For a long time, I had doubts about returning to Cape Vert, where I spent 2 years of my childhood. I had so many good memories about that tie, I feared they could be spoilt by seeing it again, so any years later; wouldn’t it be too different, wouldn’t my childhood memories be somewhat shattered? But then my sister talked me into going, and off we went, a family trip down the memory lane – my mother, sister and niece.
I’ glad we did it. We landed in S. Vicente airport (now named after Cesárea Évora), and the landscape of barren hills immediately felt familiar. As the sight of Mindelo harbor, and the Pracinha, where we stayed in a very nice hotel.
My first impressions of the city were how small it looked! The centre was so much tidier than before, and everything I remembered was in a short walking distance – my old school, the beach where Matiota used to be, the palace where I played as a child.
The centre of Mindelo is very well preserved, very clean - the bright colours of the houses and the old colonial architecture wonderfully kept. Everything we remembered – shops, cafés, the eagle statue, the palace, the Pracinha – was in walking distance, and I mean like a 5 minute walk.
There was a great exhibition of African art at the Palace, and there were a lot of tourist shops, but also genuine nice cafés. And the Leão drugstore was exactly the same as I remembered it. As was the Monte Cara, the same beautiful sight as always. The weather was unusually humid, so there was a mist stopping us from having a clear view of the Santo Antão mountains.
The food was, as expected, a wonderful experience. The first restaurant we went to was the Cocktail, where we had a buffet of hearty and tasty food, and later we tried several different restaurants, the Nautilus being the best, in my opinion. Tuna cooked in different ways, cachupa, cheese goat from Sto. Antão, cheese pudding – all delicious, as the white wine from Fogo.
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário