Home Sweet Home: Tabuado, Portugal
We have spent five weeks in this glorious little town. It’s been such a perfect place to begin our journey, decompress, and spend time together. Our home is so spacious; we can be together or have space to ourselves. Our home has three levels so we get our own level for our bedroom, ensuite, and balcony. The girls get to share a room with two twin beds and use the third bedroom as their playroom on the main level, in addition to the other typical common kitchen, dining, living, and bathroom spaces. The basement is the laundry room/wine cellar. The backyard is a huge, multi-tiered oasis that we spend a lot of time in. There are so many fruit trees and lavender bushes. Homemade lavender lemonade with lavender and lemons from our own yard became a staple that is always in our fridge!
This area is incredibly mountainous. Everywhere you look is lush greenery, mountains, and valleys. It’s stunning. It’s also the absolutely perfect summer climate for us! The days are nice and hot, usually in the 30-35°C range with no humidity. At night, the temperatures drop to a cooler 15-20°C range. We are able to keep the windows open all day to get a nice cross breeze and the house stays perfectly cool without the need for AC, then close them up in the evening before the bugs come out and it stays a perfect temperature overnight. It also does not rain in the summer months here. Every day in this area is bright, clear blue skies. When the temperatures drop down closer to 15°C, we will notice some clouds and maybe a little mist first thing in the morning, not even enough to make a puddle, but as the sun comes out that mist goes away and it’s back to perfect blue skies. Apparently, this is completely typical. They get a ton of rain throughout the winter, and then no rain during the summer. Yet everything always stays a perfect, lush green year-round as vegetation continues to draw on deeper water reserves in the ground.
The town itself has been so nice. There’s a beautiful little café/bakery across the street from our house. We go in there every day at least once, often 2-3x a day. We buy our fresh bread and buns there in the morning, will go there for a quick lunch, a coffee date, a beer to cool down after a long hike, to have a sweet afternoon treat, and to buy some yummy treats for desserts. Everything we have bought there is amazing and delicious. And it’s so affordable that we don’t feel bad indulging! $1.50 for a cappuccino, beer, or a fresh piece of cake or pastry, $2.50 for a sandwich or two pieces of pizza for lunch, less than $1.00 for four fresh buns or $1.50-2.00 for a fresh loaf of bread. And the staff there are soooo kind. We have a special affinity for one in particular, Sylvia, who is the only one in Tabuado we have met who speaks a little bit of English and has been amazing at helping us! We are all going to miss her so much!
While the café is definitely our highlight, there are so many other great little things in this town. There are other pretty little cafes, a few small grocers, a delicious restaurant, and other traditional things like a pharmacy, butcher, physiotherapy clinic, dentist, laundromat, etc. This town is small, I’d guess only 2000-3000 people, and it is definitely not a touristy place. Which we are grateful for. We wanted a small, authentic experience in Portugal, and that’s exactly what we’re getting. God bless Google Translate, which works offline since we have no data, which has helped us out a fair bit! We mostly point and say “Obrigado!” (thank you) and “Bom Dia!” (good morning) or ”Ola” (hello) as we are out walking/hiking and it’s gotten us by remarkably well so far! Despite the fact that they are a close-knit small town unused to tourists and we do not speak the language, everyone is so friendly and kind to us. And everyone loves to dote on the girls and give them little treats in the shops.
We are going to miss this magical little town and the amazing property we are staying at, both of which are lodged firmly into our hearts and will always feel special to all four of us. The girls are already asking when we can come back here next. Tabuado will be a hard place to leave and a hard act to follow for the next place we stay!
