Category: UNESCO World Heritage sites

The morning began with an incredible breakfast buffet in the Pousada Convento de Évora hotel restaurant. This photo doesn’t even show it all. We roamed around the hotel’s halls and courtyards and patios and took photos of the views from the hotel and the park on the hilltop.

We wandered down the hill and stopped in some shops, but I put off buying any souvenirs here. Later I regretted it because I didn’t get a magnet for Évora. Sandy bought me a bright blue linen dress. I will do a post later with photos of doors, windows, and graffiti but here are two windows from our walk that morning. The second is paper.

Our goal was to go to the Chapel of Bones (Capela dos Ossos) inside the Royal Church of St. Francis (Igreja e Mosteiro de São Francisco). Now, I was fully prepared to be creeped out by a chapel decorated in a mosaic of real human bones, but after seeing it, I thought, I wouldn’t mind knowing that my bones would be used to create a work of art.

We went into a small museum and into the church, which is active. I would have loved to have gone during a mass. Come to think of it, I have never been to mass. I love the last photo because Jesus and his disciple (I guess) is standing on a base of real cork oak.

We wandered a bit more, had great salads on the square, and then spent the rest of the afternoon napping and reading by the pools at the hotel. The swallows built nests under the balconies on the buildings on the square and we enjoyed watching them pop in and out of their nests. Later I enjoyed watching them play over the pools. That’s our window on the right of the video. 

I think that this one ^^^ might be a nice tapestry design.

We got a bit too relaxed and went back out too late to shop anywhere. We found dinner at Piparoza and gelato. I had duck breast with a raspberry sauce and it was one of the best meals I ate in Portugal. Apparently I was so into it, I didn’t take a photo. Oh well!

My intent for this visit to Évora was mainly to visit the stone circle nearby. Plans change. Maybe another time. There was so much to see.

When we left Tomar to travel to Évora after breakfast on the train, we had to go back to Lisbon to connect. (Yes, I put my mask on after this photo!) The station at Lisboa-Oriente was huge and modern. There were lots of levels and shops and cafes and even a farmacia and medical clinic.

Since we had a bit of a wait, I went to the farmacia to buy the equivalent of acetaminophen for my headache. This was a lot different from our pharmacies and drugstores. They are much smaller and what are non-prescription medications in the United States are not on the shelves here. You have to take a number from a machine at the door, and wait for the next pharmacist. There were four of them at this busy farmacia, behind a counter with plexiglass partitions. Another staff member provided customer service in the main part of the store. When I stepped up, I already knew that the name for the same type of medication in Europe was different, so I asked the pharmacist for the equivalent of Tylenol. She knew what I meant and got it for me. Yes, it was less expensive. I also asked about Covid-19 tests, since I had been told that I could get a supervised test at any farmacia for our travel needs. This turned out to be no longer true, and I was referred to the clinic, who told me that I just needed to make an appointment for the day we needed them.

Our train finally appeared on the monitor, so we went up the stairs to sit outside and wait for it. It was about ten minutes before the scheduled departure. That ten minutes came and went, the train number disappeared from the monitor, and a few other concerned people left. We waited another fifteen minutes and Sandy went to the ticket counter to see what was happening. Turned out that there was a scheduled strike and that train had been canceled. What’s more – they knew that there would be a strike a week ago, yet we would still be sitting there waiting for all we were told, after buying tickets online a week ago. The next train was much later, and they couldn’t guarantee that it wouldn’t be canceled. However, we were able to go to the bus station and get tickets for the next bus.

I was hustling back and forth because it was not at all clear where the bus station was. There are several bus companies. One sold tickets from a snack kiosk on a laptop. Finally I found the counters for Redi-Express and there was a bus leaving for Évora in thirty minutes. I went back to the train ticket counter, got my refund, and made it back to the bus just in time. I was pretty frazzled. We got on the bus and I was happy when the front seats were empty, but alas, it turned out that they weren’t for us. We had assigned seats, and when a young man on the bus finally interpreted what the annoyed bus driver was saying to us, we found them. The man in front of me had reclined his seat so far back that he was nearly in my lap. At some point I spilled a whole bottle of orange juice all over me and my handbag and my book. I was not happy on this bus, but at least I didn’t get carsick, which has happened to me before on buses. I could see that it would have been a comfortable, nice ride if I hadn’t been squeezed in with sticky juice all over me.

Finally we arrived in Évora. We took a taxi to our hotel, which was the one place I spent a lot of money on during our trip. It was the Pousada de Évora, a renovated historic convent at the top of the city, right at the square with the Roman temple ruins and the cathedral. Our room was once a monk’s cell. It was a beautiful place, and we set out to see what we could of Évora in the late afternoon and evening. The weather was fabulous.

^^^Drinks in Praça do Giraldo, the center square beside a 16th century fountain. We came back to this square a lot.

We decided to have dinner at a restaurant named Medieval. We ordered pork and lamb, and shared them. The lamb came with “bread pudding” which was similar to our bread dressing or stuffing. Chips or fries seem to be the main side dish for Portuguese meals. Chocolate mousse and a special dessert that was like creme brulee – so good!