Hello everyone! So as you know I’m back form Portugal and it was amaazzzing! I figured instead of mushing all of my favourite things into one post I would split them into sections so you can get the full experience.
So of course the first post is going to be about food, I love food… this should be no surprise.
Quick recap; I am 90% vegan (so we will stick with the term vegetarian for right now), but I knew going into this trip that to make family travel easier I would just eat vegetarian (see my Travelling with Family Post for Tips!), and this turned out to be one of the best choices.
One of the national dishes of Portugal is a dish focusing on salted cod, so that should set the scene. I always had something to eat; but there weren’t always vegetarian dishes on the menu. For the most part we ate breakfast at our accommodations (we rented houses so we had a full kitchen that was stocked), so breakfasts were the easiest meal to account for.
Lunches were normally eaten out during our day, and most places had at least one omelet on the menu that I could customize to be veggie (which often included French fry cut potatoes – 10/10 would recommend trying this). During one lunch spot I ordered the veg soup that seemed to be a staple on most menus; however, any vegetarians out there will know the feeling of taking a bite of something and knowing that it contained meat, for sure this soup contained chicken broth.
Dinners were the most interesting. Sometimes we ate at our accommodations; which meant eating copious amounts of bread, cheese, and olives, and other times we went to restaurants. Some restaurants didn’t have anything vegetarian on the menu. You would open the menu and it would be split into two sections; meat and fish. The servers were all so nice and did the best to accommodate me, but I frequently at a dinner filled with vegetable sides (i.e potatoes and steamed broccoli).
If you read my post on travelling with family I mentioned that being flexible for dinners could help things go super smoothly, and I have to say that this trip reiterated this point to me. My parents were so lovely and I could tell they felt bad that I didn’t have many menu options, but they greatly appreciated my flexibility and on the last night they made reservations at a vegetarian restaurant in Lisbon for me!
Oh and if your wondering if I ate those two vegan power bars, I did, one on each long haul plane ride because as I predicted they had no veggie meal for me (also the meal on the plane was salted cod… odd choice as it was rather stinky)
That’s all for now!
Kathleen
Avenue 23 