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. 

Day 6 - Guimaraes - Penafiel - Viseu

Day 6 already! Man, it's going fast. And by "fast" I mean I can barely remember what we've done already. That's one of the things I love about the Globus tours; they really stuff it full. It's also what I hate about them. 

Today we left Porto and headed north. Our first stop is Guimaraes. The little I knew about this town was that Alonso Enrique, the founder of Portugal, was born here. And, big shock, there's a beautiful cathedral in the main square. 

Our tour guide, Hassan, picked this place for a group photo. He was NOT expecting to see the crabs in the photo. He laughed when we put them on and said he had never had a group shot with crabs.

Janet and I took this opportunity to take a crab shot with ourselves and Alonso. 

After the photo op, we walked down a tiny street to the Largo da Oliveira. There used to be a olive tree planted here by Alonso Enrique. But it got chopped down at some point and a new one put in it's place. This square also has a Gothic shrine to commemorate the Battle of Salado ( a battle between Portuguese and the Moorish army in 1340.)

Walking a little further we found ourselves in the main square. Here is where we found the Church of Sao Gaulter. The square to the church is filled with this beautiful garden. 

The sun was in the worst place possible to take a good shot of this church. We walked down to the church and spent a couple of minutes inside. It was simple and beautiful as it appears all the cathedrals are in Portugal. 

We were getting close to the time we had to meet the group again, so Janet and I walked up the street and found a little cafe to sit and have a Fanta and some water. 

Back on the bus we headed to Quinta da Aveleda located in Penafiel for some wine tasting. 

Part of the group took a tour of their gardens, and the rest of us lazy bones just hung out in the main house resting on a veranda with some beautiful views. 

The wine tasting was accompanied with some heavy tapas. It was quite delicious, but the wine... not so much. It was too sweet and I'm sure not their best wine. 

Next stop, a drive through the Duoro Valley on our way to Visue where we'll stop for the night. 

The Duoro Valley is their wine country. The hills are covered with rows and rows of vines. 

All those photos were taken in a moving bus barreling down the highway. The reflection in the bus window shows up every now and then, but you get the picture of how the valley looked. 

Visue is an interesting place to stop for the night. It's a small town with TWO cathedrals in the same square. There wasn't much going on in this sleepy little town when we got there. Janet and I walked up to the cathedrals then on the way back stopped for a beer. We had a dinner excursion later that night so we needed just something to get us to that point. 

Dinner was a group dinner that was included in the tour. It was at a little restaurant called Forno di Mimi. We started with an appetizer that I really wish the waiter didn't tell us what it was. Chicken gizzards. Blech. The gravy it was in was good though. 

That was followed by a vegetable soup. Portugal is big on their blended vegetable soups. And so far they've all been delicious. 

The wine they served was amazing as well. I took a photo of the bottle so I could maybe find it here in the states. 

The main meal was "veal". At least that's what they called it. Hassan explained that the Portuguese "veal" isn't the same as our veal in the states. He said instead of "baby" cows, it's more like "teenage" cows. Not quite mature, but not a baby either. We had it this "veal" several times and each time it was amazing. Super flavorful and so tender. 

Dessert was this chocolate mousse. It was WAY too rich and way too much. I took a couple of bites and passed on the rest of it. 

And of course the whole thing was followed by coffee. Amazing coffee. The Portuguese really do a good cup of coffee. 

By the time we got back to the hotel it was almost 10 and we knew we'd be leaving early again the next morning. We were pooped. Well, at least I was. By this time of the trip I also realized I had done little to no journaling. I'll explain why in a later post when I talk about how much I HATE the iPad. 

Day 5 - Porto

What a beautiful city! Porto is officially my favorite in Northern Portugal (Obidos being my other favorite). Porto's streets are lined with buildings covered in colorful tiles. That, along with their paint pallet for buildings being colorful, every where you look in the city you are greeted by color that makes the city just THAT much more beautiful. 

The city is divided in two by the Duoro River. The one side is Porto proper and the other is a town called Gaia (though they consider themselves living in Porto). Like many cities these days, the cost to live in the city is too high, so that pushes the inhabitants out to the "suburbs" like Gaia. 

Our first tour of the morning was of the Stock Exchange (or Palacio de Bolsa) building. I wondered why this was on the list to be toured, but when I saw the inside, I understood. The outside is this very unimpressive cement looking place - which makes the inside all the more outstanding. 

One of the court rooms

That chandelier is enormous. The photos don't do it justice, but it was huge. The tour guide said they all weighed 2000 lbs. I tried to avoid being under it at any time, in case there was an earthquake or something. You can never be too careful. 

The Arabian room is the reason to visit the Stock Exchange. It was ornate, elaborate, and oh so beautiful. 

 The walls were designed with some intricate work. The workers, though, didn't speak Arabic so the copying of the Arabic isn't accurate in some cases. 

Once we were finished with the Stock Exchange building we walked around the corner to visit the Church of Sao Francisco. Another church we couldn't take photos in, but I borrowed some from the Internet again. 

Interwebs: São Francisco has three naves coated in golden carvings. It is believed that over 300 kilos of gold dust were used to decorate the church’s interior. The temple’s ornamentation was for a time considered too extravagant for the poverty that surrounded it, so it was closed for a few years.

One of the most beautiful altarpieces of the Church is located in the North aisle. The “Tree of Jesse” is a wooden sculpture by Filipe da Silva and António Gomes depicting the family tree of Jesus, considered one of a kind.

We finished with our tour for the day and Janet and I decided to take the Hop ON Hop OFF bus. We got to see some more of this beautiful city. 

The traffic in Porto is a lot like any other big city. We happened to be on the bus during rush hour, not our smartest move, and so we sat in the traffic in the heat for longer than we wanted to. 

The last exciting thing we did in Porto was touring a Port factory. The Ferreira family is one of the three big port manufacturers in Porto. We were greeted by, Carlos, who took us through the winery and explained how Port is made. It's basically wine, that is then combined with a high quality brandy and then it sits. 

Our tour ended with a tasting and my tour ended with buying two bottles to bring home. We tasted their white port and their tawny port. Both were delicious.

We leave Porto tomorrow to head north again.