Sa 5/10 A Visit to Favaios

Today I started out feeling much better than yesterday.  Last night I was able to "empty" my stomach which helped to relieve much of the discomfort. Today things were mostly back to normal (except I only ate about a fourth of the food put in front of me throughout the day 😥)

Another picturesque view out of our cabin this morning as we were sailing down the river.

At 8:30 this morning we boarded our busses for a trip through the countryside to a little town named Favaios, a community of 1,000 residents that is famous for two things -- bread and wine.   The scenery driving over, with the rolling valleys, was beautiful (Alice took these pictures, I was napping most of the way.)

Our first stop was at the Favaios Wine Co-op.  In 1952 the five major wine producers in the region banded together to form a cooperative with a common facility for making wine under the sole name of the cooperative.

This region is known for its Muscatel grape (which they pronounce moosh-ka-tell).  It is a sweet dessert wine that they drink with breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  While their most common wine is aged 3-5 years, they are still releasing wine that is 25-30 years old.  

From the wine cooperative we then went into the central village and made our way to the demonstration  kitchens of the village bread shop.  The village is famous for its four-corner bread.  They have 8 bakers producing 8,000 loaves each day.  The baking takes place between 4:00 and 9:00 am, and then each of the bakers drives their truck to neighboring communities where they sell every loaf of bread they make every day.  (Remember, with only 1,000 residents they make far more bread than they need for local consumption).  Today was the first time we had to walk through the rain, and it was really just passing showers.

One of the bakers demonstrated how they fold and kneed the bread.  It is a 12 motion process they use to make the bread into its distinctive shape, each loaf is formed by hand. The shape makes it easy to pull apart into individual pieces.

Our next stop was at the village wine and bread museum.  The museum is a project of the community to preserve knowledge of these two major activities.  It receives funding from UNESCO (which we have come to realize wields a lot of power through funding to control tourism throughout the world creating winners and losers).  

Our next stop was at Quinta Avessada, a wine estate where we were served a traditional Portuguese lunch (their biggest meal of the day).  We had salad with cheese, cod and sausage appetizers, a special soup that had many strange things in it, and roasted beef with cabbage and potatoes.  

Our ship had been sailing while we were touring.  We met up with the ship and then continued sailing down the river.  Tonight we are docked in Vila Nova de Gaia.

Dinner Menu:  Garden Greens with Roquefort, Piri Piri Chicken,  Apple Tarte Tatin

Daily Step Count:  3,475 steps walking around Favaios.