Sardinhas assadas - fresh sardines grilled on charcoal - are a quintessential Portuguese summertime dish, a kind of national signature, as gelato is to Italy or crepes to France. Best eaten outdoors, charred with the taste of a hot smoky barbecue grill, oiled and rock-salted.
Searching for a particular wooden deck of a particular family-run beach restaurant, simple and rustic, where six years ago we ate sardinhas with a bottle of house wine watching the sun set on the sea ... well, this proved difficult.
Except that one red herring led us to walk all the way down the Escadinhas (little steps) da Cova Redonda - many, many little cobbled steps, in fact, gently descending to the sea ...
Searching for a particular wooden deck of a particular family-run beach restaurant, simple and rustic, where six years ago we ate sardinhas with a bottle of house wine watching the sun set on the sea ... well, this proved difficult.
Except that one red herring led us to walk all the way down the Escadinhas (little steps) da Cova Redonda - many, many little cobbled steps, in fact, gently descending to the sea ...
where we found ourselves on a perfect, tiny beach in a cove surrounded by huge rocks to the right ...
and left ...
... cutting it off from the rest of the coastline.
These are the giant, golden rock formations that Algarve beaches are best known for, along with caves, grottos, and the blue-green colours of the sea.
This seagull barely moved from his high-rise on the rock-face the whole time we were there ...
and with so few people, it felt like being on an exclusive private beach - what luck! ...
This little girl was being towed on her lilo by her father, floating languidly on his back ...
and these two men were chatting as they paddled a little way out to sea ...
A sailor in nautical Breton stripes and white cap motored around the rocks to offer a ride to the caves, but there were no takers (no tourists here) and he sped off ...
We never found the original place from memory, but many escadinhas later, we did find sardinhas (first pic) on a nearby beach, much longer but still uncrowded
... right here, on a raised wooden deck ...
with these views ...
Did he catch our sardines earlier that morning?
and these two men were chatting as they paddled a little way out to sea ...
A sailor in nautical Breton stripes and white cap motored around the rocks to offer a ride to the caves, but there were no takers (no tourists here) and he sped off ...
We never found the original place from memory, but many escadinhas later, we did find sardinhas (first pic) on a nearby beach, much longer but still uncrowded
... right here, on a raised wooden deck ...
with these views ...
Did he catch our sardines earlier that morning?