Living Arrouquelas
Quinta da Badula, a friend’s winery. made me know Arrouquelas (where I accidentally passed a couple of years before), and keeps inviting me each year. I had to visit the village, one day, take a few photos, but the great experience of wine harvesting keeps being the reason that leads me there each September.
Nossa Senhora da Encarnação
The most interesting building in Arrouquelas is this church, that, though being built in the beginning of the 20th century has a sun clock dated from 1869, and some tiles from the 17th century (brought from… ?).
ARCA
I had no contact (yet) with the local cultural and recreational association, but enjoyed their pavilion – the bell is quite unusual out of churches’ bell towers.
Health Centre
A small and typical house, well decorated, was used to install the local health centre.
That was a surprise for me, knowing the problems in my home town to find a solution for that need (I describe it in “Monument to incompetence” a tip in my Turquel page.
Harvesting
For several years I was inviting Virtual Tourist readers for wine harvesting in this friend’s farm absolutely free. Maybe we may continue in other pages…
Some people pay much money to participate in the very interesting works of traditional harvesting. They are right, it really worth the price.
“Enoturismo” is a fancy new word created in Portugal and Spain to mean those tourist trips concentrated in wine discovery and tasting, with such demand that most farms do charge big money to accept tourists in their works.
( A friend of mine is a tourist operator that charges 4000 € for a week of wine tourism – always full!)
However, it is still possible to enjoy that experience for free.
Inspiration
In 1998, when I was about to build my new home, I saw “somewhere” a beautiful house that I photographed to give the architect a general idea of what I wanted him to do.
Yesterday I saw it again – still beautiful, but strongly needing a general painting (even more than mine…).
It is located in Arrouquelas, and it still is one of the most beautiful houses in the village.
