Corrections, information and the price of fish soup!

Yesterday I wrote about the Castello Engenheiro Souza. That should have been Engenheiro Silva. That's who I googled. My fingers just typed Souza, a common name, instead of Silva, another common name. What can you do when your fingers have a mind of their own? 

Francisco Maria Pereira da Silva, to give him his full name, had the place built for his own residence. It was one of the first buildings in that section of the Barrio Novo, which Francisco Maria Pereira da Silva (1814 - 1891) was responsible for constructing. Originally it had only one floor and a few turrets but when he added further floors it was given the name of Castello. Amazing what you can find out from plaques on the wall! 

(This business of names is interesting. Phil was looking up one of his chess opponents in a database. Most chess players have some, if not most, of the games they have played in tournaments stored in a database somewhere. In this case he could not find a single one. Odd! When they came to play, his opponent put a slightly different name on the score sheet: same surname but a different first name. Another chess playing friend commented that the problem is that the Portuguese, like the Spanish, tend to have a lot of names. It may not have been conscious trickery at all. More likely it was a mistake on the part of the database organiser!) 

Here are a couple of examples of the fancy tilework on the building next door to Francisco Maria Pereira da Silva's castle. 

 Lovely stuff. 


Anyway, Engenheiro Silva seems to have been a big wheel around here back in the 19th century. Streets are named after him. Even the market hall is named after him, and that place gets reviews on Trip Advisor! 

I called in at the pottery shop there this morning. It's full of that brightly coloured earthenware pottery that they do around here. 

And, this being Portugal, there are lots of cockerels. 

Best of all, today anyway, was this pottery  basket of Baby Jesuses! (Is that the correct plural for Jesus?) 


The games in the chess tournament here begin at seven in the evening. This is great as it gives you plenty of time to have lunch and digest it or sleep it off or whatever. However, it is not good when games go on and on. Phil's game last night did not finish until 10.30 or just a little later. We then waited around for a couple of friends to finish so that we could go and have a beer together. When we finally left the playing venue at almost 11.30 one of our friends was STILL finishing off a game. 

 We left him to it and went off to the Caçarola restaurant. Our Canadian friend had not eaten since a late breakfast and needed to have some food. We planned on having only a beer but the fish soup he was served looked so good that we decided to have some as well. 

Two bowls of very good fish soup, a bit of bread and two beers for €8.45!! You would be lucky to get a pint for that price in the UK!