Portugal – Aqueducts and Francesinha

The castle and town of Obidos are situated on a steep hill and at the bottom, outside of the city walls there is a sixteenth century  aqueduct which runs for two miles and was constructed to supply water to two fountains in the town.

It wasn’t especially tall or very memorable but I have visited other aqueducts in Portugal which are,…

…. this one is near the city of Tomar, north of Lisbon…

….

The Aqueduct of Pegões is, it turns out a little known monument and therefore very little visited, totally free access and no tourists.

It was built to bring water to the Convent of Christ in Tomar and is an amazing monument just over about six kilometers long and in some parts reaching a height of a hundred foot or so and made of one hundred and eighty arches and fifty-eight arcs at the most elevated part.  The construction started in 1593 and finished 1614 and it is the biggest and most important construction of the Philip I kingdom in Portugal.  Wow, who knew that, even the Tourist Information Office doesn’t give it a lot of headline space.

It was a quite astonishing place, no one there but us and some occasional ramblers.  There was no entrance fee and just like Obidos Castle  no safety barriers and nothing to stop visitors from climbing to the top and carelessly falling over the edge.  We climbed to the top and walked a short way out along the elevated section until we realised that this was quite dangerous so after walking out further than was really sensible and clinging desperately to the stones for security we groped our way back to safety and returned to ground level.

This one is in Vila do Conde, near Porto…

Next to the convent and snaking north away from the town are the extensive remains of the Aqueduto do Convento, a sixteenth century structure that was built to supply water to the Convent.  At four kilometres long it is claimed to be the second largest in Portugal after Lisbon but I have been to Tomar and their aqueduct is measured at six kilometres.

I am not taking sides, I am just saying.

The longest aqueduct ever (or so I am told ) was a Roman structure of Two hundred and fifty miles or so into Constantinople.  At one hundred and sixty feet the highest  is the Roman aqueduct at Nimes in France.   The tallest and longest in the UK is the Llangollen Canal across the River Dee in North Wales.

And this one is at Elvas, close to the border with Spain…

The Amoreira Aqueduct has a length of over seven thousand metres from its spring in the nearby mountains.  It is the longest and tallest aqueduct in Iberia. It is a truly impressive piece of sixteenth century architecture that was constructed to supply the frontier garrison with fresh water as the city wells became inadequate and one-by-one dried up.

Later that evening we returned to the same restaurant and they proudly announced that it was speciality Francesinha day.  In 2006 I visited Porto and had Francesinha and promptly vowed that I would never do it again.  So I completely unable to explain why I selected it from the menu.

Francesinha is a signature dish of Porto and is a massive sandwich made with toasted bread, wet-cured ham, smoked sausage and steak and then, if all of that isn’t enough, covered with molten cheese and a hot thick tomato and beer sauce all of which contains an average persons calorie allowance for an entire month – and then some.  And it comes with chips!

Francesinha means Little French Girl in Portuguese and it is said to be an invention in the 1960s of a man called Daniel da Silva, a returned emigrant from France and Belgium who tried to adapt the croque-monsieur to Portuguese taste.  It doesn’t look very much like a croque-monsieur to me, I can tell you.

I have to say that it was after all rather tasty but there was just too much of it so I had to eat what I could, the best bits obviously and then make a judgement about how much I could leave on the plate without looking rude.  I gave the chips to my travelling companions  in return for a promise to stop me if I looked like ordering it again at any time this week.

I rather like a good croque-monsieur  but it has to be in France and it has to look like this…

In future I am certain that the only time that I would consider a Franceshina is if it is a choice between that and a Poutine from Canada…

Other than Francesinha or Poutine which food dish would you nominate to avoid?

Here are some prompts…