# Pasteis de Nata: 0 (!), Distance Walked: 16.5km, # Floors Climbed: 92
Today I did a walk around town following a planned historic route. This was reasonably well sign-posted with red and yellow paint stripes at (most) intersections so I managed not to go off-track.
The official route I'll be taking tomorrow is labelled with white and red stripes for the portions that are inland. Once I get to the coast for the Fisherman's Trail the colour scheme changes to blue and green stripes. Ricardo, my hike organiser, is strongly involved in the organisation that maps out and maintains these hiking trails. He asked why on earth did they choose green & blue for the Fisherman's Trail colour scheme. He was told it was because they were the colours of the land and the sea. He pointed out that that just means they will be harder to spot when walking by the sea. The organisers confessed they hadn't thought of that.
The walk started by going through a municipal park. The council had put in several exercise stations. I ignored all the ones which you were supposed to do sit-ups on but had fun on the balance beam. I failed dismally on the monkey bars though. I could only manage to swing from one bar to the next before dropping to the ground. I remember playing on them as a child in primary school without any difficulty. Why is it so hard now?
I have no idea what I was supposed to do at this station.
The path then wound up the hill to the castle overlooking the town. I felt a right prat walking through the historic centre of town in all my hiking gear with my sunhat, backpack and boots.
I had planned on buying something for lunch at a bakery but it is Sunday and they are all shut! I ended up getting bread, cheese and salami from a supermarket across the road from the hotel. Walking through town I did see a few bars open at around 11am. The outside tables were full of local men having a cigarette and a drink while their womenfolk were at home making Sunday lunch after Mass.
The disastrous pastel de nata count is also due to it being Sunday here. The breakfast buffet at my hotel had a very disappointing selection of pastries, although the rest of the offerings were OK.
They weren't good enough for a young Englishman at a neighbouring table. He was here with a new German (?) girlfriend on a cycling holiday. I could tell she must be new because he was telling her all about the cycling holidays he has taken in the past, why cycling holidays are the best sort of holiday, what sort of hotels he has stayed in before and how this one rates and so on and so forth. At one point she managed to get a word in edgewise. However, she changed the topic and got quite flirty. I didn't really need to know what she thought of his arse in his cycling shorts or what they planned to do on their rest day. I know I look like a local but many of the locals speak English.
Anyway, back to my hike. The little blob in the top right on the map is not me getting lost. It is me taking a detour to the site of a Roman town, Miróbriga. It must have been quite a decent size as it had a forum, quite a large bath complex and a hippodrome. If I translated the Portuguese sign correctly they houses also had piped water. What have the Romans ever done for us?
I got to the site at around 11:20am only to be told it closes at 12pm for a lunch break. I went in anyway assuming it would just be the dinky little museum that would close. Access to the site itself was via a large driveway so I didn't see how it could be closed. I finished wandering around the site around midday. I did think of back tracking to the bath complex to eat my lunch. However, I vaguely remembered seeing picnic benches in the car park and thought they might be more comfortable to sit on than a stone wall. I was mistaken but perched on a stone wall in the carpark instead. It was a good thing I did so, as the museum staff member didn't just lock up the building when he left for his lunch, but he pulled an enormous sliding gate across the driveway. There was a side gate a little further down the wall I could have climbed over so I wouldn't have got trapped in the site, but it would have been awkward.
I dinner at another place Ricardo recommended called O Arco. It was next to a BP service station and looked cheap and nasty. However, the reviews were (mostly) excellent. A local family run place with traditional foods from the region. I was warned it was very popular so I got there at 7pm which is when they open for dinner. Another couple also showed up at the same time. It was still closed. I would have assumed it was shut but the woman had no qualms about wandering around the building peering in windows. She determined there were people inside so we waited. They opened about 10 minutes late.
I asked for a table for 1 person in my best Portuguese and the waitress spoke to me in Portuguese for the rest of the night. It turns out she speaks English very well as several English speaking diners showed up later. She was much more chatty with them, explaining how everything worked. I'm not sure whether to be offended she wasn't as chatty with me or flattered that she treated me like a local.
I started wth the traditional bread and olives. I noticed the waitress brought these to your table automatically if you were Portuguese and she offered them to me but didn't to the English-speaking diners. For main I had pork cheeks. I don't know what the sauce was but it was tasty so this was a Good dish. For sides I was just given plain boiled rice and some rather anemic chips, which were Dull. I washed this down with 1/4 litre of house red. For dessert I had the house pudding which turned out to be something with a custard base, a layer of sponge soaked in coffee and a topping of whipped eggs whites. It was Good but would have been even better if the meringue had been toasted.
The restaurant did feel a lot like a family-run place. I could see nonna was one of the people in the kitchen. However, the illusion was rather spoilt when another couple ordered a carafe of house white. The waitress fished out a box of white wine from the fridge! Don't they know that in this class of restaurant the house wine needs to come from Uncle Luigi's neighbour's vineyard, not chateau cardboard!
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