Day 22 Beja through Odemira, Boa Vista dos Pinheiro, Sagres to Lagos on the Algave

 I am writing this post from our terrace at our guest house in Lagos on the Algave. Lovely Portuguese jazz is playing compliments of Youtube.  The sun is setting and the fronds of the palm trees opposite are ever so faintly stirring. We arrived here via a wonderful country drive through vast broad acre farms of wheat, olives, grapes and citrus. Along this road the storks had colonized the tops of so many electricity poles. The enormous birds stood as sentinels atop their nests and as it is spring, I was thinking they must be guarding either their eggs or their hatchlings. 

It was a great run, especially as we finally worked out the navigation cast from John's I phone to the car display, AND we got apple play working. It was a cruisy, scenic drive with only the occasional warning from the rumble strip that we needed to re-centre. This was what happened when the scenery was so seductive. 

As we approached Odemira, the hills were undulating gently and perched high on a nearby hill there was the most beautiful old windmill. In its time it had been used to mill the grains from the surrounding farms. Today it stood in elegant and stately retirement, looking across the valley. 

Coffee break was at a roadside stop in Boa Vista dos Pinheiro. I was surprised at how many locals visited as well, in the middle of a workday. The Portuguese people had their priorities right.

We pressed on to Sagres and began to see signs that we were approaching the sea. The soil was a little sandy, and the vegetation became scrubby. Sagres was a surfer's paradise. The seafront had that make do beach hut appearance loved by surfers. We drove past the sandhills towards the fort built on the very edge of the cliffs above the surf coast. The fort loomed up imposingly. It was once a fortification but today it it had been turned over to a wonderful display of Portugal's navigational heritage. We were standing on the last bit of European landfall before the vast sea that washes up on American shores. It was raw and beautiful.

My mood of happiness came to a sudden end with a text message from Britt. "Did you guys leave anything behind in the room at Beja?' she asked gently. Apparently I had dropped a couple of credit cards behind when my phone case fell open. Bugger! Britt the angel fixer was on it... contacting the guest house to arrange pick up.. passing the task on to the Faux Import Team.. who contacted Fed Ex and arranged for the cards to be picked up and delivered to the Faux offices in Dubai. 

Lunch at Sagres was on the front in a surfer joint called The Hangout. Just our kind of place. They did bruschetta and tattoos. It was a good spot but I think we stood out like a sore thumb. 

From here it was a short drive to Lagos. Lagos was holiday central. It was a playground for people across the world. As we walked the streets, you could hear smatterings of so many different languages. Our guest house was a 15 minute walk to the seafront, in a very nice raised position. We had a lovely view from our room and an even better one from the terrace. We had a great view of the old town wall about 200 metres away and all the stylish villas in between. 

We were show to our accommodation by the most fastidious of young woman, Mariana. Every feature was explained. The parking options were explained. The tourist points were explained...the meal recommendations were made. Yes she was thorough and she insisted on helping us to lug our stuff up to the second floor. 

We dumped our bags and set out to get the lie of the land. The streets full of eateries and other shops tumbled down to the seafront, where a channel led boats back to the vast marina. We walked as far as the footbridge and then back through the laneways back up to our guest house. 

Apparently our guest house is just down the road from The Rising Cock Party Hostel frequented by young Australians. Their pub crawls are legendary. We probably won't hear a thing as we are up quite high.

Dinner - what should we do? The terrace was lovely and we tossed around the idea of getting takeaway and staying in, but sense prevailed. We could stay in for chicken and chips any time, but sitting in a restaurant in Food Street was not something we can do next week. We stopped to read the menu in several places and finally decided on Ocean and Earth. A few days ago I casually mentioned I wouldn't mind a bowl of pasta and ever since, Johnny had been checking EVERY restaurant menu for pasta. Both Johnny's carbonara and the salmon pasta I had were terrific. I found myself listening for Aussie accents in the crowds of people that passed us. YES! the next table at the restaurant had two girls from Melbourne. 

It was back to the guest house for coffee and choc bikkies and Joe Bonamassa. We had rediscovered him this afternoon as Apple Play shuffled all sorts of stuff on Johnny's phone. Venus was beaming down on us and the wonderful Algave landscape. Jeeze I'm lucky. Goodnight.

Day 21 Beja

We spent our last few hours in Evora searching out the gothic Chapel of the Bones. It was attached to the cathedral and convent. We thought it would be a quick tour but we were there about an hour. The chapel was founded by St Francis and his followers. The bones of the dead were used to decorate walls, columns, and even the ceiling. It seemed odd to be surrounded by so many relics of the dead and instead of being horrified, to think about how decorative it looked. Looking closely we could see the different sized bones and therefore the different ages of the people who had died. The city’s graveyards were just too overcrowded at the time, so skeletons were exhumed so new bodies could take their place. It was once believed that these were victims of the plague, which killed millions throughout Europe in the 14th century, but research has found them to simply be the remains of the general population of Évora, buried in different periods. There are also two mummies, a woman and a girl. The woman died between the age of 30 and 50, probably from a tooth infection, while the girl was just 2 or 3 years old.

From the chapel at ground level, we went upstairs to a variety of artistic displays. There were paintings of religious scenes as well as a wide range of artefacts like the cloaks and the utensils used by the early churchmen. There were the strangest dolls with jointed and movable limbs that were dressed up for the various religious events. There was a display of paintings of the chapel from a range of Russian artists. Then 2600 interpretive models of the nativity sent from countries all around the world.

From here it was back to the hotel to check out, load the car and begin our drive to Beja. Beja was a country town hub which in Roman times was called Pax Julia. It was there to service the surrounding vast farmlands. We had passed vines and olives that stretched on for many kilometres. One watering machine was 250 metres long! There were huge grain silos at least twice the size of ones we have seen in Australia. No wonder this region is known as the bread basket of Portugal.  As we flew through the countryside we caught sight  of a stork which had made its home atop one of the light poles. It was great taking secondary roads again as we felt closer to how the local people were living and working. 

The centre of the Beja town was pretty enough but again set out the Portuguese signature spider web of laneways that google maps found it hard to navigate. We had lunch at a café near the castle. The kids from the local school were dropping in on their way home. The standard uniform was tight jeans, orange crop top, bare midriff and cigarettes. Not a laptop in sight. 

After lunch and wetting my hat so that it would drip down on me to keep me cool, we set off for a walk through the castle and a couple of interesting local museums. Everything closed between 12 and 2 so we spent the time walking in the baking heat and then rehydrating with a zero alcohol beer outside the pub. The castle, curiously, has been rebuilt often with strangely modern and pale cuts of stone that stood out oddly where repairs had been made to the walls. The museums were shut for repairs. This was not a city set up for tourists. Still, that meant we could get to our accommodation earlier and thoughtfully, Britt had organized an early check in for us. And parking was available, although the locals do seem to throw the car into the spot at various angles rather than between the lines.

We were booked into a vast “loft” but it was gratefully on the ground floor and we did not have to hump heavy bags up stairs again. It looked like a modern airy wine cellar that could have accommodated 6 people. It was wonderfully cool in there. The TV was HUGE. Imagine a large fridge turned on its side. Johnny parked the car about 10 mins away and I got into my bathers before we headed out to a very welcome private pool.

OHHH how refreshing that was!

We had a few places chosen as possibles for dinner, but the first two were unexpectedly closed. We kept walking towards the castle street, and opposite the theatre, the Japanese all you can eat restaurant that we had seen earlier in the day was open! We had a good meal and half a bottle of local red wine. I got chatting to the waitress, who was not Japanese. In fact she was from Nepal. 

After this it was a short walk back to out "loft" and coffee with chocolate salami. Great.