May 22, 2023
Something Fishy on the Streets of Porto
When you are on tour, whether by bike or other means, something jiggles in your head, maybe serotonin or something, that makes you more optimistic and also gullible. How else would ordinarily savy people put down cash for the array of tourist junk offered in every tourist town?
Take Porto. There is no doubt that in Porto sardines are a real thing. They are found fresh in many stores, served in restaurants, and canned Portuguese sardines are a legitimate quality export commodity. So here's an idea - let's lure the tourists with the sardine idea, but since many may not like fish, we'll sell chocolate sardines. Good idea! Let's put them in the same tins as real sardines, or for more advanced customers, sardine shaped lidded tins.
Stores selling chocolate sardines abound in the tourist district of Porto. Their very numbers support the impression that this is a real thing, a quality export item.
With this background, and looking for a souvenir for daughter Joni, we stumbled into a Porto sardine shop. Here were sardine shaped chocolate foil figures , packed into various attractive tins. We know Joni loves chocolate, so it seemed a natural to bring back home. Portugal is known for sardines and Europe is known for chocolate - nice combination!
That is what we thought until Joni opened her first sardine yesterday. No, it was not a case of maggots or anything particularly gross. It was just the worst chocolate you could ever imagine. This was the kind of dreck you might find at Walmart at Easter. You would definitely not want to eat this. But wait, once could just look on the sardines and packaging as a kind of postcard. There is no doubt that the tin cover is attractive, and it does show the iconic Clerigos Tower of Porto!
A postcard, of course, does not invite you to chew on it. Same for a souvenir cork purse. This did not prevent Joni from musing about a taste test between some of the purses we also brought back, and one of her sardines! Ok, enough grousing. But what do you think of the below as something to bring back from Porto? (Photos, courtesy of Joni).
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