Douro Valley Day 4

We wake up in paradise, aka the Douro Valley. I am struggling to comprehend that I am actually here, because my favorite joke in Portland has always been that one day I will go to the Douro Valley and drink all of their port. Now I am here, and ready to drink all of their port, so I figure that I am some sort of magical witch woman who can wish things into existence by saying them in jest. I tell Dan I would like a pony JUST KIDDING, but the joke is so painful I tell him I actually really want one, we can put it in the kitchen.

He says we should get breakfast instead.

Free things!

What I adore is the return of the Plate of Ham, which is a staple in both Spanish and Portuguese cultures. I made that up, but it's definitely a staple in my culture, which is the culture of enjoying entire plates of ham. The entire trip Dan and I have been trying to consider how it is possible to smuggle an entire leg of Iberico ham back home, because it is so delicious and so cheap. I tell him it is easy, I will put the leg under my jacket, and when the customs officers stop us, I will tell them it is my service animal, and I will look so crazy holding an entire leg of ham that they will have no choice to believe that I definitely need help, and if ham legs are what keep me from serial killing, well, it could be worse.

Dan is not certain that will work, but I am not listening to him because ham plate.

Hello, my pretties...

A little about Quinta do Vollado: it's fucking awesome. We are uncertain how we ended up in Portuguese farm-to-table paradise, but we discover that the majority of food that is offered is from their own gardens and farms. So every morning there is fresh goat cheese, fresh eggs, fruit from trees that you can pick yourself but they do it for you anyway. They tell us there is a garden and that we are welcome to traverse any area of the quinta (which is what they call the winery, way cooler word than winery) and any part of the vineyards. They strongly encourage us to visit the orange groves. I am having trouble listening because I have never seen an orange grove before in my life and I am certain orange trees only exist in books.

Or maybe over there.

After a sumptuous breakfast of hams and fresh cheese, we decide to go back to the room. This is because we made a funny mistake when we were booking our hotel, and that mistake was forgetting to book our room for the entirety of our trip. Somewhere in Lisbon we discovered our mistake and then were fortunate enough to find ONE room left for the day that we were technically homeless, and we booked it. That room was in the new wing of the hotel, which was fancy and pretty and brand new, created by a Portuguese architect that I think owns the quinta, or something.

The wall is a door. THE DOOR IS A WALL.

After breakfast, it is drinking time, in our lovely room where there is a complimentary bottle of wine waiting for us. Despite bottles of wine being 1 euro at the grocery store, free is still better, and so we take full advantage.

GET OUT OF MY PICTURESQUE TABLEAU, HEATHEN.

Ah, much better.

I berate Dan for trying to obscure my pictures with parts of himself, because everyone knows that pictures are not for people, they are for landscapes and food only. He ignores me and drinks the wine straight from the bottle, because we are fancy people who do fancy things. Then he settles in for some serene book reading, and I settle in for a nap.

Real book.

Fake nap.

OR I WOULD HAVE, but we are on the most absurd chairs to have ever been chaired into existence. At first glance, they appear to be gentle hammocks of chairdom, a fusion of two things that are amazing (hammocks and chairs). But much like the hot girl at the library whom you are instantly attracted to because, hey, hot girls and books, but then realize she was only there to steal your Adderall, we are equally attracted to these chairs only to find they are a goddamn clusterfuck of insanity. 

First of all, to even get in this chair, you have to carefully waddle backwards like your ass is a dumptruck trying to negotiate its way into a very small parking space. Then you have to try to squat lightly so as to not drop yourself heavily into the chair, because if you do, it will flatten out, and instead of sitting, you are now lying down flat, or lying on the ground because you fell out of the devil chair. Then, once you get yourself into the fucked up contraption, you have to try desperately to not move, lest the chair start leaning backward, and then instead of sitting you are now laying down.

If laying down is the end goal, the chair succeeds. But it is a very bizarre experience, like the first time you have sex and soft, awkward white arms are trying to lay you gently backwards, but you're like dude we're doing this standing up, I don't like you that much, and then after five minutes you leave. Much like that very hypothetical scenario, Dan and I give up on the chairs and go to find better things in life.

These things are good.

This is also good.

We exit the new wing of the hotel to visit the 18th century manor house. Quinta do Vallado was once the home of Dona Antonia Ferreira, one of the most famous port houses in Portugal, and her direct descendants still run the quinta. The Ferreira family eventually sold to a bigger company, and then reopened their ancestral home as Quinta do Vallado, focused on making table wines rather than port. I find this to be fucking blasphemy, but I forgive them because they actually do still make port, and also I've been drinking for weeks and am in no position to judge anyone on anything.

As such, despite my intense love for history and old things, my other intense love for drinking by a pool leads us to, well, the pool. We ask one of the hotel staff if we can have a bottle of wine that we will take with us over there, and she says, "Oh, shall I bring it for you?" and I say yes, yes beautiful bastion of all that is right in the world, yes you shall. She does not speak good enough English to identify whether those are words she should be offended by, but as with everyone in Portugal, she gives me a confused a smile and backs away slowly. I am starting to think it is less a Portuguese trait and more just a reaction to myself that causes this, but I do not dwell on those thoughts because our foray into Pool Land has led us right past the gardens.

Poppies: farm-to-table opium.

I find they were not kidding around when they said they grew their own vegetables, unlike in other places where everyone has a "roof garden" but they won't show you what's on the roof because it's "unsafe" and "ma'am please you are not allowed back here." Quinta do Vallado does not fuck around with that American bullshit, and encourages you to stroll leisurely through their gardens and poke everything with a stick. Every tree is an orange tree, from which you are free to grab a piece of fruit and indulge in all of the earth's bounty. I do not trust these trees, because my mother told me there is no such thing as a free lunch, so I'm certain if I accept their oranges I'll probably have to go back to their apartment and "do stuff."

"Ever done it in a raised bed?"

Dan instructs me to stop being suspicious of inanimate objects, and we finally make it to the pool, which actually is a rather long walk, but completely worth it because POOL!

Where does it end?! 

And not only is there a pool, but there is a delightful bottle of wine sitting right where I totally want to sit, which is next to the bottle of wine. 

Hello, new best friend.

We get to work on the arduous tasks of drinking and sleeping. We congratulate ourselves for taking on this monumental hardship so that no one else has to. But eventually the strain of carrying the burdens of the world become too much, and we wake up and go back to the hotel, because it is basically dinner time, and by basically I mean it is a time of day in which I would like to be eating.

Quinta do Vallado has a lovely option of purchasing a four-course meal of standard Portuguese fare and all-you-can-drink Quina do Vallado wine. It is the greatest deal known to man, and because Dan is a smart man, he made us a reservation that we presently attend. 

Being in Europe, I convince myself that European glutens are different than American ones. In fact, it is probably gloutens over here, so I help myself to some delicious bread and olive oil that is made here at the quinta. I am happy with my choices and look to Dan for approval, only to find that he has made himself a majestic and beautiful plate of bread that looks nothing like mine.

The plate of a man who knows how to be happy.

I HAVE OTHER SKILLS OKAY

I glare at him, because he is a plate artist who constructs plates that look like people would want to eat off of them, and I am a garbage artist who piles garbage in front of her and then consumes it like some sort of garbage-eating lamprey.  I once again concede that if he were not feeding me I would be living inside a can of beans, literally inside it because I probably got stuck trying to scoop them out and then just accepted my fate as a can lady. He tells me that is not true because he does not date losers.

Dinner consists of multiple courses that come with multiple wines. The wine lady is a lovely person named Cristina, who, in typical Portuguese fashion, is extremely reserved when she visits our table. She begins pouring me a dry Muscat that is the most amazing white wine, and I effusively tell her, "Yes I love it! I had it last night!" Which prompts her to pull up short and say, "I will get you new wine."

NOOO!

My American exuberance nearly deprives me of my favorite wine, so I make a note to stop saying any words ever, because I am bad at it and have failed multiple times to communicate. Cristina pours me my wine, although with extreme skepticism because she is an astute woman and can tell she probably should not give me all the wine I can drink. Then they bring the first course, which is fresh goat's cheese and salmon on top of amazing oranges, and then something else that I don't remember because I was drinking all the wine nervously, and nervous drinking means excessive drinking.

It's like a sandwich or something?

For dinner, there is cod, because the Portuguese love cod. Cod is not native to Portugal, but so the story goes, the Portuguese sent some explorers to Nova Scotia, and they came back with cod, and the Portuguese were like YES THIS FOREVER. But of course cod does not transport very well, so all Portuguese recipes calling for cod are actually calling for salted cod, which makes for delicious, salty, bizarre food experiences, like this cod that is in a bread soup with an egg on it.

We also have veal, because veal is delicious.

Babies taste better.

We drink much delicious wine that all comes from the quinta, and dessert is so good that I fail to take a picture. It is thin orange slices candied in port and baked or drizzled in the fucking blood of angels, or something makes it taste insanely transcendent. We drink the 10 year old tawny port bottled basically next door, and then amble back to our room where I assume we pass out from happiness, but I can't be certain because, you know, wine.