You're right, it's a very beautiful country, although the heat does get to me in the summer, particularly because it's a Mediterranean climate, which means no summer rainfall. And month after month of baking heat with no rain becomes unbearable after a while. I long for the huge summer storms of Africa, where the heat builds up and builds up until - with a huge clap of thunder and flashes of lightning - the rain explodes out of the sky like a waterfall. And afterwards the earth sings, and all is clean and fresh.

They do indeed have wood-fired ovens all over Spain and Portugal, and the bread they make in them is out-of-this-world. I am often stunned to see locals filling their supermarket trolleys with plastic-wrapped, mass-produced, pre-sliced, soggy cotton-wool stuff called 'bread', when you can wander around to the nearest bakery and buy a little bit of heaven. :-)
But they don't much use the ovens for pizzas, and most of the pizzas I've had here have been the deep-dish type, which I loathe. There are a few reasonable pizza places around, but very few. I love Italian food, and there are a lot of 'Italian' restaurants here, but they seem to specialise in the kind of food that package tourists like. Few of them are authentic at all.

Fortunately the simple local Portuguese food is always good - grilled fish or chicken with fries and salad and great bread, not to mention great wine. And my favourite is chicken piri-piri, chicken with hot sauce - if they know you, they'll make the sauce extra hot - yum!
Hmmmm I'm getting hungry!