Portugal: A Love Letter to the Alentejo
In all its farmy and beachy glory.
Planning on attending OutThere’s Icons of Inclusion conference on Monday, July 21, at the Dorchester in London? Pavia will be moderating the panel “Iconic Conversations: Stardust and Blueprints, Making Dreams a Reality” with Nicola Butler of NoteWorthy and Sophie Galvagnon of Selar. Stop by and say hi!
Pavia here. There’s a reason everyone you and I know is traveling or living in Portugal, or else scheming a way to travel to and live in Portugal. I just zipped around Lisbon and the Alentejo region, staying in eight hotels in ten days (the glamour of travel journalism), and I couldn’t have loved it more.
But let me get the bad news out of the way, because there is so little of it: Lisbon airport sucks! I have an Italian passport, which usually makes immigration from non-EU countries a scan-and-go breeze. Not so here, where I spent 45 minutes in slow-going lines. I shouldn’t complain, because I had it better than the other two categories of travelers. The lines for UK/US/Canada/Australia passports were two to three times as long. As for everyone else, well, I think they’re still waiting. What’s the problem? The airport is installing automatic passport-reading machines (we saw them sitting there in their plastic wrap), and the transition is sloooow.
Also not so smooth: The one-hour wait to get the rental car.
Like I said: Portugal is popular.
But once we got on the road, things started looking up and never came down. Driving in Portugal is a joy. Especially if you’re heading to the Alentejo, the farmy region between Lisbon and the beachy Algarve region, which is what I’m focusing on today. (Lisbon will get its own newsletter soon.)
On smooth, easy-to-navigate highways, we passed forests of majestic pines and huge stork nests perched in electrical towers near rivers (so many nests!). Along the scenic country roads, we passed groves of olive, cork, and fruit trees, and hardly any other cars, which makes speeding really fun, though I was advised not to go above 130 km/hour.
São Lourenço do Barrocal
We were on our way to São Lourenço do Barrocal, a hotel I’ve dreamt about for a decade, for a Leading Hotels of the World conference pegged to the release of their new book, Culture. Among the attendees were Portuguese designer Joana Astolfi, photographer Mark Borthwick, and hoteliers from LHW hotels — Sara Maestrelli from Violino d’Oro in Venice and Guido Fiorentino from Hotel Excelsior Vittoria in Sorrento.
I was especially interested to hear from São Lourenço owner José Antonio Uva, part of the eighth generation to live on the estate. He grew up spending summers on the farm until the 1970s when the Portuguese dictatorship claimed the property for a decade, which was all it took for things to fall apart and the cats and pigeons to take over. (Autocracy ruins everything. Are you listening, my fellow Americans?) Uva realized the 780-hectare property that had long been home to a farming village with groves of ancient olive trees was too big to merely be a summer house, so he decided to combine farming with hospitality, assembling a visionary team tasked with staying true to the history of the place while propelling it into the future. Restoring the structures was Pritzker-winning architect Eduardo Souto do Mora, who was given one condition: He couldn’t build anything new. No problem — he found clever and winning solutions. The old olive oil press is now the reception and bar. The chicken coop is the (seriously excellent) boutique stocked with local ceramics, housewares, clothing, and São Lourenço’s own wines and olive oils. Kennels for the hunting dogs became the restaurant. Ledgers, papers, mementos, and old family photos (grandma looks like she was heaps of fun) have been repurposed into the decor, most notably a fascinating cabinet of curiosities designed by Astolfi. Warmth, love, history, and culture permeate the property.
The 40 keys include 22 winery, courtyard, and farm rooms; two large suites with a view of Monsaraz castle on the nearby hillside; and sixteen one- to three-bedroom cottages. Thick ivy covered the entrance to our spacious room, whose floors were tiled in warm terracotta bricks.
So though I was here for a conference, the panels didn’t get in the way of the fun. We rode horses through the property, past beehives, wells, ancient olive trees, and neolithic ruins. We woke before dawn for a hot air balloon ride with Up Alentejo, taking turns spotting wild boar, foxes, cows, and birds from above — a farmland safari. There was barely time to swim in the pools or have a treatment at the spa, and no time to take a pottery or a flower arranging workshop or go mountain biking or sample the flavors of an olive oil or a wine tasting.
But there was plenty of time for long dinners at the outdoor grill and stargazing under the clear skies.
Did São Lourenço live up to the decade-long dream? Yes. And then some.
Read on for life at the sublime beach and another farm-tastic hotel.