Portugal 2023: Day 2: Belver - Ourem - Tomar

 

The village of Belver.

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.  

Our ride for this trip: Citroen C4.

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.

Castle of Belver from outside of the village.  The power lines somewhat spoil the view unfortunately.

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).

Castles built by the Knight Orders.

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.

Belver Castle's tower (dun jon).

View of the castle from the village main square.

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.

Back of the AirBnb place.

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.

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.

The cistern.

The Palace of the Counts of Ourem.

One of the outer wall towers.

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.

A fairly typical street view in Tomar's medieval quarter.

   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.

Tomar.  The town square.

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.

Fish soup.

Piri Piri Chicken.

Veal livers.

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 port.

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.

Belver, walking up to the castle.

Ourem. Walking up to the castle.

Portugal 2023: Day 1 - In the middle of World Youth Day

 

Catholic Youth singing hymnals in Biaxa 

We arrived to Lisbon on time, went through passport control pretty quickly, found our bags on the carousel, went through customs and met our drivers - one, Antonio took the three of us to our place, the other - Miguel - took Olga to her dentist appointment.   

Our place is just south of the Intendente metro station, one block away from Avenida de Alm Reis/Rua da Palma (the main transport artery on the east side of Lisbon, connecting the airport with Martim Moniz and the center. We are about 300 meters north of Martim Moniz, smack in the middle of Moureira's  multitude of curry houses, kebab shops and South Asian food marts.  Our place is in a renovated house, a two-bedroom (T2) apartment with two baths.  It has a huge living room, a nice adjacent kitchen, lots of closet space and a nice balcony that spans the entire width of the apartment and gives us views of the inner court.  There are no windows overlooking the street, but given how busy it gets outside, this is actually a good thing.  The inner course has 5-6 apartments on each level, with private balconies on some levels, and walkways/hallways on others.  

Our  living room. You can see some of the courtyard structure through the windows.

Olga's appointment and delivery back to the apartment took about two hours. When she wrote that she is  getting in the car, I went downstairs and while waiting for her took a walk round the block. In the direction of Matrim Moniz, we have busy streets with the aforementioned food stores and restaurants. Going north, it's about 300 meters to Lidl, which I predict will be our main shopping venue (see below).  We also have a Continente store almost across the street. While circling around, I found one cafe that had pasteis de nata and bought four. 

While walking around, I saw several groups of teenagers - many wrapped in their national flags (Spain, France, Serbia, Mexico, Germany) walking around, sitting on the street eating food from local places, chatting and so on. Many groups have people in monk/nun garb chaperoning them, although some groups have chaperons dressed in everyday clothes.   Right after I bought my pasteis de nata, one of the kids from a nearby group walked into the cafe and tried to buy a lot of them, but the cafe had only two  remaining, so the kid left disappointed. Additionally, right outside our place there is a bunch of food kiosks selling kebab, bifanas and drinks, but at somewhat inflated prices (bifana was7 Euro).

Largo de Intendente - outside our place. Apologies for the trash cans in the shot.

About 40 minutes after Olga's arrival, we went out grocery shopping. Tatiana went with us. First order of business was to find coffee. We walked all the way to Martim Moniz because the east side of Rua da Palma lacks any padarias (and I did not notice one on the other side). Olga and Tatiana had espressos there, Tatiana did not like hers. World Youth Day crowds were all around us. I took this picture outside the cafe:

You can see a line, consisting largely of the World Youth Day folks waiting to board the 28 tram.

After coffee, we took the scenic route (Rua de Mouraria, then Rua de Benformoso) back towards Continente (cutting back to Rua da Palma as we almost reached it). This is where all the small restaurants are, and where most inhabitants of Mouraria hang out. 

Rua de Benformoso.

The actual shopping in Continente was somewhat of a downer - it's a small store missing a lot of items easily found in larger Continente supermarkets. I was expecting a more full-service store. We did get the necessities, hauled them home, grabbed a quick snack of bread, cheese and smoked sausage, and the three of us - around 6pm - went out for an evening stroll.

The weather was quite hot an humid.   We too Rua de Plama to Martim Moniz, from there, we cut to Praca de Figueira, from where we took the main drag - Rua Agusta all the way to Praca de Commerce.

Praca de Figueira

Rua Agusto is filled with dancing youth.

Lots of World Youth Day Youth sitting in cafes, singing, walking in groups. Basically, wall-to-wall traffic.  As we arrived to Praca de Commerce - we saw why. While Martim Moniz too has a stage and people talking and singing from it on occasion, Praca de Commerce has a stage with a seemingly nonstop concert going on, while the crowds thicken.

Praca de Commerce. You can see the arriving people and the stage.

We walked - occasionally navigating through the crowds and oncoming traffic to the river bank, and decided to visit the river cruise building. It houses public restrooms (important despite high demand), ticket sale booths for the businesses that can do river cruises, and a small cafe that has multiple tables with a view of the river and the (small) cruise ships.  While waiting for Olga and Tatiana, I got a seat and ordered three sangrias: two red, one white.

Our waterfront sangrias.

We have a documented bad experience with waterfont sangrias in the past (although it was in Porto, not Lisbon). This experience was exactly the opposite of the one in Porto's Ribeira.  Both red and white sangrias were fizzy, had a lot of fruit pumped into them and the white sangria is pretty much was as good as it gets.  While the price (7 Euro) is exuberant, the sangrias were awesome, and the view was nice, so we took it as cost of doing business in touristy places and moved on.

The river cruise building and the cafe where we had our sangrias.

After that we went back through the crowds.  On the way to the river front we stopped at a couple of stores - bought some coffee cups and ginja glasses (important, since I bought a bottle of ginja at Continente), and a pair of Portuguese-made flipflops (I wanted cheap plastic ones, but spotted these on sale, and decided to buy them). On the way back we rediscovered the t-shirt store we found last year. It was open despite the late hour, and thankfully - empty, so we have the salesperson's full attention. The store carries a bunch of designs and you let them know which one you want and on what t-shirt (Size, color, style), and they print it for you right on the spot. Their 2022 regular t-shirt price became their sale t-shirt price (coinciding with the Youth Day), so we took advantage of the sale and bought several t-shirt as presents (I also got one for myself. It says "School is great when it is on vacation". I plan to wear it to school.)

Passed a huge crowd of students singing hymnals (see title page), but past that point the streets were largely empty. Went home, stopped by another marketplace, got some more cheese and meat, got home, rank ginja, ate bread, cheese and sausage again and called it a day.

Steps. watch says 14647. This include sairport steps.

Alcohol. Sangrias at the river cruise pier were overpriced but really tasty,  Gingja (see photo) - good enough for several shots, but its the Cheap Continente one. We plan to bring some Obidos ginja, and buy some local and do a comparison.

Our first gingja

Day 2 plan:  Rent a car early in the morning, go the Castle of Belver and Ourem. 

Portugal 2023: Day 0

 

The travel day. Had a tiny snag early in the morning, when it turned out that we ordered a Toyota Corolla to take four of us and four bags to the airport. The recovery was quick - got a Highlander less than 5 mins later, got to the airport 3 hours before the flight, went through check-in and security process really fast, and then spent two hours waiting for the flight.  In SFO they did not require us to take the shoes off, nor did they want to see our laptops. The flight to Boston was uneventful and comfortable - all four of us got assigned seats in the emergency exit rows, plus this is a new plane, so the economy seats were wide, and had plenty of legroom even in regular rows.  Watched Guardians of The Galaxy 3 (much better than Guardians of the Galaxy 2) and Empire Records (got nostalgic for 1990s vibes, learned that Tobey McGuire plays a bit part in the movie).

Upon arrival to Boston, we had to change terminals (A to E), which involved a bit of a hike - crossing the highway along the walkway, crossing a huge parking garage structure and going back through the security.  In Boston, they did want shoes off and all electronics out, but the line was short, and we got to our gate just in time for boarding.  Olga and I had seats in the center of the plane, but the third seat in our row was empty, so we had plenty of space.  Watched two episodes of Star Trek Discovery.

Arrived to Lisbon on time. The rest will be in Day 1 report.

2023 Portugal Trip: Day -1

 Short note.

The highlight of the day was the one hour I spent checking us in on the flight.  The core goal was to ensure that our two checked bags are free - an outcome of paying for the tickets with Delta's AmeEx.  Long story short, after about six attempts we got it to work.

The only other travel-related bit is our decision to take a limo from the airport to the apartment. The cost is 33 Euro, which looks reasonable.

Tomorrow we start from the house at 9am, flight out of SFO is 12:40, arriving at Boston at 9:40pm and flying out right before midnight.

Portugal 2023: Day -2.

So, we are going to spend 35 days in Portugal this time, from August 2 to September 5.  This year, we are a party of four, with Olga's sister Tatiana and our brother-in-law Yuri joining us on the trip.   In addition to being significantly longer (or longest overseas vacation trip before was around three weeks), we are homesteading this year - we rented an apartment in Lisbon for the duration of the trip.  

So far, confirmed plans include a five day/four night jaunt around Central Portugal with the intent to catch the Castle of Belver, Ourem, possibly Castelo Branco,  some caves, Batalha, Obidos, Peniche, and spend a day or so on the beach.  This is an ambitious list, I would not be surprised if some things get omitted from the eventual itinerary,  but there are some places (Obidos, Peniche) we definitely plan to revisit and show to our companions.

We also are planning to spend four days/ three nights on the Sao Miguel Island in the Azores.  Wish we could spend more time there, but timing of various things (including lodging) demanded a very specific departure and return days.

I plan to do short reports from anything that constituted an interesting day in Portugal. I suspect there will be several days where we take a break and just chill (part of wanting to spend five weeks in Portugal was to allow ourselves some chill days).  There are some planned day trips to the usual suspects: Cascais (which we really liked when we visited in 2017), Sintra (because it's a must for anyone first time in Portugal), Setubal,  the beaches, and perhaps one or two more places - depending on what's available by rail.   We might also take a train to Porto and spend a weekend there - but this has not been organized yet. Porto appears to have plenty of lodging that for a couple of days would be acceptable, so I hope we can plan on the fly.

Our arrival coincides with the Papal visit to Portugal for what is known there is the World Youth Day (or Week) - a major Catholic celebration. The Pope will also visit Fatima right around the time we are planning on passing by. The title picture in this post is the route closures in Central Lisbon on the day of our arrival. Fortunately, we can take metro from the airport to where are going to live.

Cheers!

One of the last pictures we took last year. Praca de Commerca.

Portugal Day 17: Lisbon

 Last day of the trip. Walked around, bought souvenirs. Haggled at the souvenir shops - some time successfully, some time - not.  The highlight of the day was coffee in a Banana kiosk on the final walk home.  Packed the bags, called the taxi....

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Portugal Day 16: Lisbon

 We wanted to take a day trip to Marques de Pombal estate. Instead, we took a hike to Graca to fix Olga's broken crown, discovered the beauty of Portugal's dental care, and walked all the way to Avenidas Novas to revisit the street we lived on in 2017.

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Portugal Day 15: Lisbon

 This is a placeholder entry. Walking tour of Bairro Alto and Baixa.  This is a placeholder entry.

Portugal: Day 14: Lisbon

 Revisiting the "fake" King George's castle.  This is a placeholder entry.

Portugal, Day 14: Porto - to - Lisbon, stopping in Batalha and Obidos on the way

 The original plan was to see something new, but we wanted to buy a few things we saw in Batalha (and nowhere else), and bring some sour cherries in ginja from Obidos.  Also had to put a cap into our car rental story. Turned out decent.  This is a placeholder entry.

Portugal, Day 12: Last Day in Porto

 Our last day in Porto. Walking around, tasting wine in Vila Nova. This is a placeholder entry.

Portugal, Day 11: Douro Valley Trip

 This is a placeholder for a Douro Valley trip entry.

Portugal Day 10: Porto

 

Our second walk around Porto, featuring a visit to Palacio Bolsa - the headquarters of Porto's Commercial Association, and a boat ride on the Douro river.

One more source of coffee and pasteis

We wake up late, and are out of the house around 10:30-10:45. Heading towards Sao Bento, but taking a different route than two days ago. Stopped on the way for coffee and breakfast of pasteis. Mine is a different take on pasteis de nata, with the same custard filling but a different tart. Tasty.

Pasteis. Sorry, I already took a bite.

We took a southward route to Sao Bento station - passing by the Batalha square, and then taking some side streets until we hit the street just south of Sao Bento, and walked it all the way down to the suare. There, we spent some time asking around the tourist booths about the walking tours. Did not get any satisfactory results, so walked to Rua das Flores and took it all the way to its end. This street is lined up with a lot of stores, so did some window shopping along the way.

Sao Bento Square.

Rua das Flores.

Past the end of Rua das Flores, we continued our descent towards Ribeira, passing by the Porto Wine Association building (walked in checked it out, used restrooms, left somewhat disappointed, because the promised access to see the wine testing labs did not materialize) and eventually reaching through a big square (Praca do Infante D. Enrique)  with a large palace on it - which turned out to be Palacio de Bolsa, a 19th century palace housing Porto's Commerce Association. The palace has tours - we stood in line watching as the number of available tickets (they had a running tally) for the nearest English-language tour dwindled - until we got extremely lucky and snatched the last tickets for it. The tour was at 1pm, we had another 30 minutes to kill before it.  Went down to Ribeira, seeing a couple museums on the way, but deciding against visiting them (gotta leave something for the next time we are in Porto), but buying tickets for a 2:30pm boat tour along the Douro River (the so called "6 bridge cruise").

Palacio de Bolsa.

Took a short walk along the embankment to find the location of our boat landing, then took one of the side streets (apparently a very old passage) back towards the Palacio.  

Ribeira.

Walked back up to the D. Enrique praca, and while crossing the street to get to the palace, discovered a tram - which I honestly thought was some sort of a monument/non-working unit - as it was just standing at a dead end all the time I was taking pictures of it. Later, I discovered it gone from the very spot - apparently, there is at least one - possibly two tram lines in Porto.

This turned out to be a working tram.

Another thing I found around the corner?

McDonalds in a historic building, overlooking Douro river.

We then proceeded with the tour.  We got to see the large hall on the ground floor of the palace (actually more like the second floor, as we had to climb the stairs to enter the palace). It was devoted to some sort of "friendship of the nations" theme, with seals of countries friendly to 19th century Portugal covering the ceiling.

Entry Hall as viewed from the upper floor.

Past the entry hall the tour moved upstairs through a set of grand stairs, where we proceeded to circumnavigate the palace room by room. As the building's "technical" function is to host the Porto's Commerce Association, the formal rooms of the palaces relate to this purpose. They have a portrait gallery of the Association's presidents, a courtroom - apparently the building was used for legal proceedings and they kept the room in its historic form,  several offices, a Board of Director's meeting room, a meeting room for the full association, and finally - the crown jewel of the palace, the so called Arabic room - a large hall fully covered in Arabic art-inspired decorations - very rich and beautiful.

Palacio da Bolsa: Arabic room.

Palacio da Bolsa: Arabic Room: Interior detail.

We left the tour with about an hour before our boat trip. We decided to sneak in a quick bite before the trip, so, as is customary in our prior trips, we went to check out McDonalds.  It is, as seen above, located in a great place, in a very nice building. The menu is a mix of staples, and some dishes we've not seen elsewhere.  It is expensive - about double what a similar item would cost at a regular tashkinhia.  We settled on sharing a Big Mac (4.40 Euro - one of the cheaper signature sandwiches), just to check the box.

Why does it have to be McDonalds?

After this, we still had time to go to Ribeira, walk past our boat landing, and find an ice cream place with little traffic, and sangria on tap. Ordered sangrias, and a weirdly flavored ice cream. Ice cream was good. Sangria - white, fizzy, served with a stick of cinnamon inside a glass was by far the worst I had in Portugal - cinnamon made it bitter to my taste. Olga did not mind as much. We took the sangria to go and went to stand in line to get on the boat. We came earlier than most, so when the boat came and the boarding started, we got to take some of the best seats on the boat on the top deck, in front.

Our boat, arriving.

The cruise took about 50 minutes. We first went in-land, passing by most of Porto's bridges. Got to make some nice pictures of the riverside neighborhoods on Porto side.

About to pass under a bridge.

Gustav Eifel Embankment, and the neighborhood above it.

Eventually, we turned back and went towards the mouth of the river. Immediately we went from no wind, and hot weather, to a really nice at the beginning (and eventually quite annoyingly cold) cool breeze. We passed back under all the same bridges, went by Ribeira (giving me a chance to take more good pictures of the neighborhoods above it), and went towards the last bridge on the western side of the city.

Just passed  under the D. Louis I bridge.

Ribeira and the Bishop's Palace.

I was able to also take some pictures of the Vila Nova de Gaia side - despite essentially shooting into the sun.

Vila Nova de Gaia.

By the time we reached the last bridge, we felt real chill, but as the boat turned around, the wind immediately subsided and we got warmer.

The tour took about 50 minutes, as advertised. We disembarked, and went up the Rua de Sao Joao and then Rua de Muzhinho da Silveira to reach Sao Bento again. From there, we decided to check out the City Hall - I read somewhere that one might be able to climb the tower, so we crossed over to the  Aloidos square, where we stopped by a clothing store to buy Olga a pair of pants (to be featured in tomorrow's report), had some pasteis do nata and needed rest, before heading out to check the city hall itself.

My orange juice came in a jar.

We were able to go inside the city hall, but only one side room was open to visitors, all other locations were cordoned off. So, we left, went around the city hall to discover another church (apparently, there is a apocryphal story about the bankers not wanting a church on their square, and making the City Hall tower tall enough to obscure any views of the church from the Aloidos  square.), after which we turned towards our house, and made slow but steady progress (between window shopping, and taking a fairly long detour on Santa Catherina street - adding about a kilometer total to our walk) towards our place.

Porto City Hall.

Back in the apartment, I prepared for our zoom business meeting (final presentation for a year  long sponsored project), we did the presentation, after which, we made some food, ate it and called it  a day.

View from our apartment.

Alcohol.  Well, that sangria was aweful.

Steps.  16,503 according to Google Fit. The watch was largely in agreement - don't remember the exact number.  Not bad, considering that we did not cover too much of a linear distance.

Tomorrow. A small group tour to Douro Valley.