Mealhada Portugal lies northeast of Coimbra Portugal. The area around the city served as a huge, 260-acre monastic retreat from the 6^th though 18^th centuries. In the 17th century, Portuguese explorers brought trees that brought from around the world to expand the forest.

The area was a battleground in the early 19^th century when the Portuguese and British forces fended off the French.

Whether you prefer to hike through the dozens of trails or visit a fairy-tale palace, this is a nice place to visit.

Buçaco Palace Hotel

In the late 19^th century, King Carlos commissioned a huge, extravagant, Manueline hunting lodge here. It was constructed and decorated by leading Portuguese architects, landscape architects and artists, including those who painted murals and produced azulejos panels of scenes of the war against the French. Carlos died before the Buçaco Palace was complete and it was transformed into a luxury hotel in 1917.

The Palace is just as beautiful outside as it is inside. As we had lunch reservations, we were allowed to access the hotel and explore its incredible Manueline details, murals and tiles—and sample one of the estate’s Buçaco wines.

Our lunch took place on a terrace which overlooks its lovely garden. We also had an opportunity to strolled though the gardens and the incredible, several hundred-foot long wisteria arcade, which was in full bloom when we visited.

The Palace is extraordinary. If we are ever back, we will try to stay there.

National Forest of Buccaco

We also took advantage of one of the complete contemplative trails that the monks built in the woods and parts of two other trails. We hiked the pretty, roughly 4.5-kilometer up and back Vale dos Fetos trail. This moderately steep uphill stone-paved trail goes by a couple dozen single-room buildings each of which has clay sculpture that trace the Stations of the Cross. It ends at a viewpoint hike down roughly 1,000 feet over the valley and the hotel.

We also did parts of two of the other monk-built contemplative trails. Fonte Fria takes you to a double stairway around a terraced spring-fed cascade which goes down to a pretty pond that is shared by bamboo and palm trees.

The other trail, Trail of Ferns, is in a relatively flat rain forest trail that passes by the pond at the base of the Fonte Fria trail and the pond. When we visited in late April, the palm trees and ferns were green and the trail was lined by flowers including huge white calla lilies plus pink, purple and blue flowers. The trail was also home to tall Sequoia and Pine Trees.

Restaurants

Buçaco Palace Restaurant

The palace, the dining room and the garden beneath the patio on which we ate are all beautiful. The dishes on the menu sound elaborate, compelling, and expensive. So is the wine list which focuses almost exclusively on expensive Buçaco estate wines. We were prepared to order the optional lunch cover that showcased several intriguing tastes and a flute of Buçaco sparking wine. We planned to supplement that with appetizers of Aveiro Lagoon oysters with “suckling pig popcorn, a half bottle of wine and two main dishes.

After waiting forever to place our order and get our half bottle of wine (a pleasant, but not memorable 2017 Buçaco Branco Reservado), we faced another interminable wait to order our meal. We ended up skipping the cover and the appetizer as a means of keeping the lunch down to 2.5 hours.

We ordered two intriguingly sounding dishes: Braised Algarve scarlet prawns with heads stuffed with mushrooms and Carolina rice with yuzo gel and prawn foam and slow-baked suckling pig belly with local coastal clams and potato hachis with copita and smoked pig jus. Both were fine, if not memorable.

We then had to endure yet another long wait between the time we requested and received the check. While it is worth eating at the restaurant just to access the incredible hotel, it is yet another restaurant that seems to be resting on past laurels and reliance on deep-pocketed hotel guests, and beautiful location. It is certainly not worth going for the food, much less the abysmal service.

Rei dos Leitos (Mealhada)

We did better with our dinner choice In Mealhada. After reviewing the menu and identifying the dishes we were likely to have, we requested the wine list. Our server returned with a 100+ page book which after several pages devoted to champagnes, focused exclusively on Portuguese wines. The thick book summarized their 4,000+-bottle cellar.

After scanning several pages and being very pleasantly surprised to find that perhaps 60 percent priced of the bottles were priced at less than 50 euros and 90 percent were below 100 euros. But being overwhelmed, we put ourselves at our server’s mercy.

After telling him our food choices and what we seek in wines, he asked our price point—assuring us that they had many lovely wines for less than the 40 euros price point we suggested. After a couple more questions and brief explanations of the characteristics of reds from a few different regions, he brought us a bottle of 2015 Titular Alfrocheiro (the grape variety) red from the Dao region. While we both enjoyed the wine and felt that it would go well with the suckling pig Tom planned to order. Joyce rightly felt that it would overpower her seabass and requested a glass of white to go with her dish. The server asked us to let him try something. He brought a pinot noir glass that would allow the wine to open, brought another decanter to double decant some of the wine and then, quite unexpectedly, put the decanter into an ice bucket for a short period. This did indeed open and smooth the wine enough for her to enjoy the very nice wine with her fish.

We enjoyed the food as much as the wine. Tom’s suckling pig came an olive oil/garlic/pepper sauce, salad and, unexpectedly, potato chips. Joyce’s seabass came with prawns and shrimp risotto. While both were very good, Joyce’s seabass, and especially the shrimp risotto were standouts. We followed this with an equally tasty dessert: a sweet egg custard with almonds. The service was as good as the food and the wine—and all for less than the price of the two-dish lunch we had had with the half-bottle of much less interesting white wine. True, the Palace hotel restaurant did offer an incredible atmosphere and more complex preparations. But the food, wine, and service at Rei dos Leitos were all far superior.