Planicie Évora

... the hilarity of Spainish and Portugese bathrooms. They are a source of amusement on this trip. In our hotel room in Evora our bathroom consisted of a sink, a basin on the floor and a shower head. That is correct, there was no toilet and to take a shower you shut the bathroom door and let the water spray everywhere while you stand in the tiny basin. The next most amusing bathroom was in Albufeira, Portugal. First, the shower had windows that you could open to ...

So with nothing to do in Beja, we all caught the bus to Evora, famous for a chapel that is made completely of human bones. The whole town only took a few hours to see and the chapel was CREE-PY, yes, made of the bones of 5,000 people! After seeing the chapel, Anna and I wandered around town and found a small cafe to sit, read, and sip port in. We were watching the time and checking the bus schedule to make sure ...

... had seen the city, and ready to go to Lisbon the next morning. BUT...at about 9:30am, Ryan was shaken awake by the hostel staff, asking, "Do you drive a French car with lots of wine in the trunk?" After he grunted a yes, she only replied, "Come with me." Obviously, this was not good. Someone had smashed a passenger window of the car during the night and stolen: the GPS (ouch!!!! plus, the one night we forgot to take it inside), a handful of Euro coins we had used ...

Well I got a little ahead of myself with the last message. I forgot that I need to start a new entry if I want the locations we spend time at posted on the map. So since we already mentioned Evora in our last message - Iºll just attach a few photoºs and move on. For those who donºt know - when accessing any of the messages you can double click on any photo to enlarge it and review the notes attached to the bottom of the picture.

if portugal had a version of bath-spa, evora would probably be it. a tiny walled-town of roman origins, it's a fun place to walk around, grab some of the many local dishes, and get lost in the narrow alley-way streets that have discovery after discovery everywhere one turns. of note, the intercity buses here have stewardesses on ...

... hanging down, but not the baby one. I think I am getting old !!! We left and walked the streets until we came to a Cathedral. It was pretty nice inside, but around the back was the Roman Temple of Diana. I preferred this one to Meridas. It was on top of a hill, and the views were great. You could see the old aqueduct out in the distance. We walked around, just taking the laneways in, when we realised that we really did need to haul ass as we were going to lose an hour ...

... that in the basement of the train station that it was attached to a mall so we took turns watching the bags and each wondered the mall. Surprisingly the 6 hours went fairly quickly. We didn´t get to Evora until about 8:30 pm and the train station was closed because it was under construction so the train only took us to Casa Branca and then we took a bus to the Evora train station. There was no information office and the pay phones weren´t working ( we were trying to ...

... though we were nuts, but that is a fairly normal reaction.. We also had a few visiters from the camping ground - two hollanders, Sanders and Jos,- had enough curoiusity to come and join us for a couple of hours, even though they had to leave the car about half an hour away and walk (having a land rover does come in handy!). They also seemed to think we were a bit nutty to be making such a fuss over chipped stones, but we enjoyed their ...

... We stayed in a guesthouse inside the city walls, owned by a charming old couple and a black cat. We sampled some great local food and wine (Terras del Rei) and ventured to a student pub that was empty, but cheap and had a dustbin of the Deutsche Bundesbahn in its courtyard. Next day, it was heavy sightseeing, beautiful churches and moorish houses and so on. And some more Terras del Rei.

... walked lovely little Evora and ate the simple foods of Portugal--chicken pastries (we point, and ask "frango?"), strip steaks with onions/tomatoes and eggs, and wine. A favorite memory turned out to be this tiny little place we found when wandering by the aqueduct, called O'Portao. Only 4 tables and an ice cream cooler in the front. One woman in a pink dress took our orders, cooked them and served them too. She brought wine in a rough hewn, brick red, terra ...