The Almourol Castle from the boat.
The trip that started it all this year - a guided tour of Almourol and Tomar.
Tomar was a place that sounded really cool both when we arrived to Lisbon in 2017 and were looking for somewhere to go, and when we were planning our 2022 trip last year. Both times, we could not quite make it. In 2017 we got stood up by the tour operator for a Sintra tour, so we were not eager to trust them with another tour, and instead used our last day in Portugal to go to Cascais. In 2022, Tomar was very much on the agenda until we wound up renting in Obidos, and realizing that a lot of other historic sites (Batalha, Alcobaca, Leiria) were within an easier reach. Plus - we discovered caves, and basically decided to leave Tomar to another day.
So, when I was looking for a birthday present for Olga, I decided that a day trip to Tomar purchased way before we had tickets to Portugal, or any other trip arrangements, would serve the triple purpose of (a) a nice overt gift, (b) an incentive to actually get our act together and arrange the trip earlier, and (c) a tongue-in-cheek "we ARE going to Portugal again" message. I selected August 8 because it occurred to me that under most circumstances, if we were going to Portugal in 2023 - we would be spending August 8 in Portugal for sure. Well, I was not wrong, and the trip - purchased 8 months ahead of time - was well worth it.
As a side note, while I knew about Tomar since our 2017 visit, I only discovered Almourol Castle in June/July of this year - when making plans for our August 3-7 road trip. I immediately wanted to see it, and then got pleasantly surprised to find out that our trip, in fact, included a visit to Almourol. Based on this, I decided to not include it on our road trip, opting for Belver Castle instead.
So... We woke up around 7am. Started the prep. I discovered that (a) the main lens of the alpha 6000 was still not working, and (b) the batteries for the backup camera were dead. I quickly put the batteries into the charger - hoping to get each to around 50% in the 30 or so mins remaining before we had to leave the house - and thus have a battery's worth of camera time during the trip. I got one battery to probably about 50%, but the other - only to about 20% or so at the end. It was enough for the entirety of the Almourol Castle, and for about half - perhaps just a tad more - of the Tomar visit.
We rushed out of the house and almost ran to Praca da Figueira where the tour bus was waiting for us. The tour guide, Ricky, texted me, so I was able to tell him our arrival was imminent. We wound up being the last in a group of eight people consisting, besides us, of two Chinese men, a senior couple from (I think) Austria, and a couple from Colorado. Olga got the last seat in the van, I got to ride shotgun.
Our guide, Ricky, who - as we found out - has a Master's degree in history (MS thesis on tourism in Caldos da Rainha - his hometown) - spent the 90 or so minute drive to Almourol Castle covering the basic history of the Templar Order, and the specifics of the Templar association with Portugal - an association - which unlike their history in France in other countries, was cordial and mutually beneficial. The Templars received a lot of land that at the time marked the border between the Christians and the Arabs, and build a chain of castles along that border - including several castles along the Tejo river - which for a long time was the border.
Almourol Castle. We arrived at the castle around 9:30, did a quick coffee stop at a cafeteria located next to the small boat dock.
After the coffee, we went down to the dock and boarded a flat bottom boat that slowly took us on a 3 minute ride to the island on which the castle is located. The island comes somewhere around 5 meters to the north bank of the Tejo (the bank we were on), but the landing is actually on the opposite side, so the boat does a wide semi-circle around the island, allowing for some pretty cool pictures, with the castle reflecting in the water.
From the landing - a short walk uphill until we reach the castle gates. Ricky discusses the history of the castle, and the involvement of man named Gualdim Pais - a Portuguese Master of the Order of the Templars in last 1100s - with building of the castle. We go inside, discuss for a bit the construction of the castle - the low (southern) part, and the high (northern) part, the keep, whose door is 2 meters above the ground level, and the fact that for all the prepwork, the castle was never ambushed and saw no attacks.
On the bright is, it is in excellent shape. The living quarters and utility buildings are missing from the lower court (one can see their foundations), but the walls are intact, as well as the keep. We go inside the keep - one can climb to the roof, which gives awesome views of the castle below, and the Tejo stretching from east to west.
After that, we have time to only climb the wall and visit one of the towers - everyone else took less time to see around. I still get a some nice pictures, alternating between the Alpha 330 for main shots, the phone - for backup shots, and the alpha 6000, which has a 55-210mm telephoto lens - for close-ups.
We then return to the boat dock, wait for a couple of minutes in the shade (it is starting to get real hot outside) for the boat to arrive, board it, and get another chance for some shots of the castle from the river.
Once we disembark the board, Ricky brings the van over, we board and head for Tomar. On the way we pass several small places also associated with the Templars, as well as Portugal's largest dam, which we cross. The difference in the river levels up and downstream from the dam is pretty significant, and they don't have a lock system there.
Tomar. We do two stops in Tomar. The first one is the Church of Santa Maria de Olivais, built by the Templars for the use of the population of Tomar. The abovementioned Guildam Pais is buried there, as well as a few others. The church was heavily damaged in the earthquake (the same one that took out most of Lisbon), and was restored. Ricky shows us a few of the stones with Templar markings on them, discusses the wild theory that the Templars hid the Holy Grail in this church (this theory makes no sense to him, nor does it make any sense whatsoever to me), we spend some time looking at the tombstones of various Templar leaders, and then board the van again and head for the main attraction - Convento de Cristo.
As we climb up the hill leading to the Convent from the old town, Ricky points at the statue of the Prince Henirique the Navigator - who apparently was at some point the Master of the Order of Christ (the Portuguese-specific knight order that replaced the Templars in Portugal after the Templars were disbanded, and received all the Templar property) and affected a lot of changes to the Order, and the Convento.
We arrive to the Convento de Cristo, go inside, and spend about an hour with Ricky as the guide narrating the history of the Convent and providing us with information on the different parts as we walk through them.
Having visited two other major medieval monasteries in Batalha and Alcobaca, Convento de Cristo is by far the largest, the most complex, and the most interesting to be in - tour or no tour. It features a variety of different architectural choices in the parts of it that were built in different times. Due to its continuous use through the 19th century, most of the Convent, except the parts that were damaged in the earthquake and never repaired, and the - clearly out of date by the 19th century - defensive castle surrounding the Convent - is in great shape. There is some restoration work done on the premises - some of my photos caught it.
The Convent's floor plan is quite intricate - after our tour I bought the guide solely for the desire to have the floor plan and be able to match our walk to the actual geography. We start in the cemetery and washing cloisters, which form a triangular shaped part of the Convent that is connected to the rest of the structure through the Convent's church, which is central to the entire compound. From the washing cloister we can see the ruins of Infante Henrique's living quarters that were not restored after the earthquake, and the outer walls of the castle - unfortunately, the tour did not take us any closer - it seems like access to that part of the Convent is closed.
From these two cloisters, we go into the church. This, in fact, is the most unique church I've ever seen - it is circular in shape (apparently, in an homage of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, which during Crusader Kingdom times was used as a Christian cathedral), with eight columns in the middle. Ricky spends some time discussing the history of the church and the layers of work that was done in after the original church was built. After the church we walk through the main (grand) cloister, and get some peeks at the church's outer wall built in an extremely intricate way, with a variety of statues and ornamentation.
From there, we go to a decisively more ascetic dormitory, with the hallways shaped in the form of the latin cross. We visit a couple of monks' cells, with windows overlooking what Ricky called the "scientific pursuits cloister".
We also see a fireplace room, which was used both for heating the chains of monk cells through opening the connecting doors, as well as for heating the castle walls (which were hollow, both for temperature/isolation reasons, and also because apparently there are secret and not so secret passages in those hollows.
After that, Ricky takes us to another room on the other side of the dormitory hallway, and gives us the main attraction of the Convent - the famous Manuelene window, which is found on the west side of the addition to the church commissioned by Dom Manuel - apparently - a very influential King of Portugal. The window is beautiful, to ornamentation around it has a lot of symbolism which Ricky spends some time discussing with us. Unfortunately, part of the window is being cleaned, so the pictures include some of the repair work structures around the window.
From the dormitories, we go downstairs, pass yet another cloister and arrive at the refectory, which is quite large. From there, we head into the pantry, which has a nice setup for keeping large cauldrons of cooked food warm, and from the pantry, we visit the adjacent kitchen - a very large room with several hearths/cooking stations. Ricky mentions the wine cellar, but we do not go there.
We pass into another cloister, called the Miche cloister after a work meaning "a crust of bread". This is one of the two cloisters accessible to the public - this one accepted pilgrims and the town poor and fed them bread from a nearby bakery.
We also visit the lavatory - which was placed very far from the rest of the Convent. For all the intricacy of its structure, it is extremely primitive - i do not envy people trying to use it - it is not much better than an outhouse, only set in stone.
For our final round, we cross the visitors' cloister, which housed stables, and quarters for important visitors, then head out.
We then board the van, and head out to the old town for lunch.
We have lunch at a restaurant called Infante on the same street we walked by a few days earlier. The restaurant has a limited menu, and is out of two of their main dishes (octopus and black pork). Curiously, it had tagines - which is a Moroccan-style cooking implement. Olga goes for chicken tagine, although she expresses some reservations about the cinnamon in the dish (they promise to omit it, but then don't, at the end it does not matter, as the cinnamon taste is imperceptible). I order the lamb tagine, which comes with garbanzo beans, and a white sangria.
It takes a bit of time for the food to come - we bide it by making small talk with the other American couple on the tour - they work for the military in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and are on a 28-day, 9-country wirlwind tour that already had them visiting Iceland, Ireland and England, and is then taking them to Spain and Belgium among other places. We exchange Iceland stories, and discuss our travel impressions.
The food eventually arrives and it is delicious. Olga thinks that this is the best Portuguese dish she's ever tasted. My lamb is really good, although it is piping hot, so I have to wait until it cools down to a point where I won't burn my tongue. The sauce is delicious. While I am typically not a big fan of garbanzo beans in a dish, these serve as an excellent mop for the sauce, no complaints there.
We finish off with a local sweet made out of egg yolk and sugar (on the way to Tomar Ricky discussed how egg whites were used to clean monk's habits, leaving a lot of egg yolks with nothing to do with them, and how, upon the arrival of sugar to Portugal, different monasteries started figuring out various way to preserve egg yolks by mixing them with sugar and subsequently using the resulting mix in various kinds of baking. The Tomar's version is pretty much straight up egg yolk and sugar rolled in a ball - strong influences of "Turkish delights" (in a broad sense of the term).
After dinner, we go back to the van, and take a leisurely drive back to Lisbon.
Lisbon. We arrive around 4:40pm, get dropped off at Restoradores, head for the Padaria Portuguesa for a coffee and a bathroom break. This turns out to be a really bad place - one bathroom is closed, everyone is using the women's bathroom, and to top it off - the coffee is not good. We then meet up with Tanya "at the square with the guy on a horse", after which we split - Olga and Tanya go for a walk (they go to the river, and then return back and head to Lidl), while I head home, take a shower, tinker with the lens (no luck), search photography stores in Lisbon, find Fnac in Chiado, realize it is still open, an go there to check the lens. They have the Sony mirrorless cameras for sale, but not the stock lenses. I talk to a sales clerk, he sends me to their big store somewhere in a large shopping center at the Collegio Militar metro station. This is further away then we've been towards the outskirts of Lisbon, so I decide to go there tomorrow.
I return home, we hang out, Olga and Tatiana eventually come back with more food, we nibble on different snacks and call it a day.
Steps. 12,527 according to the watch, 13,553 according to Google fit. Of these, about 5,500 watch steps were during the trip, and the rest - after the trip.
Alcohol. The white sangria at Infante was flat, but good. Large glass - I had two, and actually felt some of the alcohol on the way back.
Next. Trip to the Colombo shopping center in the morning, and a visit to King Jorge's castle in the evening, apparently. I have some work meetings at night. We also probably need to plan our day trips (Sintra, Cascais, Setubal - for sure, maybe Evora and Porto).
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