Souvenir hunting #5
At home, we rarely count a trip to the supermarket among the highlights of the day. But abroad, at least one supermarket visit is always planned in the hunt for edible souvenirs to take home. What should you not miss from each country? FavorFlav scours the shelves.
Today we return from Portugal with:
Canned sardines
Portugal and sardines: a perfect match. Lisbon is even known as the sardine city. Every year in June, there is a sardine festival. And there are modern and traditional shops full of decorated cans. But even the smallest supermarket has a selection at prices for which we couldn’t even buy an empty can in the Netherlands. They keep well for years, so stock up. Even if it’s just for the artwork.
Port wine
In Porto, but not in the mood for the tourist queue at the port cellars across the water in Vila Nova de Gaia? Then order a glass of port with a plate of cheese somewhere in a backstreet of this hilly city. After that, all you’ll want to do is stock up on bottles of this sweet wine with its high alcohol content (around 20 percent), whose grapes grow in the Douro Valley while the drink matures in wooden barrels in… Vila Nova de Gaia.
Chá dos Açores (tea from the Azores)
We didn’t know this either. But São Miguel, one of Portugal’s Azores islands, is home to Europe’s oldest tea producer. Tea from volcanic European soil, then. The plantations were established in the nineteenth century with help from tea experts from Macao and mainly produce orange pekoe black tea. Now that’s something to bring home.
Read about our other souvenir hunts here, here, here and here.
Text:
Marjan Ippel
Images:
