Our daughter was born in May 2021 and soon after we started researching the process to get her Portuguese passport. Because of the pandemic, the big cities had huge lines and super late appointment dates, so we had to look for alternative places to resolve this issue as soon as possible. We even scheduled a date with the Coimbra registry office and planned a weekend in this city that I've been dying to visit, but Paddy caught a virus at school and we had to cancel our plans. Luckily, we found an opening for a few days later in New Town of Barquinha.
But what place is this?
Well, yes. We had never heard of this place, but when we put it on Google Maps and saw that it was 1h30 from Cascais, we knew that was where we were going. To top it off, the date was October 12th, a holiday in Brazil, and we could go with just Ju, since Paddy would be in school. A trip without a car toddler sometimes it's good, right?
We hit the road right after dropping him off at school, around 10am, and the little one slept the whole way, so we were able to enjoy the journey talking as if we were alone. Almost like a honeymoon, right? LOL
The lunch
As we arrived at the village 2 hours before the scheduled time, we decided to look for a place to have lunch. After reading some reviews on TripAdvisor and, by coincidence, reading about Vila Nova de Barquinha in the book “I STAY IN PORTUGAL“, we chose the Almourol Restaurant.
This traditional place is located in the village of Tanks, right on the edge of the Tagus River. We sat at a table on the balcony with a nice view of the village of Goosebumps. You could see the famous Almourol Castle if we tried a little harder. We chose 2 different dishes from the 25 euro per person menu, but we didn't fall in love with them. We thought it was expensive for what it was, but at least the place had a nice view. Oh, and to our surprise, they didn't accept cards and we had to pay by MBWAY, which I found a bit strange.
Making the passport
We left the restaurant close to the time of our appointment and therefore, we went straight to the registry office, passing through the main street of the village. Fortunately, the place was super empty and everything indicated that the process would be super fast, but as Portugal always has last minute surprises in store for us, the system crashed and we had to wait almost 1 hour to resolve a 10-minute issue. Unfortunately, we were unable to walk around VNB after the appointment, because we wanted to pick up the little one from school, but we could see from the outside that the Boat Park It's lovely! Oh, and the center of Vila Nova de Barquinha too.
Some photos for you to see:
In short, it is a picturesque village and a good place to visit if you want to see Almourol Castle, which is right next door.
See you next time!
