the salty coast

Let's go for at least four medals in London, Portugal! I hope we reach a new medal high in these Olympics.  I'm sure we've got a fantastic team this time around, all ready to bring home the gold, silver and bronze. Here is a link to the Portugal profile on the official Olympics site. We usually do better in the Athletics portion, but maybe this time around we will surprise people.  According to the Olympics site, we have 80 athletes competing, although some say a bit less. Here is a link to the Wikipedia page showing results, etc. Another great article about the Olympics hopes for Portugal in London 2012 - here's an excerpt: This year, the triple jump Olympic champion will not be able to attend the Olympics in July due to injuries. Staying in Portugal with him are the injured Naide Gomes, Francis Obikwelu and Rui Silva, the latter two having won silver and bronze respectively in the 2004 Olympics in Athens. Vanessa Fernandes, who represented Portugal in...

Nuno Gomes took the time to answer some questions from UEFA.com users, and here is the link to the article. I've also copied it below for your (and my) reading pleasure: Nuno Gomes will forever be remembered for scoring the Portugal goal against Spain in the UEFA EURO 2004 group stage that eliminated La Roja and sent the hosts into the quarter-finals. The tournament ended in disappointment for Portugal, though, as they lost the final to Greece. The SC Braga forward narrowly missed out on a place in Paulo Bento's finals squad but, with 29 goals in 79 appearances for the Selecção, he was the the perfect candidate to answer users' questions from our latest #Ask session. @RConcheiro: Cesc Fàbregas recently said Portugal are good on the counterattack. Is this the key to beating Spain? Nuno Gomes: Spain know that Portugal are a very strong on the counterattack with fast and technically gifted players. They're very aware of that and they'll be focusing on that as...

I am seriously in love with this ad campaign!  Check out the YouTube Channel here for more videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/onzeportodos Another one of my favorites:

How great is Portugal doing in the Euro 2012? Fantastic so far! Bring on the Czech Republic! Here is a great video of their campaign "Todos por 11, 11 por todos" from Galp. I love what they did (even though it looks a tad set up). The idea is great to sneak up on kids to make sure they are working hard (goes great with their all for 11, 11 for all theme obviously). Being surprised by Veloso, Moutinho and Coentrão, it not bad at all! Thumbs up!

Just in time for lunch time, today, I wanted to celebrate a great eat whenever you are in Portugal in August (mostly).  It is the Pão Com Chouriço that you can buy a many Festas Populares. It is super yummy, and just a good reason to sit and have a drink with friends.  Plus, it makes it that much easier to watch people go by.  This is a national past time, after all. Here is an example of the type of vendors you'll find.  They go through and show you how they prepare it and everything.  Makes me miss it that much more! I also found another site that actually has a great recipe to make it at home with.   Oh my goodness, her photos are great, made me that much hungrier for pão com chouriço! Photo from Flicker .  Great shot!

Here we go! The official song for us to cheer Portugal with! Cântico da Seleção Portuguesa - Euro 2012 Temos a luz que não se apaga E a voz que ninguém vai calar Temos no peito uma vontade Que só nos faz querer ganhar Dá-lhe dá-lhe Portugal! x2 Dá-lhe dá-lhe dá-lhe Portugal Filhos da força e da coragem Donos de uma alma sem igual Uma energia inesgotável Está sempre contigo, Portugal. Dá-lhe dá-lhe Portugal! x2 Dá-lhe dá-lhe dá-lhe Portugal

Thank-you Vanity Fair, for putting Cristiano & World Cup friends on its June cover, but also inside their pages - photos below. Here is a snippet from the article: For the June issue of Vanity Fair, Annie Leibovitz set out to capture some of the sport’s biggest stars, including Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo, Ivory Coast’s Didier Drogba, Cameroon’s Samuel Eto’o, and Brazil’s Kaká. Leibovitz’s portraits are, well, revealing. And underwear has never looked so patriotic. In America, these men might not enjoy the same name recognition as the stars of the N.F.L.—that game that we call football—but for most of the planet, they are more than just showstoppers. They are gods. Watch video below: Source

As you may have heard, last Saturday February 20th, there were devastating floods and mudslides on the island of Madeira.  Based on government estimations, there could be as many as 42 victims of this tragedy.  With at least 120 people injured. On Monday, the government declared three days of mourning.  On the left, is the cover of the recent edition of the national Portuguese newspaper, O Publico.  It is terribly sad what has happened to this island.  They need as much assistance as possible at this point. Cristiano Ronaldo, who is from Madeira, has paid tribute to the victims - during a recent match, after scoring a goal he lifted his shirt to reveal a white t-shirt with "Madeira" written on it.   He later offered his assistance.  Being that I'm living in Canada, I looked for a way to help, and I found a web site that is currently accepting donations to help - a disaster relief fund .    ...

Danny had the unfortunate result of placing last in this year's 15 Cross-Country Skiing event (at the 2010 Winter Olympics).  Great effort, and keep it up - if you do what you love, that's all that matters.   It's been great to even be able to look for Portugal in the Winter Olympics (in Portugal, normally, you don't see much snow...although it hasn't been like that lately).  Perhaps, we can look forward to more athletes competing in the future.  For now, we can put all our hopes in the 2010 World Cup.

Back in 2006, during the Torino Winter Olympics, I had blogged about Danny Silva, the sole Portuguese athlete representing Portugal at the Winter Olympics.   It was great to have him visit the site & leave me some feedback.  It is something to be proud of - I can only hope that we have more Portuguese athletes competing in the coming years.  This year, in the 2010, Danny is back, and will be competing tomorrow, February 15th,  in the Men's 15 km Cross-Country Skiing event.   Good luck Danny!  Força!   Read this great article about him ( em portugues ). Danny's personal site - ( em portugues )

It's official! Portugal has picked a theme song for the 2010 World Cup - it's Black Eyed Peas "I Gotta Feeling". As a response, the Black Eyed Peas posted a video on YouTube congratulating and backing Portugal to win the World Cup. If only that were enough to win. I gotta feeling we're in for one of those 2002 type world cups...hopefully not...but like I said, it's a feeling:

The big thing of 2007 in Portugal, particularly on the TV channel RTP is the selection of the biggest Portuguese personality of all time of all things. They had a list of more than 100 people on their web site during December and now, in the past 2 days, they've revealed who are the 100 that were most voted on, and the 10 that received the most votes and that will be the 10 from which people will vote to be the top. Here is the link to the 90 most voted - unfortunately, they don't have them in order: http://www.rtp.pt/wportal/sites/tv/grandesportugueses/bio_resultados90.php Here is a link to the top 10: http://www.rtp.pt/wportal/sites/tv/grandesportugueses/finalistas.php Now, this is all voted on on people's own opinions, and that's fine, but me, having lived there for a little while, listened to my family, and just my own personal knowledge of Portuguese culture, I have a few comments of my own.... 1. How is it possible that a politician that ran a fascist government...

The man known as Sá Carneiro (real name: Francisco Manuel Lumbrales de Sá Carneiro) was born July 19, 1934 and died December 4, 1980. He was Prime Minister of Portugal for 11 months in 1980. Short history from Wikipedia : A lawyer by training, he became a member of the puppet National Assembly , where he became one of the leaders of the "Liberal Wing", which attempted to work for the gradual transformation of António de Oliveira Salazar 's dictatorship into a normal Western European democracy. In May 1974 , a month after the Carnation Revolution , Sá Carneiro founded the Popular Democratic Party (PPD), together with Francisco Pinto Balsemão and José Magalhães Mota , and became its secretary-general. The PPD was soon renamed the Social Democratic Party (PSD); despite Sá Carneiro's original claims to be leading a left-of-centre party, he and the party soon drifted to the right. He was minister without portfolio in a number of provisional governments, and was elected...

Christmas is always nice anywhere in the World. In Portugal, Santa is put to work driving the streetcar. Get going Santa! In other important events, December 1st is an important date around the world, but not as important as in Portugal, where in 1640 we regained back Portugal from the Spanish. To mark this holiday, 2 of the biggest soccer teams faced off - Sporting vs. Benfica with Benfica coming out the winner. Then today, Porto won... ..and that's about all the soccer news I can take. In other important events around the country... They've finally decided to hold another vote to decide whether abortion should be legal. Here are some women in parliament pushing their cause... Source Portugal's president has said the country's predominantly Roman Catholic population will vote on whether to legalise abortion on 11 February. Anibal Cavaco Silva said he agreed to the vote because the issue still dominated public debate in Portugal. The country will be asked if they wish t...

The Eurovision contest is coming up in May, and we should be really proud for our entry. Cheesy as ever, these girls are going to represent us with a ABBA-esque song, which, I've had the unfortunate opportunity to hear and sounds just like every other generic pop/dance song on the radio in Europe, so it's got a great chance to win! What else has been going on in Portugal? Lisbon Fashion Week took place, great event, great clothes. Nuno Gomes manages to do some acrobatic work, but still doesn't win it against Naval, almost taking themselves out of contention to win this year's championships, but they did win against Liverpool, and are off to the quarterfinals against Barcelona. Meanwhile, Porto and Sporting are fighting it out for first place in the championship. Go Sporting! The Portuguese national team played a friendly with Saudi Arabia, where they won 3-0. I imagine that Cristiano Ronaldo's perfectly coifed hair must have had something to do with the win. I...

It's a good thing we're not without representation at the 2006 Winter Olympics. The sole athlete there from Portugal is Danny Silva. Visit his web site here . Competing in the 15 km cross country classical, Danny competed yesterday , and made a great showing. Out of 97 athletes, he placed 94th. Be proud! Força Portugal.

Being Portuguese means you will talk about Port wine as often as a Canadian says 'Eh?', which is why I love finding articles in foreign papers about it like this one at The Age. I remember when I was younger living in Portugal going to the "quinta" my family owned and eating the grapes and watching people get ready to make the wine. The vineyard was in the Douro region, and it was beautiful. It really is a great tradition, and it's nice to see other non-Portuguese appreciating the tradition and what it all involves in making such a special wine. A wine of depth, concentration and majestic structure, port is produced from grapes grown on the steep, rocky slopes of northern Portugal's Upper Douro and its tributaries and was discovered during the 17th century when two British traders added brandy to preserve the local wine for an Atlantic sea voyage. The pioneers of the port trade soon found that "fortifying" did far more than just protect the wine, i...

Having RTP has made me feel like I was back in Portugal! The one show that I got hooked on in a couple of days was Filha do Mar, a Portuguese telenovela about Marta, who met her soulmate Salvador, was torn apart from him, but not before getting pregnant, had his child, someone told her he was dead, became a doctor and then, miracles of all miracles, was assigned to Ribatejo where.....Salvador, alive and well, living with his current wife Sofia and son, Tomas. You can read about it here - it's in Portuguese, unfortunately. Here's its official site . I would love to know how it ends....

For those who live in Canada, unless you have satelitte, getting RTP was not the easiest of things in the past, and most of the time, you'd have to endure old men in one of those cheesy tavernas downtown Toronto to be able to watch the soccer game. Well, not anymore! Rogers (and I think other digital cable providers) has now made it available, and in the past 2 weeks it's been free of charge. Besides getting hooked on the novela "Filha do Mar" (more on that later), I got hooked (mostly because I've spent a lot of time at my parents) watching the news. Earlier this week, while watching the news, one of the segments was about Benfica's acquisition of Moretto and the controversy relating to that. First off, the slap heard around Portugal: Source: SIC Here's my version of the story - both Benfica and Porto wanted Moretto, but Benfica thought of it first, so Porto supposedly told this Vitor Dinis to go to Brazil, and get Moretto to sign for Porto, and he t...

I was trying out to do a daily, or at least three times a week, the news of late about Portugal, but, it's not as exciting a post as I want it to be, so I won't be doing it as much anymore, plus, since I started this blog about a month ago, I think I should play around with a couple of different things. I will still be posting news, but maybe not as often as I did in the past month or so.