Visit to Holland 29 Aug to 3 Sept 2012 via Lisbon

Thursday 30 August I, Mike, took a taxi for the 15 minute trip to the Ponta Delgada airport (cost 10 Euro) in time for the 10.15hrs SATA flight to Lisbon. As this flight would land at Lisbon13.20hrs but the connecting SATA flight to Amsterdam would not leave before 19.50hrs, I decided to pop into Lisbon instead of hanging around at the airport. Talking to the person sitting next to me, it turns out I was in luck. A new Metro line had been opened in July from within the terminal building which would connect with the line going into the center of the city - very convenient and cost less than 4 Euros for the 50 minute trip.

A note on the metro route taken -

I took the Red Metro line from inside airport terminal building to S Sebastio where I changed to the Blue Metro line to Baixa Chiada which is in old city centre close to the river Targa

The Lisbon Metro plan is in below link

http://www.golisbon.com/maps/lisbon-metro.html 

It took about 50 minutes each way from inside airport terminal building. You can get tickets from machine at station with credit card. So if you have checked your bags for whole trip, it should be possible to visit the centre of Lisbon if you have a 5 hour plus wait between planes.

 
Wonderful weather for wandering around the elegant old city

 Inside the ornate righthand arch is Starbucks - must rank as one of their most attractive locations

It was a good job that I had spent the afternoon in the city as on returning to the airport I discovered that the flight had been delayed by over 2 hours due to airtraffic control issues.

 

The next day had to sample the superb Dutch pancakes at Landgoed Mariënwaerdt.

 Wedding party travelling to the church in style

 followed closely by the wedding couple

 Cuttng the cake

 Wonderful weather for photos

 Super super trouper performance

 plus American style sketch

 Could not leave Holland before yet another of those delicious pancakes

 Holland is the land where everything is possible - such as this pancake with cheese, bacon, stewed cheries in syrup and icecream - yummy - the waitress did ask twice to check if that was really what we wanted but brought it all the same

Caught the 19.50hrs SATA flight from Amsterdam back to Ponta Delgada on Monday 3 September ( the only day SATA flies directly between Amsterdam and Ponta Delgada, Sao Miguel, Azores) after having had a super weekend in sunny Holland.

"Rocks" for supper 22 August 2012

Our friends João and Ana from S/V Danny Boy decided that we should be introduced to some of their favourite typical Azorean food and took us to the Restaurante O Silva in Ribeira Grande in order to, amongst other things, eat the local delicacy "Rocks". Soon a plate full of  "Rocks" was placed before us together with the necessary tools to attack them with - namely a sort of small skewer with a bent tip and half a straw. Ana and João then proceeded to give us a lesson in how to use them

The "Rocks" turned out to be the giant barnacle, Megabalanus Azoricus, which is endemic to the Azores Archipelago. In the Azores these are known as Cracas
The skewer with the bent tip is required in order to extract the animal from its shell

 and the half straw is then used to suck out the tasty, salty juice - a very special tasty dish

 This was then followed by grilled Limpets or Lapas Grelhadas

 The main course was Arroz de Cherne or White Grouper in saffran rice

 followed by two bean based delicious sweet deserts Queijada de Feijão and Pudim de Feijão

The restaurant then kindly presented us with bleached Cracas shells and a bent skewer as a souvenir

Thank you very much Ana and João for such a delicious, memorable meal.

I have since been doing a bit of googling to find out more about Megabalanus Azoricus.

In addition to the Azores, this barnacle can be found in the archipelagos of Madeira and Cape Verde.

However, as it is such a delicacy, it is in danger of being over-harvested and OSPAR, the European organisation charged with protecting the marine environment of the North-East Atlantic has put it on the danger list for over fishing - please click on the below link:-

http://qsr2010.ospar.org/media/assessments/Species/p0010_supplements/CH10_01_Azorean_barnacle.pdf

In order to conserve the species whilst catering for the tastes of the islanders, Horta University has instigated a pilot project to investigate the possibility of marine farming the Megabalanus Azoricus.
This study was conducted in Baixa do Norte (38º32' 26,342”N 28º33' 50,726”W) , a shallow water bank (minimum depth of 17.5 meters) located in the channel separating the islands of Faial and Pico, a zone characterised by strong currents of up to 1m/s.

Lets hope it will be possible to farm the barnacle as it would certainly leave an unfortunate gap in Azorean cuisine if harvesting were to be banned !

More can be found on Horta Universities website - please click on the below link:-

http://www.horta.uac.pt/intradop/images/stories/arquipelago/28/Pham_et%20al_2011_VN.pdf

Faial Sea Week 7 to 14 August 2012

Horta celebrated its annual Sea Week festival in fine style between 7 and 14 August. The boulevard was festively lit at night and restuarant marquees and other stalls erected

 The Club Nautica invited all sailors to a traditional fish soup supper

 and bands played traditional songs from two different stages at either end of town

 one evening was celebrated with Fada.

Unfortunately, after midnight the traditional music was replaced by very loud pop group bands till the early hours of the morning - the supply of earplugs from the festivities in Praia da Vitoria from last year came in very useful

 The town dignitaries made speeches

 and local bands marched through the streets

 one evening we were treated to folklore dancing

 A sailing race was held for any cruisers that wished to take part.

 As with all the Azores Island, the old whaling heritage is not forgotten and the local fleet of whaling canoes had a race between Faial and Pico

 zooming in ...

 and in ...

 Later they took of their sails and had rowing races in the Harbour

 

 During the week we visited the Horta Whaling Museum which is basically the renovated site of the old factory where they processed the various parts of the Sperm Whales which they hunted. Below are the boilers for producing whale oil from blubber - at the time this was liquid gold

 Other equipment produced bone meal for fertiliser

 This is the arch at the end of the ramp through which the massive whales were winched

 the ramp

 Between the whale museum and the town is Pim's beach off which we have had several good swims

 The other side of the museum is the volcano Monte da Guia which has a good walk to the end of its peninsular

 views of the small Caldeira do Inferno bay to the south of the peak which is a nature reserve

Our friends Riens and Ineke from S/V Zeezwaluw were very industrious

 and contributed to the yachtee artwork on the quay with their magnificent painting

Met up again with singlehander Chuck from S/V Reflections who we had last met at anchor off La Gomera in the Canaries 18 months ago. Chuck introduced us to the novel cooking method of Sous Vide - the steak he cooked for us had been cooking very slowly vacuum packed in a water bath for about 3 days at a precisely controlled temperature of 55 degC - end result - delicious. On Googling Sous Vide - see Wikipedia link below,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sous-vide

we find that this is a technique used by many top chefs.