Tag: Porto

S Silvestre do Porto 2014!

Manuel Marques December 31, 2014 No Comments Uncategorized , , ,

And it is done, yet another S Silvestre! This year I was quite fortunate to have been able to train with the guys from my home club for a week and a half before the actual race, which was good fun (and we have a lot of big climbs on the banks of the river to practise our hill running!).

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what a great bunch of people!

I ended up with pretty much the same time as last year (around 43:30 for 10k) which wasn’t stellar, and to be absolutely honest I think I was overly conservative with my effort – the first climb went on OK, but after it I let myself fall behind a bit. Furthermore, running downhill is not one of my best skills, hence I kept being overtaken there 🙂

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less than a km to go here! And the weather was simply spectacular!

Still, it was a nice race to finish the year properly, with the bonus of a post-race meal at our local Pizza Hut – featuring an obscene amount of pizza which made the race feel like piece of cake compared to finishing that very last slice!

Francesinha night… in Canterbury!

Manuel Marques December 8, 2012 No Comments Uncategorized , , ,

Yes, indeed! Our latest meeting of the Portuguese group involved a fairly elaborate Porto delicacy, the famous francesinha. 😀

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Yum! It looks absolutely gorgeous, doesn’t it?

Even though I’ll head back to Porto in a few days, one can never say no to a francesinha, especially one that was completely home-made, following a fairly complex recipe for its sauce (I lost track of the ingredients after a while, they were so many! 🙂 ).

And to our vegetarian friends, the chef Bela Soares created a masterpiece – a “veggie” francesinha featuring eggplant and mozarella, which looked also fairly well-composed, and the “unusual” ingredients in it made it look fairly smart and sophisticated. (and it also tasted brilliantly, according to our vegetarian friends!)

"Veggie"
I think it is fair to say that it would be viable to open a Porto restaurant here in Canterbury!
(well, perhaps they wouldn’t like the tripes as much as the francesinha… 🙂 )

All in all, it was an excellent evening. I do miss speaking Portuguese when I’m out and about (skypeing does not count!), and this kind of events really help making that happen. And I’ve also had the opportunity to meet some very nice people, while at it!…

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And here it is, the whole group.
Yours truly is over there on the left, grinning stupidly for no apparent reason and making a sad figure of himself…

 

Vistas do Porto (Oporto views), circa 1989

Manuel Marques December 8, 2012 No Comments Uncategorized , , ,

This is an old video I digitised a while ago from a pile of my grandfather’s old Betamax tapes. I think Vivaldi’s Four Seasons (Winter) is the perfect soundtrack for such a dramatic landscape!
(and note the two rowers on the double-scull – my old grandfather’s Sony camcorder has quite a good zoom, as you can even see the colour of their blades 🙂 )

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