Saturday 26 January 2019

Saturday 26 January - Vila Real de Santo Antonio

Where's Bertie? He's still unmoved, at the huge Aire at Vila Real.
Weather: Wall-to-wall sunshine and warm.

Is 'We haven't been out for coffee yet?' a good reason to decide to stay in a town for an entire extra day? I'm sure there would have been coffee-selling establishments near to our next stop too, but as coffee drinking is a morning activity, and as moving on would have taken up the prime window for coffee (our ticket here expires at 10.30am), it seemed like a good reason to stay put.

We fried slightly in the sunshine as we sat on the edge of the main square, which was hosting a small market today. Indeed, we sat over a couple of coffees for long enough that the begging busker was on his second round of the bar/restaurants around the square by the time we left.

Next up, we searched the town for somewhere we might like to go for lunch. Restaurants are not thin on the ground here (random observation: they almost all have identical chairs and tables outside; does the council require them to buy from a particular purveyor of pavement dining equipment when issuing their licences?), but there is very little variation in the menus. In fact, so little variation that we kept seeing the same photo menu over and over again.

Eventually we gave up and returned to Bertie with a still-warm loaf of bread, thinking we would be dining in again today. However, about fifty paces away from Bertie, on the riverside where the fishing trawlers dock, is a shack of an eatery, so we thought we'd wander over to see what they serve. There was no menu outside, but I was willing to take pot luck.

We'd barely sat down when a basket of bread (plus butter and sardine pâté) was put before us, along with a dish of olives and a platter of salad. A while later we were invited in to choose our fish. Ah! It was one of those restaurants! We had hit gold!

The seabass we chose was served exactly as we expected: with plenty of garlic and olive oil (I'm in no danger of any vampires attacking me in the next few days!), and with a platter of salty skin-on potatoes. It wasn't a cheap lunch, but it was very much to our liking.

Pudding was had back at Bertie, as whilst buying bread this morning a couple of cakes had also found their way into our shopping bag:

They were rather good too! We did go sharesies, to make up for the disparity in size.

We did manage another little wander late this afternoon, to make up a small amount for how much we have sat around eating and drinking today.

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