Bom dia...

Hello again - what a week that was. As expected, we had to work damned hard and therefore we felt obliged to play even harder.

We arrived at the Radisson Hotel at Stansted airport around 9:00pm Sunday and only intended to sneak in a quick pint before turning in early in anticipation of the early flight Monday morning. However, we were all fascinated by the wine tower in the bar and felt compelled to stay and watch the girls serving bottles of wine by means of pulleys, steel cables and a variety of gymnastic manoevres. End result - late night and several pints.

Incidentally, if you ever need to fly from Stansted, I thoroughly recommend staying at this hotel. Check in was laboriously slow, but well worth the wait as the rooms are superb and the terminal building is accessed via a covered walkway from right outside the hotel front door. It cost us £85 for the night and this also entitles you to leave your car there for only £7.50 per night - half the price of the Heathrow long stay car park I'd paid a couple of weeks ago.

4:30am rise next morning to check out of the hotel by 5:30 and check in for our flight by 6:00, departure 6:40, arrived at the office 9:15 and worked until 18:30 before leaving to check in at the Hotel Dighton. The hotel was a pleasant enough place; obviously very impressive in it's day but now sadly seems to have lost some of it's sparkle. That said, at €€47.50 per night including breakfast, we really shouldn't have been pitching our expectations too high.

I'm not going to elaborate on the work side of the trip; it was very intense and tiring and we were all glad to be back on our way home Friday morning. However, the food was plentiful in quantity and variety.

Monday: breakfast - coffee & croissant; lunch - green soup, grilled "meat"; dinner (at the Dighton after a 2 hour wait) - mushroom & bacon in cheese sauce, ox fillet washed down with some local (Douro) red wine and finished of course with a couple of bottles of Grahams 10 year old tawny port (between the 9 of us of course!)

Tuesday: breakfast - couldn't decide between English (hot dog sausage, panchetta and scrambled eggs) or continental (bread roll, cheese & various sliced meats), so I opted for both! Lunch - pasta water, or perhaps it was clear soup, followed by fish with pickles; dinner - (giving the hotel a well-deserved second chance) melon and ham, followed by a delicious concoction of duck, rice and cheese. More red wine but they ran out of 10 year old port so we had to settle for a couple of bottles of 20 year old (shame!)

Wednesday: breakfast - as yesterday; lunch - yellow soup, fish & shredded potato; dinner was a Brazilian feast at "Las Vegas City via Brazil" (sorry no web site to link to). Situated about 10 minutes away from Vale de Cambra, we were bombarded with a multitude of different meats and snacks ranging from garlic soused steaks to chicken hearts. I'll try and find some more info and post about it again at a later point largely because they serve these incredibly more-ish cocktails that I must find out more about.

Thursday: breakfast - same again; lunch - more indescribable soup, breaded "meat" somewhat reminiscent of schnitzel; dinner - back to the Porto Palacio for our last night and some five star indulgence. Started with duck with fig salad served on a sweet potato and chestnut mash; saddle of lamb for the main course and a fig/cream/hazelnut dessert. I also discovered Super Bock Stout which tastes nothing like our stout but is a delicious dark beer.

Friday: time to go home - food took a second priority in favour of getting home as quickly as possible to get re-acquainted with my old friend the Hobgoblin. All week we had been forced to drink their excessively over caffeinated espressos so I took great delight in telling them all that we were going home where things are the right way round - the coffee may be weak but the beer is strong.

Now, I seem to recall buying a running machine a few months ago. I wonder where I left it...