Obrigado e adeus - Portugual Road Trip Part 9

This is almost goodbye to Portugal and hello to Spain…

Coimbra

There’s a little bit more to report before we leave and what a great way to end our time here in Portugal. A round up of the last parts of the trip starts back in the Beiras region for the university city of Coimbra, and then moves into central Portugal in the Alejento region. 

Parking at the bottom of the hill was our first mistake, another super hilly town, the second mistake was winding in and out of passageways as we then went down again before going back up; my calf muscles are not thanking me. No other mistakes though as we were here to see a library…for those who are following this journey, I can almost hear you groan for Pi’s sake. 

The university is the oldest in Portugal and was founded in 1290. It’s buildings make this a beautiful city. Our entry ticket, costing 12 euros, gets us into the chapel, which is stunning, the library where we cannot take pictures (!), the palace and the chemistry lab…so we visit all 4 areas making the most of the entrance fee. You can have it cheaper by missing out the library. 

 In summary the chapel was beautiful, the palace, where degrees are conferred is stunning and the chemistry lab was really interesting and fun as there was a light wave science museum type thing, once you got through the only room with the old science equipment. 

University of Coimbra

The library, I feel you are all desperate to know about, was…a little disappointing. Not because of the books, because books will always be amazing to look at, but it was very dark and the cordon kept you so far away that it was impossible to see any books. You also only have an allotted 10 minutes and then you are moved out. Still glad we went and really grateful to Pi for indulging me once again.

Inside the palace, degree ceremonies take place here

Jardin da Manga

Mertola - a beautiful surprise!

Igreja Matriz, once a mosque now a church

 Although I read about this little town on the edge of the Parque Natural do Vale do Guadiana in my research before leaving home, I had completely forgotten about it! We pulled up to look for an early lunch at the edge of town and as we walked through it dawned on me that this was one of the places I wanted to see. The restaurant, Tamuje, was a lovely traditional Portuguese place where we both tried foods we had not had before. Pete’s was an unusual stew with meat, bread, vegetables, egg and a broth that was all assembled at the table. He said it was lovely.

 Roman settlement in Mertola

Entrance to the town

The town is set in a an amazing position high above the Rio Guadiana and it still has traces of its Islamic past. The town is almost a museum in itself and what was incredible was NOTHING had an entrance fee. 

Castel in Mertola

We visited the Alcáçova Roman settlement, Casa Islâmica, which is a reconstructed house from the 12th century, Igreja Matriz mihrab (Muslim prayer niche) still visible behind the altar and with a small museum out the back of the church with finds from the Moorish occupation. We then climbed up to the castle, which again was free, and then unfortunately we had to get back as we still had a long journey to do. Having spent about 3 hours in total in a town that has a population of just 2100 and we still didn’t manage to see all the museums that are here. Beautiful and fascinating; a definite place to head back to next time!

 

 

The next part of the journey took us through the Natural Park and this was lovely, the views were stunning as we drove through and we spotted a warning sign to drive carefully because of the Iberian lynx…as you can imagine we didn’t see one!

Évora - better now I’m looking back at photos!

Templo Romano

 This little city suffered from the weather not being kind to us, we were suddenly cold and it turned grey, in fact it rained on us when we finally got to the standing stones and as ever I was not dressed appropriately for the weather…this, I think, really coloured our view of the place as it is meant to be one of the best medieval towns. We camped in our first Orbitur campsite, which is a chain all over Portugal and this one wasn’t great, it had seen better days, however, it had very hot showers and it was only just over 30 minutes to walk to the city from the site. 

 We decided to stay two days and we wished we hadn’t. None of the churches were open and we didn’t really get to do anything in the town…we did however get to a lovely little bookshop that dispensed poetry in small balls out of a gum ball machine for just 50 cents. A highlight for me, as it then allowed me to learn more about the famous Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa whose line of poetry I got for my 50 cents!

As we had almost given up and headed back, we discovered some great sights in retrospect, and made the most of what there was to see.

 A couple of nice surprises during the rest of the day  were Roman baths in the middle of the town hall, still in tact, we just had to ask permission to see them from the security guard as there are no signs around for them. We also found the Capela dos Ossos which was a fascinating chapel made from bones. It wasn’t in the slightest bit creepy, in fact it was really tastefully done. As part of the building and the church next door to it, we ended up with our combined ticket, quite an unusual collection of nativity scenes collected from around the world. So all in all a better day now looking back!

Capela did Ossos

 

The afternoon ended with a very, very large bubble waffle with two scoops of ice cream and chantilly and nuts and chocolate sauce…we really, really should have shared one; we felt quite poorly afterwards.

Walking back through a small park we were confronted by many peacocks sitting all around a ruined structure and when we got back to the site a lizard living in the tree right next to us popped out to say hello. So not a bad day after all.

Leaving the next morning we called to see the megaliths that seem to surround Évora. Built around 5000 to 7500 years ago the various sites offer an insight into prehistoric tombs, temples and fertility sites. We decided to try and get to Cromeleque dos Almendres. As we had finally begun to understand, this wasn’t going to be easy or smooth! Lonely Planet warns about the road suggesting ‘note that about 5kms of the route is rough and remote’! As ever we braced ourselves and rattled our way to the stones. We were not alone and a group of American women, who were really appreciating the site, were quite helpful in pointing out the markings that are supposed to be visible on the stones; I think these have faded somewhat since the signs were made…you could just about make them out, still it was exciting. After hugging a few and pondering life here, it started to rain so it was time to head off to sunnier climes.

Cromleque dos Almendres

Off to our final stop in Portugal and we were so glad we stayed in Tavira, more on that as we start our journey into Spain.