Wednesday, 26 August 2015: Pinh&atild;o to Vega Terron (in Spain), Castelo Rodrigo

Written 16 December 2015

The ship cast off very early this morning, even before the dining room opened for breakfast. Two locks today, and in the first one, we entered, rose about two-thirds of the way, and then settled back down. It seems a couple of big logs had fouled the back gate, and the water had to be let back out before they could be cleared. Once they were out of the way, we rose normally to the top, but the captain was a little worried we'd miss our appointment at the next lock. Seems you have to sign up in advance . . . As it happens, we made it, but we had to hurry a little.

Above that first lock, the water was pretty green and some patches of algal scum floated by. The Viking staff say that agricultural runoff is becoming a problem along some sections of the river. Port grapes are not fertilized, but they're not the only thing people are growing.

After breakfast, I went upstairs to explore the top deck. At the left here is the putting green, located aft; three putters and two balls are provided. It's not real grass, of course, but still a reasonable putting surface.

At the right is the shipboard herb garden (you can see a little of it to the left of the putting green. The white object in the middle of it is the top of a metal mast with lights on top. It was folded down level with the deck to fit under the low exit of the previous lock. The herbs were real and healthy and were labeled in English and Latin, but they did not appear to be the source of the herbs used in the galley, as they showed no signs of cutting in the course of the week, even though we ate lots of herbs.

Facing the other way, toward the bow, I got this shot of the swimming pool, which was set into a platform raised above the level of the deck. I didn't go in, but some passengers did. The white structure beyond it is the bridge/wheelhouse.

At the right is a closer view of the wheelhouse, with the captain inside. Note the hydraulic lifts that permit the whole structure to lowered into the deck for about half its height for passage under low bridges. The mast behind it, shown here about half lowered, can also be folded up and down as necessary.

You can see that we are about to pass through a narrow spot in the river, so a staff member is stationed at the rail on each side to warn the captain if he steers too near the rocks. I don't know whether they always do that or whether it was because we were hurrying to get to our next lock on time.

Between my position as I photographed the putting green and my position as I photographed the pool was a large shade structure with tables and more deck chairs under it. Its legs were also hinged so that it could be raised and lowered, but we never got to watch the process. The top deck was always closed during that operation, for passenger safety.

At the left here is what was supposed to be a photo of an ash-colored heron, but it also serves to show some of the rocks the captain was so carefully avoiding.

At the right is another railroad bridge over a small tributary. The railroad paralleled the river all the way to the Spanish border.

At the left here is the mouth of a railroad tunnel, showing that keeping those tracks on track was not always easy.

We had signed up for the 10:45 a.m. galley tour (when the possibility was announced, and we were told space was limited, Kathy and I were out of there like a shot and skidded to a stop at reception, where we were the first to arrive to sign up), so at the appointed time we and the rest of our small group of passengers were led down the stairs (concealed in the wall behind the omelet station) to the kitchens. No elevator or dumbwaiter serves the kitches, so the waiters carry all the dishes up and down those stairs for every meal. At the left here is the "brigade." From left to right: André, omelet and pasta station, support on the hot station, some desserts; Ricardo, cold station manager (salad, night cold dishes, ice cream, appetizers, appetizers); Paolo: cold station; Jessica: prep cook; Charles: dishwasher. The executive chef, Carlos, is missing from this shot. He works the hot station.

All the burners are electric; no gas is allowed (by law). They can reach 400C! During servuicem, the ambient air in the kitchen can reach 70C—way too hot—but the keep the cold station at 10 to 12C. The ovens (described as "rational" ovens) can either steam or convection roast; one oven is for pastry and bread, the other for fish, meat, and veggies.

Charles commands two dishwashing machines, one for porcelain and another for pots and pans. (Jessica the prep cook backs him up during the rush.) A walk-in cooler accommodates frozen and fresh products. They are proud of using a lot more fresh than frozen. They keep pastry and bread dough frozen, but they bake it fresh for every meal, about 20 minutes before the service.

The kitchen starts work at 5:30 a.m., stop for a break at 2:30 or 3:00 p.m., restarts at 5:30 p.m., and finishes at 10:30 or 11:00 p.m.—all 7 days a week, all season. (We were week 23 of the season.)

The kitchen is cleaned 3 or 4 times a day. The government inspects it weekly; Viking officials inspect it every couple of months.

At the beginning of the season, they prepare 90 portions of each dish (for ca. 106 passengers!); as the season progresses and tastes become known, adjustments are made. The staff eats some of the leftovers.

At 11:30 a.m., I attended another presentation on Portuguese history and culture and acquired the following information:

• Portugal is the east densely populated country in Europe and is within the Schengen area.
• 400,000 Portuguese live in Paris, more than in any city except Lisbon. Compare Coimbra, with 100,000 residents.
• The Tagus River (Tajo in Portugese), which reaches the sea in Lisbon, demarcates the northern and southern parts of the country.

Then this time line:

• "Early peoples" lived in this area from 200,000 to 1800 BC. Then came in the Celts in 1000 BC. The Celtiberians, 700 to 200 BC, were artisans, farmers, and traders and built (hill forts.
• The Romans, 200 BC to 400 AD, contributed salting, wine, olives, new construction methods, roads, aquaducts, bridges, lighthouses, temples, money and coins, and laws and introduced Christianity in the 4th century, under Constantine. Salt was especially important for preservation of food and for paying salaries. The Roman word castrum (meaning hill fort) became castros (pronounced castroosh) in Portuguese. They also brought good metallurgy and weaving.
• The Iberian peninsula was divided into Lusitania (Portugal plus an inland bulge), Galicia, Baetica (Andalusia), and Tarragonesis (did I get that right?). "Luso-" (from Lusitania), means "of Portugal" (analogous to Gallo- for France and Sino- for Chinese).
• Germanic tribes showed up in 400 to 700 AD (Visigoths, Vandals). They contributed the horseshoe arch anbd feudalism.

Written 17 December 2015

• Then the Moors, 711 to 1249 (the name comes from a word meaning "dark-skinned").
• The Moors were Arabs, not necessarily muslims. They came from the Arabian peninsula, not just north Africa. They brought oranges,lemons, figs, almonds, the water wheel, the diversion dam, Arabic numbers, cotton and silk fabrics, the Moorish arch, mosaics, tile work, wood carving, botany, astronomy, and multifoil arches.
• From 900 to 1249, the reconquest. Crusaders wanted to cross Spain to get to the holy land, but when they showed up at the pyrenees, the Moors were in the way, so, having come heavily armed and battle-ready anyway, they pushed the Moors south until they could get to Gibraltar to sail to the holy land.
During the Moorish occupation, the christians had all been pushed up into the northern tier of provinces of the peninsula: Galicia, Asturia, Castilla, Arragon. The moors were the in the lower 2/3.
• In 1139, Alphonso Enriques took Portucale; he was the son of the Duke of Burgundy, but he inherited the Duchy of Portucale from his mother. He became Alfonso I of Portugal, oldest European country that has kept the same language, religion, and borders since its founding.
• In 1249, in the battle of Ourique, the Algarve (the area south of Lisbon) was recaptured, completing the outline of modern Portugal.
• The last stronghold of the Moors in the south became Andalusia.
• By 15th century, the age of discovery was under way (remember Henry the Navigator sending out all those explorers?). Portugal wanted to redevelop the Moors' north-African trading routes, but by sea (spices, slaves).
• Caravelles, the characteristic ships of the Portuguese explorers, were patterned after Portuguese fishing boats, which can sail very close to the wind.
• The Treaty of Tordessillas, 1494, divided the world between Spain and Portugal—Spain sent its explorers west, and Portugal went east. Except that the Portuguese already sort of knew that Brazil was there, because when they sailed south along the coast of Africa, nominally to go east, they got entrained in the South Atlantic Gyre and on the way back north they ran int the south coast of Brazil. (The spanish had so far missed it because, heading for North america, got into the North Atlantic Gyre and were swept northward. I remember think in school that Portugal got short changed because they got so little of South America, but in fact, they engineered the treaty to get that much, and Brazil made them rich.
• Henry the Navigator established a checkpoint at the southern tip of Portugal where all returning ships were required to call and drop off their navigation data so that an accurate overall picture could be compiled. Brilliant.
• Bartolomeu Dias first sailed around the horn of Africa. Vasco Da Gama found India. All these great navigators are buried in the Pantheon in Lisbon.
• The Portuguese empire at its peak in the 1820s. It was so widespread and influential that the Japanese "arigato" (meaning "thank you") comes from the Portuguese "obrigato" (also meaning "thank you"; cognate with English "obliged").
• In 1580, the Portuguese king (remember King Sebastian I The Disastrous, from our tour in Lisbon?) died childless, and the Spanish Interruption happened, lasting until 1640. England was a faithful ally of Portugal, but now all those overseas possesion were Spanish colonies, and England was at war with Spain, so the English set about systematically taking them over.
• Once Portugal got out from under Spain, the Braganca dynasty ruled it.
• Our old friend Pombal showed up and abolished slavery in Portugal anbd and some colonies, reorganized the military, reformed the taxes, created hospitals, schools, and universities.
• In the 1800s, Napoleon wanted to extend his territory, so he allied with Spain to invade Portugal (Britain was on Portugal's side, so that's why Sean Bean, as Sharpe, spent so much time marching around Portugal shooting at the French). The Portuguese court fled to Brazil. Brazil became independent in 1822, so the court went on to Angola, New Guinea, adn Mozambique, looking for a new Brazil. Britain wanted these colonies too, so for the first time the alliance was strained.
• In 1908, king Carlos I and his older son were assassinated in Lisbon by replublican revolutionaries. His younger son was declared King, but the court's absence created chaos, and in 1910, the Portuguese republic was declared. Two decades more of chaos followed. Salazar, an economics professor at Coimbra, stepped in and took over in 1933, nominally as prime minister but in fact as dictator. He kept Portugal out of WWII but let the Allies use the Azores. He xxported goods to Germany, was a friend of Hitler, and sent the Portuguese army to Africa to fight against their colonies' independence. That was in the 1960s and was a disaster (remember the enormous memorial to all those dead in the "overseas wars" from our tour of Lisbon) and led to huge emigration (mostly to France and francophone countries) by people trying to escape military service. Most of the concièrges in France were Portuguese, and the builders still are.
• Salazar died suddenly in 1970. Marcello Caetano succeeded him, but for just four years. In 1974, the army, having planned well in advance, showed up everywhere that mattered within 24 hours and took over. The people were delighted. Flower sellers in Lisbon threw flowers, especially red carnations, to the soldiers, so it was named the "carnation revolution." A couple more years of chaos ensued before things settled down. In 1976, Mário Soares became the first civilian prime minister, then Went on to be the first civilian president in 1986.
• An economic boom and prosperity followed. Portugal joined the EU.
• All the African territories became independent in 1975, Macao was given to China and East Timor became independent in 1999.
• The current president is Anibal Cavaco Silva.
• Things haven't been so hot economically lately. Three main industries are the hope of the counttry: wine and cork, fishing, and renewable energy. Portugal has the largest solar farm in Europe and the first and only ocean wave farm in Europe.

Whew! All that, and it's only lunch time!

Written 21 December 2015

At the right here is the morning's pastry tray at the coffee station. As you can see, some people chose cookies, but the miniature pasteis de nata have suffered the greater depredations.

The nominal appetizer choices for lunch were sardines marinated with tomatoes and roast beef with horseradish sauce. As you can see on my plate, though, many other choices were available on the buffet. The roast beef and sardines are on a little square plate at 7 o'clock, but clockwise from behind them are some "russian salad" (mixed cooked vegetables in a creamy dressing, marinated seafood salad, and a pile of things from the salad bar.

The main-course choices were pumpkin soup with almonds, beef stroganoff with basmati rice, pasta with tomato sauce and bell peppers, and a Monte Cristo sandwich. I had the stroganoff, which was delicious but a little odd over rice rather than noodles. Kathy said the Monte Cristo was great.

David and I both choose the apple tart with ice cream for dessert (the other choice was coffee ice cream).

Back in our stateroom, we found the small batch of laundry David had bagged up that morning (or maybe the night before?), all clean and neatly folded into this wooden box and covered with Viking-sealed tissue paper. His socks have never had such royal treatment.

Then it was off to visit the Medieval hilltop village of Castelo Rodrigo (pronounced Cosh-TELL-oo Rod-REE-goo), a UNESCO World Heritage site. The photo at the left, taken through the bus window past a fellow passenger, shows the sort of countryside we drove through, planned with olive and almond trees.

On many of the hilltops were these round white masonry pigeon houses with conical roofs. Peasants kept pigeons for food—the classic dish is "pigeon with rice"—and harvested the droppings (from the bottoms of the pigeon houses) to use as fertilizer. The pigeon houses were used for surveillance and security during the peninsular wars (when Napoleon invaded), and then as places to hide smuggled contraband (e.g., coca cola) during Salazar's dictatorship.

Here's our first view of the village (population 66), as we approach from the town below it, called Figuiero de Castelo Rodrigo, which served as the village's agricultural outpost and which now houses most of the area's population.

At the right is a map of the walled section of the village, posted near the pedestrian entrance (no motor vehicles in the village itself). Just inside the pedestrian gate was a tea-house-cum-gift shop featuring run by a Frenchman, Monsieur André, who married a local girl. The shop features many local products, most involving almonds, which are the major local crop.

I didn't do a very thorough job of photographing the village. At the left here is a view of part of the entrance to the local cistern. It had three doors; the one on the left here is the Christian door (a plain gothic arch), on the right the moorish arch, for use by muslims. Out of sight to the right of that is the Jewish door, leading to (besides the basic water source) the village's mikvah. It's all the same water source, dipped as I gathered from the same cistern, but the village's three amicable religious groups liked entering by their own dedicated doors.

The photo at the right shows a typical "street" in the village—too steep for horses or wheeled vehicles.

Jews expelled from Spain by the inquisition took refuge in Portugal, and a group settled here, in a little neighborhood just outside the wall. To prove they had converted to Christianity, they secretly made chicken sausages, which they hung ostentatiously to dry outside their doors and would willingly eat when the inspectors came around. If they passed inspection, the inspector would engrave a cross on the doorpost, and they were okay. on the Rua Sinagoga, we were shown many houses with those crosses roughly graven into the stone doorposts.

Strangely, the village's tiny church is named for Our Lady of Rocadamour (yes, the one in France). The line was too long to get in for the guided tour, and when we came back later, the place was locked up, so we didn't get to see the inside.

At the highest point of the village is the ruin of the castle that housed the local ruler during the Spanish interruption; it's been burned and left as a ruin as a reminder. All around the village, you can see pieces of it (stones with intricate decorative carving) built into the walls of otherwise plain houses, along with other pieces of stone worth reusing, like chunks of outworn millstones.

Things learned during the rides to and from Castelo Rodrigo:

• Olives bloom in May. Green olives are harvested in late September or early October, dark green olives in late October or early November, and black olives in late November or early December.
• Olives are soaked in water and/or white wine, herbs and garlic or made into olive oil.
• Portugal is among the top 10 olive oil producers, most recently in 6th place, behind Spain, Italy, Greece, Tunisia, and Turkey. It's ahead of the U.S., which surprisingly is in the top 10!
• Last season, 91,000 tons were harvested in this region, a record.
• Almonds bloom in Febrary, turning the hillsides pink and white.
• They were brought to Portugal by the Moors.
• In southern Portugal, even more olives and almonds are produced than here.
• Griphon vultures weref lying overhead as we left the village.
• Some of the ancient stone walls crisscrossing the countryside were made by the Celts, others by the Romans.
• Cork oaks are held inviolate for their first 25 years, then cork can be harvested every 7 to 9 years. Each tree is tagged, so that you can see when it's next due for harvest.

On the way back to join the Hemming, we stopped, as promised, at a site where we could see griphon vultures, and possibly even Egyptian vultures. To my surprise, it was an overlook that permitted us to look down on the vultures as they soared and perched. Believe it or not, the photo on the left shows a griphon vulture perched on a rock outcrop. The outcrop is whitened with droppings (it must be a favorite perch), just to the left of and slight below it, you can see a patch of prickly pear. The vulture is perched on the edge of the rock, its white head and most of its body visible against the soft green of the bushes behind it. That's the best I could do, even with telephoto. We got to stand there quite a while, though, watching the vultures soaring back and forth across the valley below us (as I say somewhere in every blog, always travel with binoculars). Experts in the group said they thought they spotted an Egyptian among the griphons, but they couldn't be sure.

The other photo in this pair shows the Hemming (below the farther of the two bridges) waiting for us at Vega de Terron, our only Spanish port of call. At this point, the river forms the national boundary, so we're on the Portuguese side, looking across at the Spanish side. According to the Viking guides, Vega de Terron has only two inhabitants—the guy who runs the little store you can see above the ship and his mother.

Here's the amuse-bouche from dinner—a little tart of something. Unfortunately, they didn't print it on the menu, and I forgot to write it down.

At the right is one of the first courses, Lamego ham with melon (the melon sliced thin and rolled into a rose). The pink drizzle around it is grape vinaigrette.

Two Other appetizer choices were creamy leek soup and chef's salad.

I had the fourth choice, roasted fresh mushrooms with asparagus and little toasts.

My main course was panfried John Dory (a fish, Zeus faber), shown here balanced across the top of two slightly crushed boiled new potatoes and decorated with sautéed strips of turnip greens.

The vegetarian main-course option was pasta with oil, garlic, and vegetables.

David chose the third option, tender pork medallions with celery-root puré, with a brown gravy and a shower of bits of braised celery stalk.

For dessert, Kathy chose the "semifredo of lemon," which turned out to be this multilayered chiffon pie sort of thing. She declared it excellent.

Other choices were a plate of sliced kiwi fruit and vanilla ice cream. Any of the above could be topped with chocolate sauce, butterscotch, or mixed berries.

I had the mandarin orange sorbet, unadorned. Very good.

David had the bread pudding with custard sauce and house-made vanilla ice cream, which was also excellent.

Finally, here's a night view of the Ponte Almirante Sarmento Rodrigues, named for a Portuguese naval officer, which spans the Douro at Barca d'Alva, the Portuguese town across from Vega de Terron. It was built in 1955 by Edgar Cordoso (1913–2000), a famous bridge-builder from Porto. In the course of the week, we were shown several other works of his.

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