About a week ago, we received a message from Helena on Sunday morning. It was our favorite kind of message because she asked if we wanted to go on a little adventure. Of course! Spending the day with Mike and Helena is always fun, but getting to see another part of Portugal with Helena as our personal guide puts a nice, juicy cherry on top.
When they picked us up about an hour later, they told us we were going to Évora, about an hour west of Setúbal, in the interior of Portugal. Now, Portugal is approximately the size and shape of the state of Indiana in the US. A person could drive the length and breadth of the Hoosier State – as I have done – and not see much variation in topography, climate, or crops. The same cannot be said of Portugal. Just a few minutes outside the city, I could tell we were entering an agricultural zone. Évora is the capital (think county seat) of a district of the same name – Évora. The Évora district is part of the Alentejo, which is sort of the bread basket of this country. The highway traversed beautiful country of rolling hills covered in long, golden grasses. Sprinkled as far as we could see on either side were meandering groves of cork oaks, which are rugged-looking leafy trees whose combined harvest makes Portugal the leading supplier of cork in the world. Grazing among the trees were small herds of copper-brown cows, living their idyllic lives. The acres of vineyards added to the impression that we had been transported to Napa Valley, California in the 1950s.
One of the most amazing sights on our trip to Évora was an odd juxtaposition of nature and industry. We drove through an area that contained miles of those tall steel towers that support high voltage electrical lines. As a young child, I liked to imagine they were an army of giant, broad-shouldered robots who were setting off across the country to bring technology and civilization to the unsettled parts of the US. At first, I thought nothing of seeing them here, but then something caught my eye. I noticed what appeared to be a HUGE nest high atop one of those towers. The next tower we passed confirmed that I had, indeed, seen a HUGE nest, because this one had a giant stork standing on the edge of a similar nest. The further we got into the region, the more storks we saw standing sentry over these mammoth nests, balanced among the supports of the electrical towers. Soon, we were seeing multiple nests on a single tower until we finally reached a pinnacle. There was one tower just a few hundred feet from the highway that provided perches for 15 giant stork nests! Every nest we saw was occupied by at least one giant bird. I wish there’d been a safe way to pull off the road and snap a photo, but you’ll just have to take my word for it. I recall driving through a small German village in the Black Forest whose residents built large platforms on their rooftops in order to attract nesting pairs of storks. It was considered great luck if your home was selected to host a family of stork chicks for the season. That little village will have to go some distance to top the accommodations the storks have found in Portugal!
When we got to Évora, just as Helena had predicted, we found we’d left the cool ocean breezes of Setúbal behind us. This small city is known for very hot summers and cold, damp winters. In spite of this meteorological disadvantage, Évora has been a thriving community since medieval times. Complete with Roman ruins of the Temple of Diana, this walled city is a UNESCO World Heritage site, known as a living museum. The architecture there spans the time of Julius Caesar to the mid 18th century. The Roman Temple was built in the 1st or 2nd century AD and withstood the devastating earthquake of 1755. Perhaps the most interesting, and absolutely the most ghoulish site is the Chapel of Bones. This tiny 16th-century church is made largely of human skulls and other bones. It’s said to have been constructed to remind passes-by of the temporary nature of life.
We wandered around this lovely historic city, lingered over a delicious lunch in a small local restaurant, and enjoyed ice cream at a sunny table in the middle of a pedestrian street. Nearly every structure within the walls is painted brilliant white, which Helena said is to reflect the intense summer sun away from the interiors. Many of the houses had door and window frames painted in a kind of mustard yellow. I thought it was curious that everyone used the same color of paint and Helena explained that the pigment was made from a mineral extracted from a particular kind of local stone. In times when paint was expensive, and colored paint was prohibitive, the locals made due with what their natural world provided for free. The practice became a tradition, and the tradition endures today.
As we left this ancient, yet lively place, I vowed we’d come back when we could visit more of the architectural treasures preserved within the walls. We returned to Setúbal, happy and tired. I’m so grateful to Mike and Helena for showing us some of the middle section of the country, and I’m grateful we returned home to our beautiful coastal home.
Tomorrow, I’ll write about a field trip Helena and I had with a friendly group of women.
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