1am talking about literally everything.  We were hanging out with Todd from Perth, Australia, Julia from St. Louis, Missouri, and Rainer from Dusseldorf, Germany.  It was a very fun night to get to know everybody’s story.  That’s what the hostel experience is really about.

The streets of Porto, Portugal - they have a unique type of beauty.

Houses built on the green slopes of the river

Well, Monday morning (today) we got up, checked out of our hostel, and caught our flight from Porto back to Madrid…and that brings me full circle to where I am now…still sitting on the bus from Madrid’s airport to Valladolid.  I’ll go back to classes tomorrow, but next weekend I’m off to Sardinia, Italy.  It’s an island north of Sicily, and south of Corsica in the Mediterranean Sea.  I’m really excited!  But for now, I’m going to revel in my fantastic weekend travels to Portugal.  Once again, this country has won my heart over!  The people were so genuine, and kind.  It was truly a wonderful, wonderful weekend.

And that concludes my blog updates!  It’s been a whirlwind of a month so far, and I know it won’t end until May 20^th.  The date is looming in the future…last weekend after my bad experience in San Sebastian, I would have told you I was more than ready to be home.  But after traveling this weekend, I’m not sure I want this ever to end.  It’s been a dream come true, and I couldn’t have asked for anything better.

With much love from Spain and Portugal,

besos y abrazos,

Erin          

El final de mis vacacciones! [The end of my vacations!]

Bienvenidos otra vez!  So far we're up to Sunday, April 8th on my 2 week adventures!  Let's finish this trip up!

We left Arrecife on Sunday evening, and we sailed that night and the following day, Monday.  On Tuesday, April 10th, we arrived back into mainland, Spain to our last and final port city, Málaga.  Málaga is located in southern Spain on the coast of the Mediterranean.  But instead of staying in Málaga that day, we drove to Granada and visited the Alhambra and the Generalife gardens.  Here's a fun fact: more people visit the Alhambra every year than any other tourist destination in Spain, including the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona!  

The drive between Málaga and Granada was incredible – we drove through the Sierra Nevada mountains and the whole countryside was dotted with olive groves.

We arrived into Granada after about an hour and 40 minute drive through the mountains, and we began our tour of the Generalife gardens.  This is a photo of the Alhambra from the gardens.  You can see the old fortress walls, as well as the majority of the buildings.   

We spent all day touring the Arabic palaces (Alhambra) and the gardens (Generalife) that were built in the years around 1000AD.  Here's a little brief history lesson of the influence the Arabic culture had on Spain: The moors invaded southern Spain in the year 711AD, and they stayed in Spain until the Catholic Monarchs, Fernando and Isabella, kicked them out, with the war ending in 1492 with the conquest of Granada.  The photo to the right is a picture of a patio in the Generalife gardens, on the top most level.  Water was a very vital symbol to the Moorish people, and because of that, they had fountains on all levels of the gardens that were interconnected.  The Koran also prohibited the use of animals or human decorations, so they used a lot of vegetation, Arabic writings, and tilings to decorate the palace.  

 

The majesty of these buildings lies in the age and detail of the artwork.  It’s true that it’s not an impressive building size wise (there’s no comparison between the Alhambra and the Sagrada Familia) but the design and artwork that went into making this such an influential Arabic palace is obvious.  The details on the walls, which include a lot of Arabic writings, and geometric shapes, are unrivaled by anything I’ve seen.  Of course, since it was built it has been restored several times, but the age of the buildings themselves is quite impressive.  

One of the facades in the Alhambra palace

After spending about 2 hours for free time in the city (we got some delicious pasta for lunch) we hopped back on our tour bus and headed back to Málaga that evening, and got there in time before our cruise set sail to return to Barcelona.

  

We sailed the next day, Wednesday, April 11^th, and arrived back into Barcelona on the 12^th.  After spending the day in Barcelona, we left for Madrid that afternoon on another train.  Once we got into Madrid, we headed to our hotel (it was close to the airport) and stayed there until the next morning.  On Friday the 13th of April, my parents and I packed up our stuff, and headed to the airport really early!  I was to catch a bus to San Sebastian at 7:45am, in northern Spain, and they were to fly out back to the states around 10am.  It had been a wonderful 2 weeks with them, and I’m so happy I was able to show them the country that has captured my heart once again.  (Don’t worry mom and dad, I’m not moving here..).  We parted ways at the airport (my bus from Terminal 4, and their flight from Terminal 1).  

Thank you guys for spending 2 wonderful weeks with me in Spain!  :)  I loved every minute of it!

The city of San Sebastian from Mount Orgull

The small old fortress on top of the Mountain I found!

And now, I had one more weekend planned in San Sebastian with my ever faithful travel buddy, Sarah Vowels.  From the airport, I hopped on my bus to San Sebastian.  I was planning on arriving there Friday afternoon, and staying until Sunday night (April 13-15).  I was going to get home Monday morning, pretty early.  I arrived Friday afternoon, and it was pouring.  Good thing I had brought my umbrella!  I walked to my hostel, and to my dismay, it was the worst hostel I have ever stayed in.  It was terrible.  I don’t even want to waste my time telling you all about it...but from here on out, I have learned to spend the extra 5 or 6 euros for a private room, rather than staying in a "dorm room" type hostel.  I left the hostel and headed out to see the city, but there wasn’t much to do since it was still raining.  I climbed the mountain near the city (more like a steep hill) to get some great views of the city.  I walked around and eventually ran to the grocery store and grabbed some Jamón flavored chips for dinner.  I slept in the hostel Friday night (on top of the bed…) and met Sarah, my friend when her train got in Saturday at 1pm.  Honestly, the first thing I did when I woke up Saturday morning was check what times the trains were leaving Sunday to change my ticket to an earlier time.  Sarah was okay with changing tickets too, so we took care of that while we were there.  We checked her into the hostel, and we headed out to see the city.  

The city lies on a river, with about 6 different bridges!

This is a picture of the city with the Basque flag.

We explored around for a while, but we shortly ran out of things to do.  So, we decided to go to a movie.  We bought tickets for an 8:15pm showing of Todos los dias de mi vida (The Vow).  We explored some delicious tasting tapas that night before the movie (probably the  highlight of this last weekend).  After the movie we went to bed.  We left at 9am Sunday April 15^th, because quite frankly after two weeks of travelling, we were both just ready to go back to Valladolid. 

So..that concludes my 2 week spring break traveling with my parents to the Canary Islands!  I hope you enjoyed reading about it, because it was a phenomenal part of my semester!  I’m so thrilled to have my parents to share in the beauty of traveling and learning about a new culture.  <3  Thank you guys for coming to Spain!  I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did!

I hope you all enjoyed reading my entries from my 2 week spring break!  I know I sure enjoyed traveling around Spain and taking the 2 weeks off of school!  It was definitely a welcomed break!  

Stay tuned for some more adventures before the semester comes to a close!  

besos y abrazos,

Erin  

Puerto - Ciudad #3: Arrecife, Lanzarote [Port City #3: Arrecife, Lanzarote!]

Hello there!  Now that we've been to 2 of our port cities, we are coming in on the home stretch of our cruise.  

On Sunday, April 8^th (Easter Sunday) we arrived in our 3^rd port city, called Arrecife, on the island of Lanzarote.  This too is located in the Canary islands, west of Africa.  This port we didn't have an excursion, so we got to sleep in a little bit, and we headed off the ship to get on some transfer buses to head into the city.  From the ship, we could tell it was a relatively small city, but it had a great feeling to it once we got there!  The photo to the right is the town with a ton of fishing boats - the first time we walked past, it was low tide, and the boats were sitting on land but the second time we walked past it must have been higher tide, and some of them were floating!  It was really neat to see! 

We spent the morning bumming around town, heading to a few tourist shops, and getting some nice drinks at an outdoor café.  As we were walking along the ocean, we saw a group of men racing motorized small sailboats!  It was a really interesting race to watch!  At the cafe we stopped at, we were serenaded by a group of guys that played wonderful music.  Arrecife is a small area, but that doesn’t mean anything, because it held so much culture and beauty. 

 

We went to a church (we were late for Easter mass) but we walked around it, and it’s truly what I expected a Spanish church to look like.  After mass was let out, we were able to walk inside and just take a peek.  It wasn’t a large cathedral, rather a very small catholic church, but inside, it was decorated in such an unmistakable Spanish tone that it couldn’t help but take your breath away.  After doing some investigation, I've learned that it was built at the end of the 16th century!   

 These are photos from the inside of the church - you can see some of the typical Spanish Catholic decorations, including statues of the Virgin Mary, and the color red.  Red and gold are two very typical colors used in Spanish decorations, and this church was no exception!  Enjoy!

After our really relaxing day in Arrecife, Lanzarote, we headed back to the ship to board and start sailing back towards mainland Spain.   

Stay tuned for the next entry on our last port city and the last few days of my 2 week spring break trip! 

besos y abrazos,

Erin

Puerto - Ciudad #2: Santa Cruz de Tenerife [Port City #2: Santa Cruz de Tenerife!]

Well hello yet again!

Coming into port in Tenerife, Canary Islands

Our next port city was the very next day in the Canary Islands - Saturday morning, April 7^th, when we arrived into Santa Cruz de Tenerife.  This island is in the Canary islands, just off the western coast of Africa (yet they belong to Spain).  The Canary islands are a group of 7 islands of volcanic origin about 100km west of the border between Morocco and the Western Sahara.  Legally, the canary islands are regarded as a nationality of Spain, but are geographically considered part of the African continent.  Which means, this semester, I successfully made it to the African continent!  :)  

This stop was on the largest island, Tenerife.  Santa Cruz de Tenerife is the capital of the island, but we didn't stay in the city for long!  This is because Tenerife is home to one of the world's most visited National Parks: Teide National Park.  The park is centered around Mount Teide, which is regarde as the highest peak in Spain and the Atlantic Islands, as well as the 3rd highest volcano in the world, with 3,718m (or 12,198 ft).      

We took another excursion to visit the national park as well as Mount Teide.  The drive was quite long from the port because Teide is located centrally on the island, but it was definitely worth it.  We drove so high, we were above the clouds, and because of that, when looking out, you could see a vast sea of white, cotton-ball clouds with green pine trees.

There’s was something really touching about being there, because these were all natural creations that we were seeing.  It's been a while since I've been completely surrounded by nature...and it sure felt good to get out of cement city and back into some greenery for a bit! 

Since Mount Teide is a volcano, within the national park we were able to see the lava flows from previous eruptions and where they stopped.  It was a really neat area, since I have never seen a volcano before, I was completely amazed at the characteristics of the area - from the vegetation, to the coloring of the rocks, to the cold temperatures.  I learned that since we were so high up, there were 2 observatories built on the side of Mount Teide (okay, so we weren't completely out of man made creations).  Which makes sense, being so high we were away from light pollution and closer to the atmosphere levels, giving astronomers a better look at the stars!   

What a sight that would be! 

Also, since we were so high up, there was hardly any vegetation, as you can see in the photos - but there are several types of flowers that are unique to the Canary Islands.  One of them is called the Teide Violet, and this flower can survive with such low amounts of oxygen that you can find it all the way up to the summit of the volcano, making it the highest flowering plant in Spain.

Anyway, our bus stopped at this great little place where we could use the restroom, get some fun souvenirs, and get some coffee.  It was still early in the morning (well, early being around 11am) so I was grateful for the coffee stop!  The morning weather was phenomenal for our visit to Teide National Park, though, since it was so high up, it was a bit chilly.  We stopped at a few more areas to take some breathtaking photos of the national park and Mount Teide, which included a stop where we were able to climb around on some rock formations - this is where we could see the dried up lava flows from previous explosions.  It was incredible!   

After we finished monkeying around on the rocks, our tour bus headed back once again to the ship.  We had spent a wonderful day driving through a beautiful national park, and it was time to head back to the port so we could set sail for our 3rd port city, Arrecife!  

With that, I'll wrap up the day of April 7th!  I hope you've enjoyed the photos so far!  

besos y abrazos, 

Erin   

Puerto - Ciudad #1: Funchal, Madeira! [Port City #1: Funchal, Madeira!]

Hello there again!  Let's get this cruise under way!  I'm going to attempt to write an entry for each cruise port, so that I can share as many pictures as I possibly can...and because if I tried to write about all of them, it would get too long! 

I had never been on a cruise before this, so I was really excited to see the ship and to have this wonderful experience.  We boarded  the cruise ship, the Norwegian Jade the afternoon of April 3rd, around 2pm, and then we set sail from Barcelona at 6pm, leaving the sun behind us and heading into open waters.  We sailed Tuesday night, all day Wednesday, and all day Thursday.  During those two and half days, we found plenty of things to do on the ship, from swing and merengue dance lessons, to “name that tune” trivia.  With Geo, our cruise director; Marni, my German dancing partner; and Tomas, our fantastic animal making housekeeper, we were set to have a wonderful experience!  While we were on the ship, we had ample opportunities to eat and meet many people from all over Europe.  We were in the minority on the ship, being all the way from the states.  

Wednesday night we sailed through the Straight of Gibraltar (7.7 nautical miles between Europe and Northern Africa), and it was absolutely beautiful.  I wish we would have sailed through it during the day at one point, because on our way back we also sailed through it at night…but either way it was an interesting experience.  On one side of the ship you could see the lights from Morocco, Africa, and on the other side loomed the dark outline of the rock of Gibraltar, surrounded by the lights of the city.  At one instance, we were looking at three different countries…Spain, Great Britain (they still own Gibraltar as a colony), and Morocco.  This is the best photo I could take of Gibraltar's city lights and the rock...it's pretty difficult to make out, but if you stare at it long enough, you can see it! 

Friday morning, April 6^th arrived soon enough and with the sunrise, we were able to see the city lights of Funchal, Portugal.  Funchal is located in the Portuguese archipelago named Madeira that lies in the North Atlantic Ocean, in the most outermost part of the European Union.  The archipelago is made up of 4 islands/groups of islands.  Madeira is not only the name of the whole archipelago, but also the name of the largest island, which is were Funchal is located.  

We arrived around 7am to the island now a part of Portugal.  Here's the proof that 1) I was up before sunrise and 2) I was functioning enough to take photos.  This, folks, is a very, rare occurrence.  But here is the city of Funchal, just before daybreak, with the city's night lights lighting up the sky.  This photo was taken off of our room's balcony, along with the next photo of the peach colored sky peeking around the edge of the mountain off in the distance.  I was so excited to get off the ship and start exploring - this would be the FIRST time being in a country other than Spain this semester!   

That morning we had an excursion to go see some beautiful areas of the island as well as taste some Portuguese wine and cheeses.  It was quite the island.  Madeira is hilly, green, and beautiful.  Houses are built into the sides of the hills, and fishing villages dot the coast.  Banana farms stretch as far as your eye can see, and beyond that, the ocean loomed in the distance.  We stopped first at Pico Dos Barcelos which was a look out over the city of Funchal.

   

This is a panoramic from Pico Dos Barcelos in Funchal, Portugal.  You can see from the hillside to the sea, and it's a perfect example of the houses built right into the hillside! 

You can see the beauty that captured my heart in this photo.  Being here felt incredible, and we passed a few people selling some embroidered items such as kitchen towels, shirts, and sweaters on our way to the lookout.  Funchal, and Madeira in general is known for their incredible handiwork in embroidery.  After picking out some kitchen towels, we headed up to the lookout for some great picture taking opportunities.  

After a brief stop at Pico Dos Barcelos, we continued on our excursion to Cámara de Lobos, which is a small picturesque fishing village about 20 minutes away.  Cámara de Lobos translates to "chamber of the wolves" in Portuguese.  Winston Churchill immortalized the beauty in this village in many of his paintings during the 1950s.  It's said that he returned several times just to create paintings so not to forget the beauty he saw here.  That basically sums up Cámara de Lobos' claim to fame!

There were brightly colored boats that dotted the beach, while fish were hung drying out in the sunshine.  It was like nothing I've ever seen before.  These are the fish that were hanging up to dry - at first I wasn't sure they were fish, but my sense of smell soon assured me that they were indeed, some sort of fish, sitting right in front of me, drying in the sunshine.

We also stopped at Estreito de Cámara de Lobos (a small parish outside of the fishing village) to taste wine, cheese, and garlic bread from Portugal - this little township is known for it's cultivation of grapes to produce Madeira Wine.  The drives throughout the entire island, and especially this stretch were incredible.  There were banana farms as far as your eye could see, cut into terraces on the sides of the hills.  From where we tasted the wine, you could see ships out in the ocean, and look out over the city of Funchal.  It was an absolutely beautiful island.  At that instance, I think I fell in love with Portugal.

 
After the wine, cheese, and bread tasting, we then headed to Cabo Giráo, Europe’s second largest sea cliff.  Unfortunately, our tour guide told us that the cliff is the second highest in Europe, but after I got home and did some research, I found at least 5 other sea cliffs that were higher...but tomato, tomahto.  It was still a spectacular sight I had the privilege to see.  The cliff is located between two river valleys that empties out into the Atlantic Ocean, and is approximately 1,932 feet above sea level. The blue of the ocean was reminiscent of a blue raspberry icee, it was so vibrant!

When standing on top of the cliff, you can either look straight out into the sea, which is what this picture shows you - the bright blue of the Atlantic, and the blue of the sky, melding together as if it were a puddle of rainwater on a rainy day... 

 OR, you can choose to look straight down, and you'll see a peculiar sight...I thought at first it was just some grassy open areas along the coast, but after further investigation, I found out they are actually vineyards at the foot of the sea cliff, right along the Atlantic Ocean!  You can see them in the photo on the left. 

After stopping at Cabo Giráo, we headed back on the bus to the ship in port, and spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing in the sunshine.  It had been a wonderful day filled with some incredible times spent with my parents, and I was tired, but oh so very content with life.  I will move onto our second port in my next entry...Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Canary Islands!  But for now, I will leave you with this incredible photo I snapped of the island from atop of Cabo Giráo.  I hope you all enjoyed this short tour of Funchal, Madeira!

besos y abrazos, 

Erin