Saturday 4th April: a great trip to Alentejo!

This will be a long posting covering Monday to Saturday in Alentejo, because we couldn't get online while we were away. A great trip - wonderful places, very different from each other, lovely weather,wonderful and different scenery from what we are used to in the Algarve. In Alentejo, you get contrasts between huge flat areas a bit like the Prairies in the States and then lovely rolling hill countryside with endless vineyards and endless cork trees being cultivated for the corks for the wine. Many experiences from this trip to be described here!

Monday 30th March
Destination Estremoz, via Béja and Evora,a detour to Arraiolos, famous for carpets which turned out to be well-made thickly-woven rugs with traditional designs rather like Portuguese pottery, colourful but no way comparable with Iranian or Turkish. Checked in at the Pousada in Estremoz, a 13th century royal palace surmounting a hill village, with fabulous views, enormous rooms, period furniture, textiles, paintings. A very, very grand bedroom with shutters revealing a view of a marble square and a vast landscape. Bed not a four poster but rather a four minareter. Long corridors full of antique furniture and paintings, many of them rather dark with creepy figures whose eyes seem to follow you as you pass. Found out later from the manager at another pousada that the night watchman there hates doing his rounds as he finds these portraits really creepy. Huge reception rooms, and dinner in a vast dining room with 4 other diners (off-season) in a hushed atmosphere beneath a very, very dark painting of the Last Supper. It was fun, though we did not enjoy the dinner much, dramatic surroundings but rather pretentious and overpriced for what we actually got.

Estremoz is a beautiful town with very grand marble squares, trees, fountains; in fact one of the three so-called marble towns where even modest houses have marble decorations and the streets are paved with marble.

Tuesday 31st March
Visited two towns to the north of Estremoz. First via a very spectacular and sometimes terrifying single track road with fantastic endless views and with a sheer drop on one side through Carreiros from Portalegro to Castelo de Vide, a beautiful old town with small intimate squares with fountains. From there to Marvao, a fantastic village on top of a hill, heavily fortified and apparently only taken once, through treachery rather than by strength of attack. Spectacular views all round, especially from the dining room of the Pousada where we had lunch. After lunch went and fetched car to drive up through terrifyingly narrow and steep streets to the castle from where dramatic views over the surrounding countryside and into Spain. Back to Estremoz to suss out place for dinner, a taverna we found in the Rough Guide, and had good grilled pork and house wine in a carafe for about 30 euros and enjoyed it much more than the meal at the pousada the evening before! Whole atmosphere of the place decidedly rural, as we sat on stools and leant back against gigantic antique wine jars.

Wednesday 1st April
Enjoyed a last view of the beautiful marble square outside the pousada, with its tall white statue of the Queen the pousada is named after, Reine Santa Isabel, and spectacular view of the plain with a distant sight of another castle. We then set off to visit the castle, at Evoramonte, set atop another steep village and with a three storey keep which while we were there was visited by a coachful of very excited schoolchildren, who sat down in the vaulted second floor chamber to hear their teacher tell them the story of the castle.
From there we drove to Evora and managed to get ourselves inside the walls at the right gate and negotiate the narrow street to the hotel, only trying once to go round a small square on the wrong side. The hotel, Solar de Monfalim, is a former summer residence of a duke, and remains unspoiled and rustic, with lovely tiles and old woodwork. Very warm friendly welcome from the all-female staff. Were fascinated by the card we got with the key which informed us that " We have at your service a Safe where you can put your values." We spent the afternoon learning the geography of Evora. From the central Giraldo square you can reach any of the interesting areas - university, Roman temple and abbey/pousada, Moorish streets, the walls, etc - in ten minutes. A small church next door to the pousada had the most amazing tiles combined with gilded baroque altar - a pattern we found in the church Jon took us to here in the Algarve, and also on our last day, in Alvito, in a beautiful, worn, slightly tatty parish church which was very real and not a museum, including the bells being rung at 5 pm on the Friday before Easter week. (see Friday blog).
The university of Evora was closed by the Marquis de Pombal, who disliked the Jesuits, in the mid 18th century, and was reopened after the Revolution in the 1970s. It was open for visitors to walk round the central courtyard and surrounding galleries and look into the teaching rooms, with gorgeous tiles and lovely old woodwork and students very much of today.
Late in the afternoon we got ourselves organised and visited the local information centre to find out about visits to vineyards, and were helped by a glamorous lady to taste some different Portuguese grapes and set up two visits for the next day. Also checked out a small restaurant recommended in the Rough Guide. When we got back there for dinner we were very impressed by the "black" pork, and the owner's enthusiasm and recommendation of an excellent Alentejo red wine - we went back the next evening for more.

Thursday 2nd April.
Breakfast much less posh, and without the fresh fruit and "All Brands"( All Bran) we found in the pousada - fellow guests American and Canadian. Gave ourselves plenty of time to find the first vineyard where we were due at 12 - and needed most of it to work out the small-town roundabouts and unhelpful map. It was a Herdade, i.e. posh wine estate, created in 1997 and now producing about 9 wines with state of the art methods and equipment. Were given only one wine to taste, as it was coming up to lunch time, but enjoyed a posh lunch in the restaurant there before buying some wines to take away. But were shown round by very pleasant young woman and left feeling we knew quite a lot about wine production. This stood us in good stead after lunch when we visited the cooperative where the guide was fluent, but often almost incomprehensible.

The second visit was a complete contrast - a Cooperative with plant producing wine for its over 1300 members. Much enjoyed the bottling and packing plant with its robots, and also got a glimpse of a new project in a mobile winery parked outside the main building, a white wine to which was added a tiny amount of additional yeast before it was capped with a metal crown cork for second fermentation. Our guide had not very much English but communicated very well, and we learnt a lot, besides buying even more, including their top reserva, at the appalling price (for Norwegians used to cheap wine!) of 10 Euros!!! We noticed by the way that the pousada where we had dinner on the first night used as their house red a wine we buy in the supermarket here for 1,90 - and charged 15 Euros for it! That makes even Norwegian restaurant markups look reasonable!

To round off the day we drove further out into the country to yet another castle and hill village, Monsaraz - and found a real community, two lovely village streets with three restaurants/cafés and, for the first time, two or three shops with good quality "brukskunst", including lovely textiles. A great find for K was a knitted jacket with a roll-up collar to withstand all evening chills in Greece, Portugal or anywhere else!

Friday April 2nd

Left our very nice ducal town house in Evora and headed westwards to the dramatic stone age menhir ( basically a giant stone penis three meters high) and a very dramatic and eerie stone circle ( the largest and best preserved in the Iberian peninsular). The two sites are two and half kilometres apart but there seems to be some connection between them since the sun rises at the summer solstice behind the menhir which is in line with the opening in the (horseshoe-shaped) stone circle.

After this decided to return home across country rather than simply taking the main road. The cross country roads here are amazing, straight and well surfaced, and the countryside is really beautiful. Found ourselves at lunchtime in an interesting small town, Alvito, where they had a pousada in the local medieval castle which is also in the main square. Went in ( having rejected the menu at the only other restaurant also in the main square), looked at the menu, decided to have lunch there and asked to see some of the rooms ( just out of interest). Duty manager said he could give us a really good deal if we were interested. Had lunch ( slight disaster as the waitress brought K something totally different from what she had ordered, but things sorted out in the end). Back to reception where we were taken up to see a huge, beautiful double room overlooking the castle gardens for roughly a third of the normal price. Decided this was an offer we could not refuse and stayed on until the following day. For the night in this beautiful medieval castle with fantastic breakfast, paid roughly the same as for a good b and b in Britain. Only drawback was the peacocks in the formal garden outside the window. ( but they were very grateful for nuts we fed them from our window!).
After this went to the tourist office and talked to the incredibly helpful and informative young man there. Lots of useful info in English about the village and the area, and he particularly recommended visiting a local chapel with very interesting frescoes. We had to go to get the key from the lady who looks after the place. She (we had been warned) spoke no English, but was very friendly and keen to inform, so we managed to learn a lot about the frescoes, the chapel and its Alentejan style of painting. Wandered round the town and also visited the parish church ( see earlier comment on this). Distrusting pousada restaurants in the evening ( tendency to be overpriced and pretentious), we went to the place we had rejected at lunchtime and realised we had made a BIG mistake! Food was OK, but the owner/cook/waiter ( same person) was decidely surly. We reported this to the tourist office the next morning, and the very pleasant young man there was very concerned, but said this was not the first time he heard this comment.
Despite dinner fiasco, romantic night( no details!) at the best pousada we have been to, and excellent breakfast the next morning ( no " All Brands" here either). More feeding of the peacocks from our window and were rewarded by both the cocks displaying for us. These peacocks also interesting because the peahen was white. K needed to go to the chemist which is owned and run by a lady called Dottore Technica Maria Jesus Vieria Lizardo. Pity Norwegian "apotek" don't have such interesting names!

Saturday April 4th.
Time to go back to base, rather reluctantly. But before getting from the yellow roads around Alvito to the red roads back to the Algarve, we went to see the Ruinas Romanas de Sao Cuculate, just East of the pousada. We were alone at the site, a substantial Roman villa with some walls intact, well organised walkways and information about a building that was developed over about 4 centuries for different purposes. It was full of flowers, and the only sound was birdsong. We had explored most of it in peace and quiet before the arrival of a small group of Portuguese pensioners with very piercing voices. As we beat a hasty retreat to the exit we met a busload of people coming in, and considered our timing to be excellent! Found coffee in a small village where there were no cakes available. Five minutes later the waitress brought us some home-made biscuits, on the house, with a smile!

After that we had a fast run back to Foral on the excellent IC1, stopping for lunch in a featureless town called Aljustrel, where the "dagens" was grilled pork chops, with the inevitable chips and salad, enriched by Nin fetching the salt and pepper and getting cinnamon by mistake - not recommended on pork chops! A dive into our local supermarket, Continente, along with what looked like the entire local population getting ready for Easter week, and then back to unpack and start our blog while everything was fresh in our minds.