Last weekend I went with some friends to Arouca to spend the weekend. A friend of my mother has a house there and from there we could drive to Passadiços do Paiva, the World Travel Award winner of 2016 of Best Touristic Development Project. Unfortunately dued to the big fires of the past summers, part of it was destroyed and it reopened two weeks ago. As we wanted to do the 16km (8km up and 8km down), we decided to start in Espiunca, as we could do all the way up and then all the way down, not so tiring at the end. We actually didn’t go all the way to Areinho because the last kilometer would be just to go down there and then we would have to go all the way up again. If you just want to do one way, start in Areinho, we preferred walking that way.
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My favorite parts of the way, when the river would turn back like this!
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A good surprise: the big waterfall!
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The hardest part:
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Upstairs they all give up and took a taxi in Areinho back to Espiunca and me and my mom walked back alone. As I said we preferred to walk in this direction, but I’m not sure if it was for what we were seeing, but because it was going down, it wasn’t that warm any longer and the light was more beautiful!
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Back at home and we had to hurry up because there was a table reserved for us at “Parlamento” Restaurant. We had to try the Posta Arouquesa, a really tender steak typical from Arouca! Absolutely amazing! Everything!