Madeira I - tastes

Dear friends

The Madeira archipelago was, until the end of 2005, one of the only parts of Portugal that I had never been to. In the Portuguese imaginary it is a semi-tropical place, on the same latitude as the north of Africa, with luxuriant vegetation and a very typical President: he is certainly one of the most rude Portuguese polititians, rules the island as if he was a king, and says whatever he likes about national politics, journalists and anybody that dares to criticize him. Some of my friends claim that they are not going to put their feet in Madeira while the guy is in power.

The other side of him is of a big joker and of someone that brought a lot of economic development to the island. Madeira is now on of the richest regions of Portugal, due almost exclusively to tourist attraction: there is a huge amount of hotels and resorts, restaurants, sport activities and everything that makes a good holiday place. It is also a smart strategy to attract mostly retired, rich northern Europeans and Americans - they also come in winter when it is quite good weather in Madeira and the peak of an usually dark and cold winter in England, Sweden or Germany. Flowers and sun all year round is argument enough!

So there we went, me and Lu, check out the place and have a good new year break... The pictures in this first post have mainly to do with the nicest things to taste in Madeira.

Madeira wine is the most famous product of the island. It is produced since the XVI century, from particular types of grapes. The peculiar thing about it is that, like Porto wine, it is sweet. It gains its qualities after some years in the oak barrels in warm cellars. The process was discovered during the ship voyages of the Portuguese navigators: the heat in the tropics improved the qulity of the wines transported. Nowadays these conditions are re-created by placing the barrels/casks in warm terraces. The wine cellars can be visited and old wines tasted. As you see in the photo above, Lu was refusig to leave the place without taking at least a barrel back to London ;-)

One of the features of the capital of the island, named Funchal (one of the largest cities in Portugal, after Lisboa and Porto), is the decoration in the streets. Bunches of fruits and vegetables hanging around are a beautiful thing and make some persons have uncivilized attitudes (as usual...)!

And then the meals... In the photos above you can see squids roasted in coal and lapas fried in olive oil - very good stuff, believe me! And they taste even better with a good white wine.

To finish this post, the visit to the producer's market of Funchal: the Mercado dos Lavradores. It's really cool to see the diversity of fruits for sale, most of them produced in Madeira. Some I had never seen: the Adam's rib, or the banana-passion fruit. In the picture above our chinese friends can see that they are not the only ones to like chili!!!