She Says - Portugal’s beautiful cities

18-21 August
We left Lisbon for Sintra, yet another World Heritage site but this time for the landscape of beautiful houses and palaces set into the forested hillside. Sintra was home to the royals and visited by other famous rich people including Lord Byron, and it’s well worth the visit for the winding alleys (full of tourist shops) and gorgeous buildings. A surprising number of houses seem to have been completely abandoned - it’s so sad, I hate seeing beautiful buildings left to decay and I can’t understand why they haven’t been bought and converted to hotels or pousadas (B&Bs) or even just lived in! We’ve seen a lot of this now, even in Lisbon, buildings where there are loads of tourists and visitors and so amazingly empty. I’m surprised they haven’t been bought by some national organisation for preservation of historic buildings and turned into museums or something, but I’ve no idea if such an organisation exists here considering the state of decay we’ve been seeing. We fell in love with one house, all covered in tile work with a balcony and balustrades and arches and just beautiful – it broke our hearts to see this massive beautiful building slowly decaying.

We had reached Sintra reasonably early (only 20 minutes by highway from Lisbon) and decided to leave early after lunch as there were no campgrounds nearby. Our trip south along the coastline led us past Cabo da Roca, the most westerly point of mainland Europe, so that was worth a quick stop. We chatted with another motorbike-travelling couple from Italy, who spend their holidays each year travelling to a different part of Europe – I think that’s a great way to slowly see the world! They seemed really impressed about our trip, and even took photos of the bike. The attention we get from people is a little embarrassing sometimes, as we don’t feel like we are really doing anything so out of the ordinary. The problem is, we know of many other people who have done trips like this, but that’s from our exposure through internet forums etc., and not everyone has had that same exposure. I have to remind myself that taking 2 years out of your life just to travel is a pretty weird thing to most people - it seems quite normal to us to do it, but I guess really it isn’t! We found a nice coastal campground – big, busy, not too loud but more expensive than we’ve been paying lately – and enjoyed sunset over the horribly littered sand dunes. We came back into Sintra the next morning to visit the palaces and Moorish castle, not to go inside as entrance fees were high, but hoping instead for some nice views. However, the access road was thin and full of buses and people, and you can’t see anything of the view or buildings! We caught a glimpse of one palace and decided to move on to town to take advantage of their free library internet access. Happily, we found there is a network of library internet across the country - at least two cities we plan to visit in the next week have access so that may be useful, as we are looking at having some slow days soon. Unhappily, the library computer corrupted our memory stick with a virus and we were unable to update our Swiss blog, which we’ve been trying to do for 3 weeks now!

After lunch, we took the toll roads to Evora, which were quick and almost empty, and we only got a little bit lost in Lisbon. Approaching Evora, we took a detour along a well sign posted route to some prehistoric rock monuments that our map indicated were in the area – wow! (and not just because it was sign-posted!!) We found the giant circle of Almendres, made from around 50 large granite blocks formed into 2 circles (one basically inside the other). The rocks have been rounded, and several of them had engravings, either circles or hollowed out ‘cup’ marks – not an easy task using granite! It’s the biggest stone circle on the Iberian peninsula, and I was thrilled we got to see something so cool. Visiting prehistoric (or megalithic) sites is a bit of a hobby of ours (mostly mine I think!) and we’ve visited loads in the UK, so it’s been great to see some stuff over here too. However, we decided not to hike to the single standing stone nearby – we’ve seen enough of these by now, and it’s very hot out here! We also got to see cork oak plantations! It was very bizarre to see these trees stripped of bark almost all the way up the trunk. Stranger still to see them marked with numbers that appear to correspond to the year the bark was cut, presumably so they know when to cut again. Almost every tree we’ve seen seems to be cut though – including on roadsides and in picnic areas – presumably because we’ve heard there is a world cork shortage and any tree is fair game!

We found the campground outside Evora, run by the same group with the same prices as over near Cabo da Roca. We decided to ride into town to see if there were any other camps, only to get ourselves hopelessly lost and ended up riding through the pedestrian-only zone in the middle of town! We found the tourist office, but there were no other campgrounds. We were able to read about the area’s other prehistoric monuments, and picked up a map of the city and surrounds for later exploring. Arriving late in the campground, good and quiet but around 2km from town, we decided to have an easy night and visit the city the next day when we could walk during the cooler morning. It’s very very VERY hot here, now that we’re out on the plains again, and someone told us it’s around 40 degrees today. The campsite is stifling, dry and dusty, with few places on the site having shade all day. Our tarp provides some protection, but it’s still very warm under it and inside tent, and the airflow is not great. I have to say though, while hot, I’m glad we haven’t seen rain for 2 weeks - I was getting pretty sick of it! We’ve had little worry if each day will be sunny and nice, or if we’ll get rained on!

We got to Evora nice and early yesterday morning. It’s a lovely little city, and again so quiet! There were plenty of tourists around, just not busy like we expected from a major tourist destination in the middle of summer. It was really nice and easy to walk around. The city is all white and yellow, and the buildings are in better condition than we’ve seen elsewhere. It’s a walled city and almost entirely paved in rough cobblestones (not neat square ones like we’ve seen elsewhere in Portugal and other parts of Europe). The Romans settled here, and left behind a temple in the city centre along with parts of an aqueduct. In the 1500s, a giant aqueduct was built from the edge of the city outwards, and now there are houses built under some of the archways! The big highlight of Evora, and our main reason for visiting it, was the Chapel of Bones (Capela dos Ossos). Adding to our list of the world’s most morose monuments (among others, we’ve made it to Czech Republic’s Kutna Hora bone church, Paris’ bone-lined catacombs, and Rome’s mummified monks chapel), this small chapel behind one of the main churches was completely lined with human bones in 1810. The bones have been arranged around the walls into patterns, and include the mummified body of one of the chapel’s designers. I loved the motto written across the entry to the chapel, something along the lines of ‘These bones that lie here, wait for yours’. I was really pleased that, unlike a number of similar places we’ve visited, photos and videos were welcome and we could take as much footage as we wanted! The main entry into the chapel was covered in tiles, and contained a beautiful series of azulejos depicting Jesus carrying his cross. We went back to camp mid-afternoon, originally planning to return tonight to take ‘golden hour’ photos before sunset and some night shots; however, we’ve realised that nothing was particularly worth returning for due to the low angle of the sun, the high building walls and tight streets – no light really gets in anywhere in the afternoon!

I’ve been getting frustrated at not having time to write blog entries that are more than rough notes, or being able to get enough free internet time. Not paying where we can manage it helps a lot, as it’s money we need to help us stay on budget (already running over since we left France). Often the computer doesn’t have enough battery life to do much work, so that doesn’t help either, though we are getting better at organising ourselves to charge it off the bike while in camp (one hour is no problem to the bike battery and gets the computer charged well). The most frustrating thing is that everything takes time!!! Writing blogs, downloading photos then going through and picking the ones to keep, plus trying to keep track of other elements of the trip (like costs and fuel consumption), on top of daily work like cooking, cleaning and clothes washing, all takes a lot of time. Thankfully, the campsite has FREE WIRELESS INTERNET and we’ve spent a lot of time since last night using the computer in the TV room, getting all our batteries charged and photos downloaded, uploading the Swiss blog entries, going through emails, and gathering info on bike travel in Morocco. OK, it’s mostly been me! Xander has been reading and relaxing a lot. But like our electronic gear, our batteries need recharging too sometimes. I was feeling a bit off this morning and didn’t feel like dealing with heat, so being inside all day has been really good, and having a day of not being tourists is a good thing. And I’m slowly catching up!