Portugal’s state-run pousadas are well-known for their comfortable and luxurious hotels, but for the traveler who enjoys “getting inside” the local culture, Solares de Portugal offers a more intimate and personal way to see the country. Its members welcome guests to their own historic properties, which may be a noble palace or a beautifully restored country home.
Maria Armanda Ribeiro de Sousa was given Casa da Pedra by her parents; she was born in a larger house within sight, on the same hillside on the Sera Marao, not far from Porto, in northern Portugal. The former farmhouse had fallen into disrepair, and Sra Ribeiro de Sousa rebuilt and modernized it, creating the comfortable home it is today.
She tells guests the story of the farm, called Casa da Pedra for the stone hillside from which its land is carved. The people who had lived her had sad lives, she explains, and she was determined to bring happiness to the land and the new house by inviting people to stay here and enjoy its comfort, hospitality and grand views. And she is having a lot of fun by doing it.
“Guests come from all over the world,” she says in her careful English, “from New Zealand, Norway, Canada, United States, South Africa, Netherlands, Italy, everywhere. I love to meet people and welcome them to this house.”
And welcome them she does, to cozy bedrooms with modern baths and tasteful antique furnishings. Rooms have handmade linens on the nightstands and fine cotton sheets on the beds – which may be of intricately inlaid wood. As she shares a glass of Port wine with guests on arrival (accompanied by the most delicious nut cookies – a specialty of nearby Amarante) she invites them to enjoy the entire house and to curl up in the comfortable parlor chairs to read the local hiking and nature books she keeps on hand for them.
In the evening they can sit on the balcony above the garden and watch the lights twinkle on in the valley below. The garden includes a swimming pool, a large copper still from her parents estate, old pottery wine jugs and a lemon tree, along with flowers.
Casa da Pedra is near the charming town of Amarante, which sits astride the Tamego River. Tying the two sides of town together is a high arched bridge, and the church of the local saint, Goncalo, stands at one end of it, making a perfect picture best viewed from one of the cafes whose balconies overhang the river.
Amarante, the palace of Mateus and its beautiful gardens, and the wine-clad hillsides of the Tamego and Douro valleys are within easy reach of Casa da Pedra, making it a good center for touring the region. A good restaurant is about a mile down the road, so guests don’t need to travel far from “home” at night.
Reservations and information about Casa da Pedra and all the other properties in the system are available from Solares de Portugal, which also offers travelers help in planning their entire trip, at no charge. In fact, if you send them a list of your interests and the places you’d like to see, they will plan your entire trip, reserving rooms in Solares properties in each area.
Barbara Rogers - Traveler, writer and guidebook author with a passion for those lands that border the Mediterranean Sea and the neighboring Atlantic ...
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