Portugal: From Spain back to Evora, Day 6 & 7.

Today the drive could’ve been as simple as just crossing over to Portugal and heading to Evora. Like I did, when entering Spain. However I had my travel tool with me, and even Tim today chose to listen to the book. Tim being my GPS voice for those who haven’t followed the earlier posts.

Lets say it started with breakfast and ended with it. Ok a little more detail …

I usually had my phone to wake me up, but not today the 25^th December, Christmas morning. I woke up to the sounds in my stomach, the sounds which were with me the entire night. Screaming. ‘give me food’.  I went down where a breakfast was laid, it was the best I had so far. From a thigh of pig kept to be picked to the fresh honey and cheese everything smelt nice. It was raining out and it felt moist in my mouth. I am talking about the first bite of the croissant. Is'nt it lovely? how beautiful the simplest of things taste when they are done perfect! Looking at the spread that morning, I thought I should eat it all. But the first bite of that croissant is really what I remember. So, with the breakfast done and the voices calmed down, I started my decent from the old town to the Portuguese border. 

The first town on the other side of the border was so white that the sun light reflecting  from the walls nearly blinded me. It looked beautiful however. My aim however was to visit the town of Monsaraz, where the population was 20, in words, twenty!! 

The road was much narrower and the drive much nicer, much like the road to Pinhao. It did’nt have the river for company, but the fields and the sheep grazing on them. It felt like spring in the middle of winter.  Unlike in Spain where all small towns have a by pass on the state highway, Portugal needs you to drive through them. That is the best part, coz on the way you see so many characteristic towns and if you are lucky then, even some people on the street. I don’t know if it was for Christmas or these towns always feel empty. Only in people I mean not ever in the way they make you feel.

If the towns on the way to Monsaraz felt empty, then Monsaraz felt like a ghost town. The book had suggested that the vehicles, be parked outside the town walls and the entrance was by foot through one of the five gates.  In old times there would be the guards to accompany the entrances, now too they were there but only in figures. As I entered and walked through the narrow pebbled streets, I saw the whole town was filled with figures. The book has said that once the town had a population of over 200, and now it had only 20, with the young going out to find jobs. I wondered later was this decoration really for Christmas or to make the old folks in the town feel that they have more faces to see than what they usually do.

It is true that tourism supports such towns but then not all want to be a part of tourism, so the young leave and the old are left behind, I would rather say they choose to be left alone, with their town. Very often when one takes pictures of a monument or a town square, you wait for the appropriate moment when it feels less crowded around or you have a clear view. In Monsaraz there was no obstruction, there was just me and the figures, the streets and the old church which stood there decorated and feeling rich for Christmas.

However as I roamed through the narrow streets there were some inquisitive dogs who spoke to me, till their sound was cut by sounds of plates being washed. It was a restaurant and I was hungry, only that the sheer beauty of the emptiness didn’t make me realize that. Ah, I said to myself, so this is where the town is. They were all having lunch. It seemed like this was the only restaurant in town and they were all having lunch there. But there were young people too! And then I realized they had come to see their parents for Christmas and then the parents took them out for a Christmas lunch, the town belonged to them after all.

                                                             The figures of Monsaraz

'Monsaraz' was a find, but it was for me. Coz I knew my senior citizens wont be able to do what the towns old folks did.

It was a similar fear, Guadalupe before Caceres and liking Guadalupe so much that Caceres just turned out to be a night stay. So,  I thought to myself on the way to Evora the Capital of Alentejo region in Portugal, ‘what if it disappoints me’ the big town feel turns out to be a spoiler at times. Evora was never on my group itinerary and I was only doing it as it was heavily recommended by the book, and this is the only hope I went in with. The Lonely Planet recommends it so it wont be that bad if not to my taste. But I forgot, I was in Portugal and here, as I later realized even Lisbon seems to be a small town.

Evora was good, well more than that. I was glad that with all the restaurants closed for Christmas I was not left with a 50 euro supplement on dinner in some fancy restaurant but was nicely catered to by the staff of my guest house. We spoke till they had to leave and I had to go to bed.

The breakfast next morning was the freshest I’ve ever had in my entire travel life. I wont say more ..

                                                                The breakfast in Evora 

I will not go to Monsaraz again or maybe even Evora. Because it won’t happen in my group tour. Why? Because I cant tell my people to walk so much, it’s a pity I know but then there are always some adjustments that can be made without compromising the integrity of the tour and being true to the country.

As I soon realized, the Atlantic coast would be the next thing to blow their mind in Portugal!

Each road, that pass through the vineyards in Portugal is called as the 'rota de vinho' (route of the wine). If you ask me to pick any road in the country I would name it 'rota de paraiso' (route of paradise). 

Atlantic was next. 

Portugal: In Spain for day 4 & 5

Spain?! What comes in your mind when you hear this word? Flamenco dancers, Tapas, Spanish guitar, bull fights .. Well I think it is much more than that though I have yet to see Spain, the way I want to, let alone feel it. I really believe that a country hits you instantly, and Spain hadn’t hit me in my first trip there in 2010. So this time I was a little biased when I crossed the border and entered Spain. The only comforting thing was Spanish, and that I could do more with it than to just get around with my limited knowledge of the language. On the first 2 days of driving I had taken the odd route and it paid at times. That day on the way to Salamanca, the capital of Castella & Mancha, I decided to simply listen to Tim, the voice on the GPS. I reached early and it immediately hurt that I did not have the ‘lonely planet’ to Spain. I knew the language but I did not know what to do in Salamanca. So I did what I had gone for. To search for hotels for my group to stay, following a map, which I had marked the hotels on. It was a small town and finding the hotels was easy, though not always going up to them. The medieval towns in Spain are more or less set on hills and Salamanca is no exception to that. We will just say that till the evening I had managed to select one hotel which was good with the feel, its distance from the main square and most importantly for my 60 yr + people, it had an easy access.

A job done with the hotels and the places to see could be dealt later when there would be a guide to show us around.  It was almost 6.30 pm and unlike the earlier evening in Coimbra, my appetite had only grown in Salamanca. When I travel alone, and it does get a little lonely at times, food is the only thing that I look forward to. So I set to search for a place that felt right. Its very important on your travels that you don’t enter the first place you see and eat a sandwich coz you are too hungry to wait and too scared to order anything else. Roam around a bit, take in the town and you will know when to enter a restaurant.

I took my chance and entered a place, which served only Tapas. Well I suddenly remembered that the only thing that I had really liked on my first visit to spain were the tapas. So tapas they were for lunch and for dinner. Spain being expensive than Portugal I overspent by around 10 euros on each meal. The day was good but it felt like a regular office day. You do your work and you eat your meal. You enjoy both but there still feels something missing. Or maybe it was just the standard’s were raised too much by Coimbra.

The second day however came as a surprise. Salamanca had to stay in my itinerary, unlike Coimbra, which had to be sacrificed for the sake of Pinhao. The question then was which Paradores to select out of the three medieval towns of Caceres, Trujillo and Guadalupe for my next stay. ‘Paradores’ are hotels owned by the state in Spain and are beautifully structured in an old palace or a villa. I wanted my people to stay in one of them to get the authentic feel of old world Spain.  On my drive to Caceres where I was booked in a Paradores myself, the town of Guadalupe came in first. The road was a little off track but then I thought what if it pays off like Pinhao? and what a view it was from a distance of 500 metres! A Church which looked like a castle rising high above the other structures as it rightly should, and the being surrounded by perfectly sculpted city walls.

. As I entered the tiny square I could hear people singing and it seemed that the walls sang with them. Straight out of a story book. No tourists, only locals drinking, eating and praising the patron saint of the village through music. I told myself I shall come to sit amongst them later, first the hotel to be chosen. There was no option here. Either the Paradores had to be too bad or it had to have a 500 step climb in order to be declined for the group. The town had really won me over and to my relief, the hotel was as charming as the town. Set in a convent around an orange orchard. The manager even said that I could get a bus to the steps and he would ask the town municipalty to arrange for a parking.

I wanted to ask the manager even before staying at the Paradores in Caceres which had a population of 60,000,  whether it would be possible that I shift my stay from there to Guadalupe. There is a thing about small towns everywhere, the people are generally nice and if you speak their language they are nicer. Its true that on that afternoon as I had my first sip of Spanish beer, it felt much better than I had felt after having beer ever.

The town of Caceres, later as I learnt was just a formality. A night was booked and I had to simply use it. My group would stay in Guadalupe and proceed to Seville in the south of Spain without even stopping at Caceres, forget staying there. However being a Paradores, my stay in Caceres was good, but it happened to be Christmas eve and that meant I have their 50 Euro meal or stay hungry, with all the restuarants closed. With my over spending the day earlier, I chose the later.

Next morning I woke up with excitement, I was heading back to Portugal!