Woke up around 6am, packed, had a quick breakfast of eggs and sausage. Decided to take Uber instead of metro to pick up the rental car. This gave us another 30 mins or so of prep time. Took the Uber to the outskirts of the airport, where KlassWagen, the company we are renting the car from resides. Were there around 8:10, waited for maybe 5 minutes, then got to the agent who spent less than 10 mins with us. Had a couple of choices, eventually settled on a Citroen C4 - a compact SUV, which turned out to be a decent ride, but has a rather inconvenient gear switch.
The first destination is a small village of Belver which I found when looking for castles within a couple of hours drive of Lisbon, specifically, castles that we have not yet visited. Belver is located on a cliff above a picturesque river, and still appears to be the same small village it was in medieval times, with white houses and red roofs around, the public space in front of the centrally located church, and a short climb to the actual castle. It took us just under two hours to get there. Approaching Belver, the road makes bend and leads to a vantage point showing the castle from afar - we stopped and took some pictures. At the village, we squeezed into one of the parking spaces on the central square.
Going there, I was under an assumption that it was yet another Templier's castle that were part of a long network of castles used in 12th century to protect the frontier of Christian expansion against the Arabs, but turned out that it was built by the Order of Hospitaliers, who - it seems - wound up controlling part of that frontier. The picture below - from a display inside the castle's tower shows the castles in Portugal built and maintained by several Knight Orders, and makes clear that they all built in somewhat compact ways (based on grants of land, I am guessing).
The castle itself is rather small - medieval pictures show it as a circle with a tower, a church and some buildings inside. The wall is not quite circular, but one can guess the intent. The tower and the church still stand, but no other buildings are inside the walls. We walked around the perimeter of the castle, went into the church/chapel (it has a nice altar), and went up to the tower, which has rooftop access, allowing some pretty shots (see above) of the village of Belver.
After Belver we double-backed towards Ourem (double-backed, because we wound up taking the same A23 back for a couple dozen kilometers before splitting north towards Tomar). The initial goal was to get to the Castle of Ourem, after which to grab some food in Ourem itself. But, on our way to the castle, we drove past Lidl, stopped, bought food, and then decided to buy ice and head to our rental (it was right around our check-in time), which is located about 25 mins away from Lidl (and the center of Ourem) in a small nearby village of Arrimal. We drove to Arrimal, found the place - a really cute and traditionally looking small house. We checked in, unpacked, had a lunch of bread, cheese, sausage, tomatoes and a can of mackrel, after which (around 3:45pm or so) we got back into the car and went to see the Ourem Castle.
The Castle of Ourem belonged to the Counts of Ourem, not a Knight Order. It is located outside of the modern town of Ourem on a pretty tall hill. The hill itself is large and houses what appears to be the medieval Ourem - there are some old buildings, a city hall, a prison, an old synagogue, and a few streets leading up to the castle. Parking was tricky - I could not find a way to get to the top of the hill and park next to the castle, but was able to navigate the narrow one-way streets of the medieval Ourem to find an empty parking space. From there, we hiked the medieval streets past the cemetery to get to the top of the hill where the castle, and the Count's palace stand.
Castle of Ourem consists of the fortress - a thin triangular wall with several towers in it, and a Count of Ourem Palace located just below and outside the walls of the fortress. The interior of the Palace (we went there first - to buy the tickets) is new except for the walls of course, there is a small exhibition there. The fortress has access to a huge cistern with excellent acoustics. Besides that, inside the walled part of the castle, there is not much to do - we could go inside a tower, which only had one floor and no top access. In front of the castle, there is a fairly large and flat ground with a statue of a guy facing the castle walls. I should have paid a bit more attention reading the signs - I don't remember who the person depicted by the sculpture is.
Inside the walled fortress.
Below the Palace there are remnants of an outer wall with two towers that can be walked up to (one tower allowed for a wrap-around walk). We spent some time there, then went down to find our car.
Carefully navigated the narrow streets of the medieval Ourem (in one place, passing under an arch we had about 3 cm of clearance for the rear view mirrors on both sides, but were able to squeeze through w/o touching anything), went down. Yuri decided that a nice outdoors space in our Airbnb called for a cigar. Looked for specialty tobacco shops, could find the closest one only in Tomar, about 25 mins drive (the joke of the day was that everything is 25 mins away from everything else), drove to the place, got the cigars. Nearby produce shop had olives, and some fresh fruit and vegetables. After that we went to the center of Tomar, where, after some futile attempts to park on a street (featuring some locals trying to "help" us), I drove a bit further and discovered a municipal parking lot that had zero "helpers" and available spots. From there, we went to a pasteleria for a quick coffee and snack, and then walked the streets of medieval Tomar for about 30 mins waiting for the restaurant we chose, a place called Piri-Piri, to open.
I will write more about Tomar later - we have a guided tour to Tomar on August 8, suffice it to say that the medival town looks really cool, albeit - for obvious reasons - somewhat touristy.
Eventually, Piri Piri opened, we went in and had our first - this time - restaurant dinner. Had a tapas spread of bread, fresh cheese and olives, followed by fish soup for myself and Yuri, followed by pretty hefty portions of Piri Piri chicken (half a chicken cut into pieces - see picture below) for me, and veal in wine sauce for Olga, complete with half-liter of house white wine (which turned out to be pretty decent) and a liter of white sangria, which was fizzy and refreshing.
After dinner, walked back to the car, drove the same 25 minutes to Arrimal, and called it a night.
U-pick. Pathway to Castle of Belver had some stray fig trees with fresh figs that were reachable. A walk around Castle of Ourem revealed a stray patch of grapes (serving as a sort of a fence) with some ripe white grapes.
The grapes of Ourem.
Alcohol. The white sangria in Piri Piri was fizzy and refreshing, similar in style to the one we had the evening before in Lisbon. I also had a glass of Velhotes White Port which we bought for a whooping 5 Euro in Lidl. It was somewhat more caramelized and sweeter than the more refined white ports I've had in the past, but tasted good.
The sangria.
Steps: 13,107, according to Google Fit (phone). Last time I checked the watch before midnight, I had around 11,000 steps, so overall, I think both numbers track.
Next: Between going to Castelo Branco and going caving, the crew chose caving. So, we are going to Grutas de Moedo (a re-visit for us, but an easy reach and a self-guided tour), and one other cave (Grutas de Sao Antonio,most likely). With the remainder of the time, might visit some places we have been to last year - Batalha or Alcobaca, or even Nazarre, depending on what everyone wants to do with their afternoon.
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