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Wednesday, August 26, 2015

Out into the Alentajo

The Alentajo region is south of the Tagus River from Lisbon, a warm dry area primarily focused on food and wine production. How bad could that possibly be?

First stop, a baking establishment that still mills some of its flour using a windmill:



 A serious industrial bread mixer!
                            

 Wood-fired bread oven

The windmill's grinding stone - wheat is funneled into the hole in the center, ground, and then shakes out the bottom of the drum:

Who could resist this donkey, posing with the owners of the bakery?

Next, onto Acietão for cheese-making demonstration and a lovely lunch, both done by the owner of this farm, a Rhodesian woman, Phillipa, who came to visit Portugal and never left.

Naturally, the tourists had to get in on some cheese-making, which is a messy business and no mistake!



Now highly skilled at handwork, we shuffled off to learn tile-making; why not?




The variety and beauty of the tiles made here is incredibly broad:






They do quite a bit of custom work, as well:




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