If the Food Doesn’t Get Better, I’m Going Home!

Last night, after a wonderful day in Porto, we decided to have dinner in the Ribeira area by the water so that we could see the Ponte D. Luis bridge at night.  The view was spectacular, but the food was a big disappointment!

After walking the entire strip of restaurants in the area, we picked a smaller one where the waiter seemed to speak English and the menu had an option of ordering entrees sized for two people or just one.  We decided to try a trout  dish and the tripe – the last Portuguese specialty that we have heard about.  It came out looking interesting – a small steel pot full of beans and tripe in some sort of broth. Considering we ordered the single serving, this seemed like quite a big portion by European standards!

Again, the first two bites of our meal were fine, and then we began to notice how the food doesn’t sit well in our stomachs and the flavours are just kind of blah.  It seemed like something about the way the tripe was cooked was not good- it was too tender for tripe, like it had been overcooked, and there was an overwhelming amount of beans.  The trout seemed fine, until Paul started getting sick later at night.

Today he has full on food poisoning and has had to spend the day in bed/the bathroom at the hostel (editor’s note: try sipping at least 1 – 2L of coke throughout the day – the acid kills the germs and the sugar/water keeps you hydrated).  For dinner I went and got take-out at McDonald’s because it’s familiar and safe in a way I think the willingness to try new things may have been lost for now, but hopefully things will improve when we head to Spain tomorrow…