Day 7 - Belmonte - Castelo de Vide - Evora

Headed north again. Our first stop is Belmonte. A quaint little town in the hills. We're only here to see the a Jewish museum and olive oil making. After that, we'll be off headed to Evora. 

The town itself is cute. More tiny alley ways that lead to some unknown destination. I met this guy in one of those alleys. 

Belmonte isn't overly interesting. But the Jewish museum was. I didn't realize there was a Jewish population in Portugal - and that Jews escaped there in WWII. It makes sense, but it hadn't actually crossed my mind. 

After the museum we walked back down the hill and stopped at an olive oil making facility. I wasn't sure if it was still being used or just set up to show us tourists how olive oil is made. It's a pretty interesting process, and time consuming. 

Back on the bus, we're headed to Castelo de Vide for lunch. This is where my day turned to be a bit irritating. Here we stop in a small town with a bus full of hungry people. And we're not the only bus that has stopped here. Finding food was challenging for most. Thankfully, Janet and I stopped immediately for lunch. Others who waited found no food left. Several restaurants ran out of food because of the demand. 

I understand why Globus stops in small communities. It brings money to the locals. At the same time though, it brings stress to everyone. They were clearly not prepared for so many tour buses stopping for lunch. 

More bifanas for us. 

The highlight of the day was the last stop, a cork factory. Portugal is one of only a handful of countries that grows and creates cork. The trees are scattered throughout the landscape. They aren't planted in nice pretty rows like you'd expect. I asked about that and was told that they just let them grow where ever. 

The bark grows and the eventually is "peeled" from the tree. They don't take all the bark off, just usually the lower part. The tree then regenerates the bark. The mark the tree with the last two digits of the year. Then in 9 years they will be able to harvest from that tree again. 

The cork tree is the only tree you can peel it's bark and the tree not die. It was fascinating to me. You can see the whole process here. 

Done with the cork factory we were off to Evora for the evening and to stay the night. Tomorrow we'd tour the ONE place I was most looking forward to on this tour - the Chapel of Bones.