Evora is another walled city, about an hour and forty-five minutes away from Obidos. Evora is less dramatically walled, as the walled area is huge; the fourteenth-century walls enclose an area big enough that you can’t see the walls from inside the walls themselves. Inside the walls and up the hill are some still-visible sections of a Roman wall, including a still-used Roman gate.
We parked outside the walls so that I didn’t have to drive in the warren of streets, and we walked to our nearby hotel. Our room was ready, so we dropped off our luggage and headed out. The forecast was for rain, a rarity in these parts, so we wanted to take advantage of the rain-free morning and afternoon.
Mer took us up the hill to the main square of the walled city to where the market used to be. It’s a surprisingly large square to be inside walls, and it’s quite pretty. One side is mostly shops with a covered portico to keep winter rain and summer heat off of shoppers.
From the main square, we walked up to the smaller town-hall square, where we went into the town hall. Inside the back of the lobby area is a Roman bath that workers uncovered during renovations, as one commonly does.
More up-the-hill, to the top of the hill. An old Roman temple wrongly attributed to Diana still partly stands (the temple is now believed to have been dedicated to the cult of the emperors). Next to the old temple is a park with a good viewpoint, a church (closed on Mondays), a museum on the Inquisition (also closed on Mondays), and the town library (you really have to want those books). Just beyond the square is the town’s cathedral, which we walked around to locate the front entrance, which turned out to be ninety percent of the way around the building; we had gone the very long way around.
We saved touring the cathedral for later, and we headed back down to the market square to grab a light lunch at a cafe. From there, we went down the hill some more to the Franciscan church, which was founded within Francis’ lifetime. Not a bad ideas-spread for a guy living in 1200s Italy.
The church was simple, as many Franciscans churches are, but it became “the thing” to have wealthy people build side chapels onto existing churches in the eighteenth century, so there are many elaborate side chapels in the church now. To make sure people don’t get caught up in all the pomp and showiness of worldly displays of wealth, three Franciscan brothers built a bone chapel, which we visited.
We’ve seen multiple bone chapels in Europe over the years, and we always find them fascinating. The point is always to highlight how brief life is and how long eternity is. I’ve seen the motto “We were once like you. You will be like us” on such chapels before, but this one had the new-to-me inscription of “We bones in here wait for yours to join us.” Point taken. There were hundreds of skulls and thousands of bones decorating the chapel. An inscription pleaded with people to stop being busy and to contemplate the chapel. Life is short, and you need to know that and think on the next life.
Attached to the church is a museum of ecclesiastical art which included a special exhibit of paintings of the cathedral done by teenagers from around the world. They were all good, but several were excellent and fairly moving. It’s quite a feat for someone who has only been around thirteen to seventeen years.
Upstairs from the art gallery was another gallery, showcasing some of the 2600 nativity scenes that a collector donated to the church. About half of them are Portuguese, but the rest come from over eighty countries around the world. There were nativity scenes made of clay and cork and colored tin foil and carved rock and even pencil leads. Some were very simple (just Mary, Joseph, and Jesus), and others had hundreds of figures crowded around a strangely Portuguese-looking Bethlehem. There were holy families of many different races and many different customs. It was a great display. And as a bonus, the museum led out onto a viewing terrace, which was wet and windy today. It still gave good views of the town.
From the Franciscan church, we went back up the hill to the cathedral, where we had less than two hours to climb to the roof, tour the cloister walk, check out the cloister roof, tour the cathedral, and see the two-floor museum attached to the church. No problem.
The roof was a good climb up both standard and spiral stairs, and even with the steady drizzle, it was still fun to be on the roof. A young couple asked us to take their picture, and so we got to talking. He’s a software engineer from Latvia, and she’s a vet from Australia, and they now live in rural England. They were fun to chat with, even in the rain.
Mer and I went down the stairs and on to the cloister, which encloses a small lemon orchard. I saw a sign for stairs in one corner, and that took us up to the roof of the cloister, where we could look down into the orchard. We walked around the cloister on the roof and then again on the normal floor when we got back down there. The walking area is intact and still a great place to quietly walk about.
On to the main cathedral, with time running short. We took a quick look around and headed over to to the museum. There we saw lots of paintings and vestments and metalwork used in the mass. Of special note was a serene-looking dead Mary whom people pray to when they want a good death. There was also a Mary figure whose front could be opened up to reveal carvings telling the story of her life. I don’t think I’ve seen anything quite like that before.
And so, after a warning by the museum staff person that “You control the temp! We close all doors at 5:00!” we walked back through the darkening cathedral, getting out the door at about 4:59. We ran into our English couple there, and they said they hadn’t made it to the museum in time, but the ticket people promised they could come back tomorrow to see the museum on the same ticket, which was kind.
Mer and I then began what turned out to be a two-hour mini-Odyssey to find supper. First, we located a gelato store for future use. Then we walked a fairly long ways to a restaurant that didn’t open until 7:00. We walked back to our hotel to regroup, and I took us to a pizza place that Google said was open, just a block away. It was closed until 7:00. We headed back to the ice cream place for a pre-supper dessert. We went back to the pizza place a little after 7:00. It was still closed, and no lights were on. We gave up on that and went to the nearest restaurant that was open – an Indian place just a few doors down from the hotel. Although I usually am suspicious of Indian food because it’s usually quite spicy, I managed to find a couple of things that I could eat, and so we ended the evening dry and well fed.
Tomorrow, I need to start the day off by going to the local branch of my rental car company. The “check oil” light came on in the car today when we were about seven or eight miles from town, so I drove here keeping an eye on the engine temperature. I verified that the car is low on oil, and when I called the company, they told me to drive it the two miles to the office. It’s their engine. I’m hoping they will give me a different car, but it’s annoying that we have to delay touring by probably thirty minutes to take care of it.
Today was a solidly good day in that most of our outdoor touring was dry, and the indoor touring worked well. Tomorrow we head south, and it’s supposed to be sunny the rest of our time here in Portugal.