Almendres Cromlech

 

Next on my trip in Alentejo was a visit to the Cromlech of Almendres, one of the biggest megalithic structure in Europe.

It was a little hard to find, the road was really bad, and actually we got lost on our way and found another smaller structure somewhere in the opposite direction.

When we finally found it, it was a little disappointing: it is big, yes, it is very old, yes, but kinda nothing happens there, just a big pile of  big rocks...no magic, no extraordinary feeling.. although it is very interesting to from where architecture started and go back the roots.

Anyway, I advise you to go visit them if you are on your way to Evora. They are relatively close to the main road (around 14 km) and if you follow the signs you willl have no problem in finding them.

Trip to Alentejo: Montemor-o-novo

Another beautiful part of Portugal I've discovered over my trip this weekend is Alentejo (the South-Central part of the country), and the first city I've visited was Montemor-o-novo.

As I will later on notice, this little city is a typical one for this region - an area rich in agriculture with olives tree orchards, cork tree forests, cows, sheep and pigs running free on the green fields, with very small medieval cities spread around in between the hills.

The architecture is unitary: white houses with painted accents of yellow, blue or red as well as ajulezos accents (but very few comparing to Lisbon) glued together  to form medieval  

urban tissue - with narrow, labyrinthine streets going up hill to a stone castle that reigns over the area from the higher place. This can be named the "the Alentejo model of a city" - with no exception! (I've seen this weekend at least 20 castles - one in every city).

But what makes this city special, and the castle (now just ruins) unique is that this is the place where the important decisions were made, such as the decision to go and discover India as well as the decision to build the University of Coimbra.

Besides the castle and the breathtaking view over the surroundings there is not much to see in this very little city - maybe just walk for a while on the streets discovering the beauty of the place and taking in the atmosphere as well as observing the peaceful and quiet way of life of the people here (for example you can notice that every house has this stone washer that women use to wash the clothes by hand, as in the old times).

So if you want to slow down and breathe the fresh, clean air, I recommend a trip to Alentejo - the place where time stops.

Lisbon from above

One thing that I love about Lisbon is the fact that it is constructed on 7 hills, so you have a lot of points to admire the city from above. Some of them:

    Alfama

    Castelo Sao Jorge

    Elevador de Castelo

    Elevador de Baixa

    Rooftop in Graca

   Miradouro Sofia de Mello

   Miradouro de Sao Pedro de Alcantara

    Monumento dos descobrimentos

    Random street towards Graca

Hiking trip - part 1

 This weekend I went on what was supposed to be a little hiking trip (the initial plan was 20 km) that actually turned out to be a huge one, walking around 60 km during 2 days. The location was the Natural park of Sintra-Cascais, which I might add, it's the most beautiful and strange place I have ever seen.

The starting point: Sintra, it's one beautiful little city with a lot of history and architecture, that i will largely present with other occasion, because it is so much to say about it.

So, from downtown Sintra we had to go up mountain to one of the castles (there are 6 or so in Sintra) where was the starting point of the journey. Needless to say that this road was a total adventure where we ended up trespassing some private gardens, run across the owners (who were kind enough to let us continue our walk through their gardens), had to climb on rocks to jump some very tall walls because the backdoor was closed and the owners gone....all of that just to get to the castle and find out that the road it's actually on the opposite direction. Duh!

After we finally found the right way we begun entering the forest....which is absolutely amazing as you can see from the photos. The vegetation is very strange from the one is Sintra ( where it's very tropical with palm trees and stuff like that)...the trees are only pines and eucalyptus (you can imagine the amazing smell????) and there is little to no grass...so you can actually see the brown earth and yellow rocks of the ground.

The first stop after God-knows-how-long-of-a-walk (around 3 hours, maybe more...) we got to our first stop: Convento dos Capuchos, a monastery built in the 1500 by the Capucin Order.

Great place.Great building.Great memories.

The building is made to be in communion with nature, and all the materials used are local stones and cork and wood...so from some points you can't actually see the little building.

Also, I was amazed about the poverty that these monks lived in. I mean, I know there were supposed to, but common, a room for one monk was about 1m square....how did he slept??!!

Anyway, the place is worth seeing, and the 6.50 euro ticket was totally worthed to see the complex and surroundings (after visiting the building, you can go up the mountain to see other points of interest of the monks, where if you are daring enough to climb the rocks you can have an amazing view of the cities on the ocean's coast - see the pictures- and that were actually our next stops on the way)

Our next stop was the Sanctuary of Peninhas...that it's 3 or 4 km away (on the map) but actually it was more like another 3 hour trip climbing up the mountain ( I honestly think there were 8-9-10 km)-anyhow,the road was amazing, and the nature again, mesmerizing.

We even found a really, really creepy place with some sort of abandoned swing that looked like a scene from a horror movie- I must tell you that there are a lot of stories about how the forests of Sintra are filled with ghosts- after seeing it for myself, I kinda believe them.

By the time we arrived to Peninhas a really think cloud entered/settled in the mountain (beacuse the church it's on the very top) so we were not able to see anything there - but I will definetly go back there another time to fulfill my mission and tell you guys about it!

After that disappointment, the darkness begun to take over the forest so we kinda left in a hurry and begun to search for the nearest village where to look for shelter....which was: Azoio.

And from there, I will tell you what happened next time, in part 2 of the story