Family meets family in Santa Maria da Feira - Santa Maria da Feira, Portugal
Santa Maria da Feira, Portugal
Where I stayed
home of a friend
What I did
Cambra
Family meets family in Santa Maria da Feira
With less than two weeks left in Portugal, we set off for Marcela’s hometown in Santa Maria de Feira, in the north of Portugal near Porto. Curt, Dianne, Gibran and Marcela squeezed into our rented VW Polo for the cloudy and rainy seven hour drive. The Auto Estrada (freeway) extended the full distance, including a convenient bypass well away from the big-city traffic of Lisboa (Lisbon).
By evening we arrived at Marcela’s family home in heavy rain. We were greeted at the gate first by Sebastiao and Micas, two lovely dogs that have been in the family for many years and by eight cute cats and kittens, most curled in a basket on the front porch. Micas is famous for her role in helping to nurse the kittens!! Even in the dark and with rain, it was easy to see the yard was beautiful, a large garden, really. An arbor of kiwi vines, an orange tree, and a lemon tree, all loaded with ripe fruit, lined the cobblestone walkway to the house.
Antonio, Marcela’s dad, escorted us into the house where mother Maria and younger sister Maria were waiting with a fully set table in the kitchen, ready to serve cabbage soup, fried catfish and a medley of vegetables from the garden, and a pair of other vegetables that were deliciously deep fried (fish from the garden).
All this was topped off with a couple of traditional desserts, Rabanadas (a kind of sweet French toast) and Bilharacos, made with cooked carrots, (or could be made with pumpkin) flour, walnuts from their tree, and sugar, pressed together and deep fried.
Almond and cinnamon tea accompanied the meal.
Afterward, we “tasted” several varieties of traditional Portuguese home-made liquors, geropiga, bagaco, and vinho do porto. I won’t try to describe the taste of each of these, but only to say that bagaco is very close to West Virginia moonshine, so far as I could tell with a touch to the tongue. Mama Maria told the story of tasting it one time, didn’t like it, and spit it out into the fire, only to create a small inferno from which she was lucky to escape!
The house interior is small, with kitchen and dining area adjacent to a sitting area with two couches and a coffee table in front of a blazing fireplace. Two bedrooms and the a bathroom connected to the living/sitting area. (Another part of the house is under construction and will add three more rooms.)
All around the walls and hanging from the ceiling are displayed many, many pieces of Maria’s arts and crafts. The dining table and the coffee table were made by Antonio from an Australia tree, that grew in Portugal, but may have one day long ago been imported from Australia.
Mother Maria is a very special artist. The next day we were treated to a tour of her workshop in a basement area of the house. An unbelievable place, packed with original arts and crafts designs which she sells. Her work--every piece original and unique--is, in fact, a mainstay of the Loginha Shop inventory in Tavira. Dianne is certain there would be a strong market for her work in the United States, especially New York, if only we could find a way to market it there.
The evening was really fun, in spite of the fact that we had driven for seven hours in wet, rainy conditions to get there. We forgot being tired for a while, and had a great time make introductions and communicating back and forth with our newly gained, but still highly rudimentary Portuguese language skills. Mostly, truth be told, Marcela translated, with assistance from sister Maria, who, unlike her Portuguese-only parents, is also very good at English.
But it is amazing how well one can communicate with people who speak another language by your expressions, gestures and actions. The most important part of communication, respect and love for newly made friends, doesn’t need a language. It would have been apparent to any third-party observer that on this first night of meeting and conversation with Marcela’s family, we were all very close, indeed!
In time, we said our goodbyes for the evening, with much double-cheek kissing and hugging, adeus (goodbye), tchau-tchau (bye-bye), and ate’ logo (see you later). We packed off into the VW Polo and headed for Teresa’s apartment in São João da Madeira, a short distance from Santa Maria de Feira.
She has an un-rented apartment in São João da Madeira in the same building where she lives with her husband Luis. Her mother, Isabel, was also there, visiting for a few days. Teresa had previously offered the apartment to us as a free place to stay when we visited the north, but only now were we able to take her up on the kind offer.
Teresa, as you may recall from previous blogs, is the owner of our apartment in Tavira and also the owner of Loginha, where we first met her and Marcela. For most of the time we’ve been in Tavira she has left the shop in Marcela’s care while she spends time in São João da Madeira with Luis, Isabel, her son Miguel, daughter-in-law Ana, and their twin, two-year-old girls, Joana and Sara.
The next morning, we all slept in until nearly noon on this, another very rainy and stormy day. Teresa squeezed into the Polo with us to meet Marcela’s family at the Massapão Cafe, a place where we found ourselves each morning in São João da Madeira. Of course, Teresa and Maria are friends from “way back,” so they, as everyone, found lots to talk about.
Leaving the cafe, Dianne spotted a small yarn shop, and was soon joined by Maria, Maria, Teresa, and Marcela. A common interest among these women it seems is knitting. It’s a wonder we ever left there! But eventually, balls of yarn and a couple pairs of needles later, we departed to take Teresa home and head back to Marcela’s home for (late) lunch! And what a lunch!
The main dish was a traditional Portuguese dish, salted codfish (bacalhao) from Norway. (I heard that codfish used to be plentiful in Portugal, but no more. Thus, the salted delicacy is imported from Norway, evidently by the trainload, because bacalhao can be found on the menu in most restaurants and continues to be a popular treat at home, especially around the holidays.)
The bacalhao was served with a beautiful salad with olive oil dressing and boiled potatoes to die for, says Dianne, “I just loved them! The same can be said for nearly all fruits and vegetables we’ve found in Portugal, very fresh and flavorful. Bread, cheese and wine from the famous Portuguese wine-producing Douro River valley gave the perfect touch to a perfect “Mediterranean Diet” meal!
After dinner, Marcela’s aunt (mother’s sister), Lina, and her grandmother (mother’s mom, Lucinda) dropped by for a visit. Marcela had not been home for a visit since early in the year, and everyone wanted to see her.
Everyone retired to sit around the fireplace, with Maria, Maria, and Dianne taking up their knitting needles. Dianne had promised to show (daughter) Maria how to knit with a very beautiful yarn she had just purchased, but it turned out to be too difficult to work with for a beginner, so the headscarf project was turned over to (mother) Maria, a totally expert knitter, as she was an expert craftsperson with everything else she touched.
Antonio gave me a tour of the yard, umbrellas in hand, dogs and cats in tow, to show me the kiwi arbor, citrus trees, chicken coop, handmade stone picnic table, and a water well which he dug by hand 20 years ago. It still provides a plentiful water supply for the house and yard.
In the early evening, Marcela’s older brother, Mateus, stopped by, fresh from his work from a medieval art troupe attaching wings to a real horse. Mateus’ theatrical troupe travels around Portugal, and a few other European countries, putting on their extravagant outdoor shows during which he frequently plays the part of a knight in a display of jousting and other mounted high-jinks.
We all loved meeting Mateus, and wished we had more time to get to know him. Everyone, including Teresa, who again joined us, ended up the day with dinner at a restaurant in Sao Joao da Madeira where Marcela knows the owner. One dish, the Francesinha, was served to everyone. Francesinha is known for its delicious broth. Everyone makes it different, but ours was made with beef and sausage in the center of two slices of bread, covered with cheese, and immersed in the sauce.
Next morning, after coffee and a light breakfast of pastries and cheese sandwiches at the Massapão Cafe, we departed for one of the most interesting side trips of our entire stay in Portugal--a visit to Cambra de Baixo, the small rural village in the mountains where Marcela’s family lived when she was much younger. The countryside reminded us of the Oregon mountains, maybe, though the trees weren’t as tall.
Located not far from the A25 Auto Estrada, a major east-west highway that bisects Portugal and connects to Salamanca in Spain, a step into Cambra de Baixo is a step way back in time. This beautiful village is the stuff of Hollywood sets, so perfect is its preservation of old, living Portugal. Winding, narrow, cobblestone streets among ancient homes and farm buildings--small fields of grains and all manner of produce, cultivated mostly by hand. Portuguese grandmothers in traditional black dress and head covering, pushing wheelbarrows and collecting water at common well pumps, and men, especially, gathered for conversation in the “tasca,” the cafe/bar that also serves as a community gathering place and village communications center.
Antonio and Maria wanted to show us where they used to live in Cambra, actually three places. We went to the latest house and found, Fernando, the son-in-law of their previous neighbor at home there. After greetings all around, Fernando took us around the corner to his in-laws’ home where Fernando's wife Isabel, Albertino and Piedade, Isabel's parents, were in the kitchen making sausage. Quickly, after hugs and greetings for everyone, and sausage-making paraphernalia removed, Piedade reset the table with cookies, cakes, bread and wine for a reunion feast. Bigger smiles you never saw all ‘round at the chance to visit with old friends!
After the feast and much visiting, we visited the farm with Fernando, saw the pig next in line for sausage product next year, beautiful gardens and old buildings. We walked to the previous Fernandes residence that was in ruins because no one had lived there for years. There were some plants and trees still growing there that Antonio and Maria had planted. Sister Maria remembered the steps she had fallen down when she was a baby. Fifteen-year-old Maria was, in fact, born there.
Walking around the narrow, cobblestone lanes that comprised the village of Cambra, Antonio and Maria met and visited with several former neighbors, each one (it seemed to us) a prototype of Portuguese village dwellers from hundreds of years ago. Nothing seemed to have changed in this place, even with the construction of the Auto Estrada superhighway passing a couple miles away. Life seemed to be going on as it had forever.
On the way out of Cambra we stopped at a beautiful small park by a river, Espirito Santo. Ruins of an old castle stood in the park, as well as a church that was quite intact, though we could not go inside.
Returning to São João de Madeira, we met Teresa, Luis, Miguel, Ana and their twin two-year-olds waiting for us at Slatel, a family-owned factory that makes parts for the shoe industry. We were given a tour of the factory, and detailed explanations of how these heel and toe reinforcement pieces were made with the many, many automated and very modern machines on the floor of the factory. It was very interesting, but perhaps a bit disorienting, transitioning from an ancient village in rural Portugal to a modern, robotic-controlled factory in one of Portugal’s manufacturing centers all in the same afternoon!
After the factory tour, Marcela, Gibran, Dianne and Curt went back to Marcela’s home for a dinner of “leftovers.” As it turned out, there was nothing “leftover” about it, except that some of the fish that had been thawed the night before was baked on this night. Otherwise, another feast, including catfish, dourada (we had this fish once before in Lisbon), a great salad, bread baked in a community brick oven, and, of course, more Portuguese wine.
Next morning, after a short visit, and more knitting tips, with Teresa and her mother in Teresa’s lovely apartment, we loaded up the trusty VW Polo and headed down Auto Estrada A13 for the Algarve and Tavira.