Sunday, August 29

Like Estonia and Latvia, Portugal has Bolt, and all three countries use the same app. Today we celebrate by taking a Bolt to the little seaside town of Matosinhos, about forty kilometres north of Porto (and actually part of the Porto district of Portugal).

For some reason the beach and the approach roads remind us both of Santa Monica. We walk along the beach which reminds me of English resorts on an unusually good day. Families nestle beside foldable wind breakers and children bury each other in wet sand.

I take a picture of a walled pool that some children have built to capture the sea when the tide takes it out. Ten minutes later, as we look at another one, the young makers race down the beach to guard it, apparently worried that we have vandalism on our minds.

We eat salads for lunch at a beach café but can barely manage them after last night’s calorific excess.

In the afternoon we walk away from the beach and stumble across a big Lidl. Curiosity drives us in. We find an enormous amount of whole fish, not all of which we recognise; octopus both whole and butchered; giant prawns, and shellfish of various sizes. Not like the Lidl in Söderkulla, then.

In the evening, back by Bolt, we go for a meal at Maria Rita, highly recommended and literally round the corner. I have the signature dish, Bacalhau à Maria Rita, which turns out delicious and exceedingly large. It consists of cod baked in a cream sauce with sliced potatoes and onions. It arrives looking like lasagne for four.

We will go wild and finish the evening with two glasses of wine outdoors at Permanent Bubble where we will have a long conversation with the Dutch waiter.

She will have a lot to say about the immediate area.