We called an audible today, but it worked out well.
Woke up really late - left the house only around 10;30 am. Yesterday turned out to be a really tiring day, so we got totally decomposed in the evening and slept through early morning. The original plan called for going to Batalha Monastery first, then a trip to Leiria to see the castle, and a visit to Fatima, which we figured would be a quick one - just to take a look at the shrine and the whole pilgrimage thing. But... on our way to Batalha Olga discovered the caves (Grutas do Moeda), located right outside Fatima, and we decided to go there instead of Leiria. Was a good call as it turned out.
We arrived to Batalha around 11:30, after our first experience driving toll roads (a stretch of A8) followed by a 15 km drive on a small country road - which was again a very pleasant experience. Had no trouble parking - there is a large parking lot behind the monastery, it appeared to be free - at least I could not find where to park (an no one gave us a ticket). Olga had coffee and we bought two local pastries at the first bakery off the parking lot. The pastries turned out to be really sweet and not as good as our favorite pasteis de nata. One of the pastries was called "Pasteis de Batalha". Apparently, every town has their tart recepie...
After that, we walked to the monastery, and circumnavigated it until we found an entrance. The Batalha monastery is a huge building, comparable in size with Westminster Abbey or Canterbury Cathedral. The church itself (free to visit) is grand. We stood in a small line and bought tickets and then went around the paid parts of the monastery, starting with a small space in which the tombs of the king and the queen who commissioned the monastery in the 14th century, and their children lay. The tomb ornaments are quite exquisite.
Next, we visited the original cloister - a perfectly maintained shrub maze in the middle (you cannot walk it though), great gothic architecture, and the views of the church walls. The sun decided to show up in the middle of our visit, allowing me to take some nice pictures. There were quite a few people in the church, which is free to view. The paid areas had only a handful of people in them. I was able to "lay in wait" and get some shots of the architecture with no humans in them.
We visited the exhibit of "gifts honoring the unknown soldiers" in the former refectory - lots of military paraphernalia - some, like the medals - straightforward, other - like a statue made out of an artillery shell - unexpected. The room also doubles as a small souvenir shop. After that we visited the Chapter house on the other side of the cloister and learned why there were gifts honoring the unknown soldiers there - the Chapter houses tombs of two unknown soldiers with modern honor guard (complete with M-16s) standing watch. It also has a beautiful stained glass rendering of various defining moments in the life of Jesus.
The second cloister of the monastery - much more somber, devoid of gothic detail, and built 100 years later was deserted and the yard itself was closed for renovations - we simply walked the hallways to walk out of the monastery.
The last stop - the "unfnished chapels" - tucked behind the nave of the main church and accessed from outside - it seems like "unfinished" was the intent. There is no ceiling, but there are multiple, intricately ornamented chapels along the circumference of the space, housing the tombs of various royals, some - unmarked, making us quip about the "tombs of unknown kings".
We then went outside, and after a brief stopover at a souvenir shop along the way, found the facade of the monastery/church (we did not go this far in our original approach), and spent about 10 minutes there waiting for a few other picture takers to clear the plaza in front of it, so that we could take a "perfect shot".
Overall, Batalha is a beautiful monastery - absolutely stunning architecture, very well-preserved - probably the most ornate gothic cathedral/church/etc... I have ever visited. Huge - same as the largest cathedrals in the UK we visited - bigger than anything we saw in Lisbon in 2017.
We circled back to our car through a few streets adjacent to the monastery, making on our way the final decision to forego Leiria, and check out the caves.
Grutas do Moeda (Coin Cave), found in the 20th century by "two hunters chasing a fox" are found around 3-4 km from Fatima, inside a small forest, less than a kilometer from some apartment complexes located in a place called Sao Mamede (St. Mohammed? what's up with that?). We were in luck - all the reviews indicate that the caves were accessed via a guided tour, but either they got lazy, or decided that QR-based technology is cheaper than human guides, and now, the system works as follows: every 2 minutes a new group of people is let into the caves to explore on their own, with the said QR codes found in a few places to lead to various "pages" of the audio guide. It is a huge upgrade over having to visit the narrow passages of the cave in a group of even 10 people (and I suspect it would have been more like 20-30 at a time).
And the cave is well-worth it. The walkway is artificial - they excavated the rock around the original cave formations so that the formations are visible, but are not disturbed. As we walk we see hundreds of beautiful rock formations. There is an underground stream and a few undergrounds pools with crystal clear water - so clear in fact that in one place Olga thought that the pool went dry.
The cave itself is not very large - it's about a 350 m walk that drops around 45 meters below ground at one point and then slowly walks us back. There is a part of the cave - with a built-in walkway that seems to go further below that we did not visit, but what we saw was impressive enough already. We've done caves in the US (including - for me - a visit to the only part of the Mammoth Caves in Kentucky that has formations), Iceland, and Korea. When it comes to formations, this was probably the most beautiful cave we ever visited.
After the visit to the caves, we went to see the small museum which contained samples of minerals and fossils from around Portugal and the world, and visited the café where we got to sample some sweet bread (Pao Dos Santos - given traditionally to kids on All Saints Day), and local sweet wine, which has interesting flavor for those people (like I) who like dessert wines, and have zero attraction for those people (like Olga) who do not like dessert wines.
From the caves, it's a short drive to Fatima. We wanted to get near the Sanctuary and (a) take a look, and (b) get food. It was starting to get late afternoon-ish, the time when food in Portugal is hard to come by. I punched in a wrong location in Fatima and we had to double-back, stopping by a "Fatima Shop" on the way (a big and empty department store, run like all other such department stores by Chinese people curiously enough), then corrected our course and parked on a small side street a few hundred meters away from the Fatima Sanctuary.
While I checked what we would be looking at beforehand, Olga was not expecting an empty concrete plaza the size of 10 or so football fields, with a towering cathedral on one end, and a towering crucifix on the other end. There were some crowds clumping in a few places on the plaza, we went to check them and discovered (a) the focal point of the pilgrimage - with a path leading to it that people walked on their knees (not too many, but every 2-3 minutes or so someone would walk by) and (b) a line to light the candles, which are then apparently burned in a big pyre to let others' candles be lit as well. That line, even for a fairly empty plaza like today was pretty long - I estimated about a two hour wait based on the speed with which people moved. Everyone in the line had multiple candles, sized anywhere from your regular ones, to human-sized ones that they used like staves. We got curious where they got the candles, but our curiosity was answered a bit later.
We then walked up the steps to the cathedral itself, spend some time visiting it in between two services, and left the Sanctuary plaza. Outside - tens of souvenir shops selling regular souvenirs, religious paraphernalia, and, well, candles. Candles, everywhere, in each size. We walked around the part of Fatima immediately adjacent to the sanctuary, and consisting of many large massive old-style hotels, and some apartment complexes looking for food. All the actual restaurants we passed on our way were closed promising to reopen around 7. It was about 5pm, we needed to leave Fatima before 7 so that I could have a zoom meeting with colleagues at 8pm, so for a while it looked like a later dinner in the house. Fortunately, though, right as we lost all hope (pun somewhat intended, given the location we were visiting), we found an open family-style restaurant (checkered table cloths, and friendly owner and all) tucked in the basement of one of the buildings right across from where we parked the car.
I tried to order octopus, but apparently they ran out, so instead I ordered the most unusual-to-me looking dish - a pork stew with clams served on a bed of fried potatoes. Olga ordered a beef "bitoque" (entrecote) served with a fried egg on top, french fries, rice and salad. We also got some bread, olives and a liter of white sangria, which came flat, with about half of a can of canned fruit in it, but was really refreshing (see my notes from yesterday on how it is hard to destroy a sangria).
We both found our food tasty. I could have used more sauce in the pork stew - what sauce I had was excellent, flavoring both the pork, the potatoes and the clams. The dish was large - Olga commented on just how much meat I got - very "family-style". Olga's meat for "perfectly seasoned" according to her, and she liked sides as well - the egg was a great touch. All in all it cost us 30 euro. The proprietor thought we were Polish (he apparently has some Polish roots), but then a real Polish family (who spoke very little English) came in (we were first customers at the restaurant, but once we sat in, another four or five groups showed up almost immediately making the place go from deserted to real busy in five minutes), and when I was paying the proprietor, forgetting that I did not speak Portuguese conveyed to me that he had trouble understanding what they wanted.
After the meal was over, we got into the car, I punched in our home address, and we drove "straight" home. "Straight" in quotes ,because the fastest route was to go north all the way to Leiria (ha), before double-backing south. Got home with enough time for me to prep for the meeting.
Called it a day then.
Alcohol. I wrote about the white sangria above. Two more notes.
1. White wine do Moedo - made locally near the Grutas do Moedo, a fortified wine with a smooth sweet flavor, and some raisins on the nose. Sort of like Jerez, and a bit sweeter than the Moscatels we tried in Portugal. I bought a small bottle - less so because I liked it, more so because I wanted a souvenir - and we already have a bottle of a French aperitif from Le Gorges du Fier in Savoy - a similar place. B.
2. Cacho Fresco vihno regional Tejo. A fizzy white wine our landlady left for us the first day. On the sweeter side, but not too much sweetness, refreshing, nice summer sipping wine again. Olga liked it too. B. Nothing sophisticated - just sit on a terrace and drink kind of wine.
Steps. Google fit thinks I did 10,199 steps for the day. The watch has me at 12732, so today, the discrepancy is similar with yesterday, but it goes in the other direction. At least by adding yesterday's and today's steps we reach agreement.
Tomorrow. Alcobaca monastery in the morning, then Nazarre in the afternoon-evening. Hopefully the weather helps make the beach visit work out well.
We have a bit of "technical debt" by not visiting Leiria today. We'll see if we can visit it in one of the other days.
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