the salty coast

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.

What will I remember about 2005? 1. The MTV Europe Awards took place in Lisbon 2. Benfica won the championship in 2005. 3. Our national team qualified for the World Cup. 4. Fires, fires and more fires! 5. In March 2005, they elected a new Prime Minister, choosing the Socialist party to run the country with Jose Socrates as its leader. That's all I can remember...you?

One of today's posts is to celebrate a very important tradition when one goes to Portugal. This tradition is to have a tosta mista sometime during your stay. It would not be a good trip to Portugal without one of its famous tostas mistas. Photo courtesy of Brigitte Boitel Bonfils ( site ). Her site has got some great photos of Portugal, so check it out!