Evora - Roman ruins and a chapel made of bones

Evora was a short stop for us, just a couple of days before starting our workaway experience in Aljezur. We stayed at a campsite just outside of the old walled centre of Evora, which we were pleased to discover also had a swimming pool. This actually came in very useful as the temperatures reached over 40 degrees!

Setting up our tent was a real challenge as the ground was incredibly hard and we did not have a hammer or mallet. We managed to eventually after a very long time get two pegs into the ground using big rocks to bang them in, whilst bending every other peg we had. To keep the tent standing up we had to improvise by tying it with bungee cords to a tree and putting tent ropes under big rocks, but it eventually stayed up. After this taxing work we were ready for a relax by the pool!

Evora is actually quite a small city with a population of only 56,600 and does not really require more than one day to explore it. The old centre is where all the sites are (being an UNESCO world heritage site) and is almost totally enclosed by medieval walls. The social centre of Evora is Praca do Giraldo and this is where all the locals hang out and sip a coffee. This is the place that all roads lead to in Evora.

Praca do Giraldo

Just around the corner from Praca do Giraldo is the famous bone chapel (Capela dos Ossos) which is actually part of the Church of Sao Francisco. It is as the name implies a chapel made out of bones. The walls and pillars are totally covered in skulls and other bones from 5000 dead monks and cemented into place. There are also two dissecated corpses hanging from ropes on the walls, one of them being a childs corpse.

Inside the Chapel of Bones

The chapel was built by a Franciscan monk who wanted his fellow monks to contemplate life and remember the fact that it is transitory. This is clearly shown in the famous warning at the entrance: Nós ossos que aqui estamos pelos vossos esperamos (“We bones that here are, for yours await").

Chapel of Bones with inscription above entrance

There are a couple of other quotes like this around the chapel: "Melior est die mortis die nativitatis (Better is the day of death than the day of birth)" and the poem: -

Where are you going in such a hurry traveler?

Stop … do not proceed;

You have no greater concern,

Than this one: that on which you focus your sight.

Recall how many have passed from this world,

Reflect on your similar end,

There is good reason to reflect

If only all did the same.

Ponder, you so influenced by fate,

Among the many concerns of the world,

So little do you reflect on death;

If by chance you glance at this place,

Stop … for the sake of your journey,

The more you pause, the further on your journey you will be.

All in all it made for quite a spooky experience. It would probably be even better if you could go in there at night.

Some of the other sites we saw included Evora Cathedral, Evora University, the cities aqueduct and a park that housed the Palace of Dom Manuel. Last but not least we also visited the Roman Temple (Templo de Diana) that was originally constructed around the 1st century AD but later destroyed during the 5th century by germanic invaders. However some of the base and pillars still survived to this day and were used for various buildings over the years until it was classified as an archaeological site in 1869 including a butchers and a castle stronghouse. It is still impressive to marvel at.

Evora University courtyard

Temple of Diana

After a long day in the old city centre we had another dip in the swimming pool before heading for an early bed, as the next day we had an early bus to catch to the south of Portugal to start our workaway experience.

A week in Lisbon

Lisbon is an interesting city with plenty to offer for almost every kind of tourist or traveller. It has beaches, nightlife, historical sights, good food, culture and friendly people.We had a very varied visit to Lisbon, staying there for just over a week, it allowed us to see the city at a leisurely pace and enjoy it more. Whilst there we stayed in a room in a flat belonging to a Portuguese girl. It was nice because we had access to a kitchen, meaning we could cook our own food (something we had been looking forward to).

We were lucky enough to be in Lisbon at the time that an airshow was going on in the nearby town of Cascais (a popular beach destination for tourists). Due to this we also benefited from cheap train tickets. There were hundreds of people lined up on the beach and next to it to see the airshow and we sat with them and were not disappointed. It was a lovely day and we were treated to some stunt helicopter flying and then some planes doing formations and trailing smoke behind them. After the show we were even lucky enough to get to sit inside one of the helicopters! 

The beach at Cascais

Us in the helicopter

Before we headed back to Lisbon though we also had a stroll along the seafront all the way up to a place called Boca do Inferno (Mouth of Hell). It is named this because of the way the water violently crashes and sprays up against the cliff rock walls. On the way back to Lisbon we also went past the town of Estoril and saw the famous casino there, which is a popular landmark.

Boca do Inferno

We did one other day trip whilst we were in Lisbon as well; this time to the very popular place called Sintra, known as the City of Palaces. One of the hardest decisions about visiting Sintra is choosing what palaces you want to see, as there are 8 palaces, and a castle. We tried to see as many as we possibly could, and we managed to see 4 palaces (Pena Palace, National Palace, Seteais Palace and Quinta da Regaleira) and the Moorish castle, but we had to choose only one to actually go inside to explore. We decided to visit Quinta da Regaleira for a couple of reasons, one that it was less popular than the famous Pena Palace and two because from what we had read about Quinta da Regaleira offered something a bit different and a bit more interesting than Pena.

Carmen with the National Palace

Seteais Palace

Pena Palace

The Moorish Castle

We really enjoyed looking around Quinta da Regaleira, it has a lot to offer. The palace building itself is not as big as many of the other palaces in Sintra, but what it lacks in terms of size it makes up for in design, and beauty. The main residence is over 4 floors with an alchemist lab in a tower on top. This is where the owner used to practise alchemy. The best part about visiting this palace though is the grounds, they are vast and are a lot of fun. The grounds include lots of underground tunnels and hidden passages, towers and wells, it was like being part of an Indiana Jones adventure.

The highlight though and most popular and most photographed place in the whole grounds was the Poço Iniciático (Initiation Well), which looks like an inverted tower, where at every 15 steps there is a plateau, in total there are nine plateau's leading down into the ground. The nine plateaus are supposed to signify the circles of Hell, the nine sections of Purgatory and the nine heavens of Paradise, as told by Dante. It was a really fun visit and would highly recommend it to anyone else visiting Sintra.

Quinta da Regaleira Palace

Tower in the grounds

The Initiation Well

There are many things to visit in the city of Lisbon and we tried to squeeze in as many as we possibly could. Belem is one of the most popular areas of Lisbon owing to the iconic Belem Tower along the waterfront, which can make for a very nice picture. The tower looks very nice from the outside and when you climb to the top you get a nice view up and down the waterfront, however inside the tower is nothing special, so I would say at 5 Euros the ticket price is probably a bit expensive. Luckily for us, however, we got it for free as they allow one day a month free admission to both Belem Tower and Jerónimos Monastery.

Belem Tower

Jerónimos Monastery was the other main attraction we visited in Belem and it is a very impressive building, late gothic apparently and took 100 years to build between 1501 and 1601. It is seperated into two parts, the church and the monastery. Within the monastery is a huge cloister with beautifully carved pillars, arches and windows; it felt very tranquil and peaceful. Contained in one of the rooms off of the cloister was a very interesting exhibition of the history of the monastery compared to the what happened in Portugal and what happened in the world at the same time.

Jerónimos Monastery exterior

Jerónimos Monastery cloister

Our last stop in Belem was to the famous Pasteis de Belem, this is where they make the equally famous Pasteis de nata. Pateis de Belem was first opened in 1837 specifically to sell Pasteis de nata, which had become a very popular snack sold by the monks at Jerónimos Monastery since 1820 to try and gain extra revenue. However, when the monastery was shut down Pasteis de Belem bought the recipe and still make them exactly the same way now. Pasteis de nata are basically an egg custard tart sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar; they are delicious. Unfortunately we only bought one each, and could have had a few more of them, but the queues to get them were huge, trailing out the door and along the street!

Carmen showing off the delicious pasteis de nata

Just walking on the streets of Lisbon is a nice thing to do in itself, you don't even have to visit particular sites, just take in the small windy streets of areas like Alfama, the oldest neighbourhood in Lisbon, which reminded us of Moroccan cities. A particular favourite place for people to visit here is the Castelo de São Jorge, which overlookes the neighbourhood and makes for some nice photos. Another area that is really nice to just walk around is Bairro Alto, probably the most touristy part of the city where you will see people taking pictures of streets and buildings on nearly every corner. This section of the city includes the most photographed street in Portugal and the oldest book store in the world (Bertrand Bookstore). It has lots of shopping areas and restaurants, as well as little eateries and praça's (squares) where locals congregate. It is an area full of life and is just nice to sit and people watch.

Archway in downtown Baixa

The most photographed street in Portugal

Although this was the longest we had stayed in a place (apart from Madrid and whilst doing the workaway in Spain) we were still a bit sad to leave Lisbon as we had become quite settled, but it was on to our next destination, Evora and experience the summer like heat in Portugal!