sâmbătă, 7 martie 2015

Monsaraz


























If you are going to Alentejo, please put on your list: visit Monsaraz. Beside the beautiful landscape sprinkled with blue lakes, the medieval city is very well preserved with people still living inside the small white houses. Being on the top of the mountain, Monsaraz has the privilege to offer 360 degrees view over the landscape almost from every little narrow street.

For sure you will fall in love with the calm atmosphere, fresh air and with the frozen moment in time that the city provides.

luni, 2 februarie 2015

Evora - city of bones




































Next stop: Evora. Although I didn't had time to write as often as I wanted, and I visited Evora around 2 months ago and only for half a day, I would definitely recommend it as a place worth visited    (maybe not more than 1 or 2 days).

It's a typical Portuguese city, the heart of Alentejo, with a beautiful, filigree-style-Lego-type-that-focuses-on-the-attention-to-details architecture in the authentic Portuguese style, that was for me love at first sight (maybe because it reminded me of some small house collection toys from the Kinder Surprise that I used to play with when I was little).

What I liked the most on my quick visit there besides the small medieval streets with coquette little stores and gift shops, was:
1. The cathedral: typical for the country -Gothic, nice clauster (interior garden), can climb on top to have a beautiful view over the city;

2. The Chapel of Bones: kinda small, and kinda scary - a 200 m square room, with walls and ceiling decorated by approximately 5000 human skulls and bones- like real dead people skeletons surrounding you from everywhere . The entrance to the chapel has a clear message for you as you enter: We bones that here are, for yours await - like what??! really, I'm young, I don't need to be reminded that I will end up pack of bones!!  Really people...I mean who can have such an idea? It was something like: "Oh, I just woke up this morning I was was thinking that maybe we can decorate a church with dead people"?. And another question I have: Did they just dug up some old corpses from the graveyard and put them on the walls, or did the people donate themselves? how sick is that? and more how can someone pray in such a place? Anyway, It was creepy, but kind of awesome also - even in some twisted way it made sense after you read what is written on the ceiling: "Better is the day of death than the day of birth"  So yeah, they kind of want to celebrate the death and passing to the other side where thing are supposed to be better - STILL WEIRD in my oppinion.

3. The roman temple kept in the middle of a new square that has new architectural intervention as well as medieval building and close to the Gothic cathedral - very nice contrast between the different times in history, and also a reminder of how architecture evolved...so, I liked the fact that you have like a comparative point between the buildings and can see the evolution right before your eyes, in a material form.

So that's it, for more information, visit Evora, it  worths your time.