H2O hotel

The highest road in Portugal, almost 2000 meters above sea level.

Place: Portuguese Serra da Estrela mountains. Recently opened H2O hotel and spa.
Time: 09 of February 2009.

Gosh, how I love new hotels. Everything is so clean & new, staff is nice & accommodating. Pools are great.

Unhais da Serra valley overlook. Where is it ( see on the map )

That night at the restaurant ( main restaurant still not open yet ). H2O hotel interiors.

At night we tasted Portuguese local specialty: "Pernil do porco" accompanied by the bottle of red "Casa de Santar" 2005 from the Dão region. Didn´t like the meat very much, so ended up with a nice table of local delicious sheep´s milk cheeses ( Queijo da Mistura, Queijo picante, Queijo da Ovelha Serra da Estrela ) and wine, doing the "Cheese and Wine Tasting".
Queijo picante, with its strong taste and relatively hard and chewy texture, worked very well with red from Dão. "Casa de Santar" is full-bodied, with a deep ruby-purple color. The wine is dense, chewy, ripe, and a surprisingly big mouthful of juicy, velvety-textured wine.






PS. Our second stay at the H2O hotel / click here



Maciek.


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Once In A Lovely Spring Day

Early February. Porto, Portugal. Blossom trees of Magnolia. Like snowflakes - no two blossoms alike. Each is unique. Named after a French botanist Pierre Magnol.

Magnolia is an ancient genus. Fossils of Magnolia Acuminata has been found dating to 20 million years ago.

Flowering tree on my picture belongs to Magnolia Grandiflore or Southern Magnolia. White and beautiful. Spring in its best.




Camera: Nikon D80, F 13, Fl 10mm, Sigma 10/20 mm, ISO 100, no flash, skylight and polarizing filters, 14.02.2009, 13.00. Site: Avenida Aliados, Porto, Portugal.

Maciek.

Braided delta of Vouga River, part II.

Yesterday I pointed camera at my favorite spot at Ria de Aveiro , close to the fishermen´s village of Murtosa. The sunset was gorgeous. After a month of almost continuous winter rain, the beautiful Portuguese weather has finally returned.









Camera: Nikon D80, F 22, Fl 12mm, Sigma 10/20 mm, ISO 100, no flash, Cokin Gradual ND filters 0,6 and 0,9 special equipment: tripod, ladder.


Maciek.

Braided delta of Vouga River

Vouga River mouth, central Portugal. Water flows as several interconnecting streams forming vast patches of multiple sinuous channels. Welcome to Ria de Aveiro, or delta of Aveiro ( Aveiro is a name of a city lying nearby ). A malaria parasite was still present in the waters of this coastal lagoon in the middle of the last century.



Ria de Aveiro is a beautiful spot for photographers. Picture above was taken in January 2009, close to fishermen´s village of Murtosa.



Camera: Nikon D80, F11, Fl 18 mm, Sigma 10/20 mm, ISO 400, no flash, Cokin Gradual ND filter 0,6, special equipment: tripod, ladder.


Maciek.

Last Wednesday ( 11.02.2009 ) in Spain

View from Monte Santa Tega to the South: Portugal´s coastline.

It usually takes us 30 minutes to drive from Porto to Caminha, where we hop on a ferry to cross the Minho River and enter Spain. The funny thing is, that when you cross the border, nothing really changes: the villages and people are exactly the same. The architecture, churches small markets, shops, even the language is very similar. Galiza is in fact not so different from northern Portugal.

This Wednesday our plan was ... well, we did not have any specific plans for that Wednesday. First thing after leaving the ferry we climbed the Santa Trega mountain. This is a site of an ancient Celtic village. The views here are absolutely marvelous. To the south there is a Minho river that separates Spain from Portugal. To the north you can see the rocky Spanish coastline dotted with red roofs of La Guarda town.

View to the North: La Guarda town.

On our way back home we noticed that many new wineries are being opened. Seems like Galiza wine industry is booming. Their Albariño vines, which have been nicknamed "The Wines of the Sea", are absolutely first-class. They are the descendants of Portuguese vines called Alvarinho. To be denominated as DOC they must contain 100% Albariño grapes. These single-vine, single-grape wines I like most.

We ended up buying some bottles of Albariño and a plate of Spanish curado chesses. The dinner at home was going to be great.

Ferry from Caminha to Spain. The view from the top os Santa Trega mountain.

Modern Valencia

City of Arts and Sciences. L'Hemisfèric.

I´m not a modern art lover. In fact I believe 99% of modern-art-artefacts are rubbish. If one puts a 1425 "Saint Josef in his workplace" painting of Robert Campin, one of the greatest Renaissance painters, in the garage, it´s still a great piece of art. If one puts a modern-art piece in the garage, it´s obviously a trash. "Art in the gallery-rubbish in the garage" - this is how I define modern "art".

The only art that somehow has survived in our post-modernism world is architecture.
We´ve been lucky to see two masterpieces of modern architecture genius: Santiago Calatrava. One was in Valencia last November: City of Arts and Sciences. The other is located "right under our noses" in Lisbon, Portugal: Oriente Train Station.

City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia is really impressive. At first a "wow" factor dominates. Ultramodern architecture with good taste. Lots of water pools. Spacious. Very nicely illuminated. White and transparent. Made of heavy materials but somehow remains light.

The Hemesferic was the first building to be completed in 1998. Looking from the right angle it resembles a huge eyeball floating above a pool of water. The eye even blinks with the aid of a steel and glass shutter operated by hydraulic lifts. Looking from the sharp angle the Hemisferic and the Oceanografic resemble a huge fish.

Opera House ( photo below ) was opened in 2005. For me ( I am a big"Star Wars" fan ) it definitely looks like an Imperial Star Destroyer space ship.

The Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía is the final segment of Valencia's City of Arts and Sciences.

That November night Lucas and Agnieszka went shopping. I stayed and took about 500 shots of the City of Arts and Sciences in the sipping rain. The rain clouds went low the way they reflected red and blue city lights. No wind, no tourists, no flashes. Photos went very well: micro bubbles of falling rain did all the job.
After they came back we headed for "Civera" restaurant in Valencia´s Old Quarter ( recommended by the "Good Food" magazine ) to taste the best classic paella valenciana.

Time: early weekend of November 2008, Valencia, Spain. Rain. Camera: Nikon D80. Photo 1: F22, Fl 20mm, Nikkor 17-80mm, ISO 560, HDR +2,-2,0 exp., no flash, no filter. Photo 2: F11, Fl 10 mm, Sigma 10-20 mm, no flash, tripod. Photo 3: panorama made of 6 horizontals.


Maciek.

Skiing in Portugal - Impossible?

Torre - the highest point of continental Portugal.

Central Portugal. Serra da Estrela mountains. Top peak named Torre is nearly 2000 meters above sea level. The skiing station is rather small counting with only 5 ski-lifts. The ski trails are marked red and black but the degree of difficulty is very, very exagerrated. All the piste are easy or moderate. One is marked as black, but on the Alpine scale of difficulty it should be only easy-red.

Skiing conditions are very, very unpredictable due to strong winds from the Atlantic Ocean that can bring rain ( very frequently ) or snow ( rather rarely ).

But this February 2009 the massive snow storm hit the mountains really hard covering it with up to 2 meters of fresh powder. We took our ski and hit the slopes of Ski Station at the top of the Portuguese mountains.

Part of Torre instalations.

Later in the afternoon we drove down to the hotel , where I usually stay, and had a local specialty: Trout from Manteigas. ( Manteigas is a name of small Portuguese mountain village ). Baked with oil, flower and coarse grain salt. Served with butter, poured with the lemon juice, pepper and the minced parsley.
To accompany we had a small bottle of regional white wine Meia Encosta. Dry, well equilibrated and full of minerals, Meia Encosta is a nice white wine for mid-week´s night dinner.

Maciek.

Camera: Nikon D80, fl 10 mm, f20, 1/125, ISO 100, white balance:auto, sky filter.



Ski Station Link

"Lord of the Stone" Chapel.

Nikon D80, Manfrotto Tripod, IS0 250, f 13, 1/5 sec. December 2008.

"Lord of the Stone" or "Senhor da Pedra" in Portuguese, is a small rococo style chapel from the X VII century located by the Atlantic ocean in Madalena, Portugal.

The cult of Christ the Lord of the Stone may have originated as a ancient pre-Christian pagan worship of the Lord of the Sea.



In the back of the chapel appears a strange marking on the rock in the shape of horseshoe. The legend says that the mark was left or by the donkey that transported a Virgin Mary or by the horse of D. Sebastião I, one of the Portuguese kings.

Nikon 80, ISO 100, HDR post-processing. November 2006.

The Chapel is an "icon" for photographers in Northern Portugal. Winter is an exceptionally good time to take pictures there: it´s cold what makes the air more transparent and clear, we have normally some clouds in the sky and the chapel is partially surrounded by water. Avoid times with strong winds - the moisture from the sea can damage your photos.

Maciek.

UNESCO heritage site Porto, Portugal - medivial district of Sé.

Not too many people including residents of Porto have a courage to wander around narrow streets of old Sé district. Most of the tourists stay close to the Sé cathedral and its square. Looking down from the cathedral hill to the narrow streets of Sé, with locals standing at every corner doing nothing, with almost every building partially or totally ruined, one can be very reluctant to enter and visit.

Number of Sé habitants went down almost 50% in the last decade. Living conditions must be horrible there. Some part of Sé does not have running water. Houses are abandoned, ruined, with dirty, tiny rooms, no central heating and lot of humidity. Police raids searching for drugs are not uncommon. Welcome to UE forgotten regions.

I myself like to walk around those small and dirty streets with my Nikon turned on. Faded colours of the ruined buildings, its strangly behaving locals, no straight arquitecture lines or 90 degrees angles make Sé so unique. Photos must be taken in winter or early spring, with cloudy skies making a perfect background and dimmed light reducing high contrasts. It´s especially beautiful after rainor early in the morning, when the Sé is covered in mist from the nearby Douro river.

Most of the pictures above are made using the HDR or DRI tecnique between 2005 and 2008.

Nikon D80.

Maciek.

The official Sé district link

Alsace wine trail

In December, just before Christmas we visited Alsace. Our main goal was to visit famous Christkindlmarik ( Infant Jesus Xmas Fair )in Strasbourg. OBut on out way we spent a couple of days cruising through Alsace famous vineyards and tasting some local wines.
At that time of the year, patches embedded with vines unfortunately look sad and colorless, not just like in summer or autumn. But the foothills of Vosges mountains were now covered with mist from the nearby Rhine river and this also had some subtle charm.

On the wine trail in Alsace: Zelleberg seen from the village przedgórza Vosges, church and vineyards in Hunawihr Riesling, Grand Cru vineyard Schoenenbourg.

Alsace, as everyone probably knows, is very famous for its white wines. Precious grapes like Riesling, Pinot Gris ( once called Tokay-pinot gris until Hungary, does not applied to Alsatian court wine ), Gewurtztraminer and Muscat d'Alsace ( quite different from the common grape of the same name from the south of France - because that gives completely dry wine, without any sweetness ). Only those types of vines can be used for the production of top quality wines called grands crus. To received this honorable title of grands cru, the vineyards have to be located in some specific areas with exeptional soil structure and should meet the highest quality criteria.
There are also other grape varieties there. Popular Edelzwicker table wine is just quite a successful mixture of such less noble species.

Dopff et Irion - Riquewihr main street. Beautifully decorated Alsace advent window.

I have been very, very long time a great lover of Gewurtztraminer, in my opinion, simply irreplaceable comrade of any intense flavor cheese. Its delicate sweetness and surprising flavor of honey, flowers and exotic fruits excellent balance any sharp taste of salty cheeses such as roquefort, São Jorge from the Azores islands or the Alsatian Munster cheese. Moreover, if I have to choose a wine to the accompany severaldifferent kinds of cheese, the choice is often Gewurtztraminer. Although one must be careful since this wine may slightly change the taste of soft cheeses. In our home it is not a big problem, since we are fans of old, strong and hard cheeses. The Gewurtztraminer is also a great aperitif and the French also recommend it to serve with desserts and dishes of exotic cuisine ( andone can not easily find a good wine to complement specialties such as Asian ). In contrast to herds of sommeliers and wine experts of all sorts, we rarely feel any dominant aroma in wine, but the Gewurtztraminer is definitely a mango fruit flavor ( at least IMHO ).

Panorama of Andlau town. Kastelberg Grand Cru vineyards.

Sparkling wine crémant d'Alsace has a great reputation in France. Always dry, usually white, occasionally pink. French like it so much that they export only 10% of its production, the rest drinking locally. Crémant makes up to 30% of the French market for sparkling wines.

I could not end this post without mentioning vendanges tardives and Sélection de Grains nobles wines. The late harvest wines, produced only in exceptionally good years, when the grapes are left to mature on the bushes untill the first freezing temperatures of late November in order to obtain a high concentration of sugar. Wines from these collections are usually of exceptional quality and can be stored for a long time ( up to 10-15 years ).

Map of vineyards in Alsace. One of the wine cellars in Riquewihr. Brand Grand Cru Gewurztraminer from Turckheim . Shop of Dopff & IrionCompany in Christmas decorations.

Our travel started from small Riquewihr village. Apart from tasting wines, we were welcomed by a beautiful Christmas decorations and atmosphere. We went to the shop of a very well-known company in the Alsace wine market: Dopff & Irion. To ensure a particularly high quality of the vineyards, the use of pesticides and fertilizers is very limited only to exceptional cases with a natural grass growing in between. We left the store with Gewurtztraminer'em Vendage Tardiva, Crémant d'Alsace Pinot gris and Rieslingiem Murailles Blanc 2005 .