Days 4 and 5, Evora, Elvas, Duoro Valley and Porto

The last two days have been a bit of a blur, but I am going to try to write about them quickly. On Sunday morning we got up relatively early, grabbed a little breakfast in the executive suite, and then started our first real road trip to Elvas by way of Evora. Just before we reached Evora, we stopped to visit some 7000 year old rock formations. Nearly one hundred giant rocks were scattered in a loose oval as an apparent temple to the sun gods. We explored for a few minutes, and then drove to Evora and parked outside of the walled city. We walked into the city and began exploring from the town square, visiting churches and seeing the many Roman ruins. Did you know that much of Portugal was under roman rule from 400 bc to 200 ad or so? We didn`t, either, and were surprised to find Roman aqueducts, temples and arches everywhere. The highlight of our time in Evora was seeing the chapel of the bones - a chapel with walls covered in more than 5000 skulls and many other types of bones. It was built in the 1600s to remind people of the fleetingness of goods and the permanency of death. We had some lunch in a cafe in the square, and enjoyed the regional sweet cheese tarts, and moved on to Elvas.

Elvas was a lovely city, another walled one, and Matt had arranged for us to stay in a pousada - a government sponsored inn, usually made in old churches, convents, monasteries, castles etc. Ours was lovely. Though we arrived late in the day, we explored the walled city quickly, seeing the castle and the church. We returned to our hotel for a quick dip in the pool, and then changed and headed back to the walled city for dinner. We grabbed an outdoor table in the square and discovered that there was a weekend festival where different people would give concerts starting at ten at night. We sat under the stars, listened to the concert, drank some of the famous vinho verde, and had an absolutely amazing evening.

Yesterday we did a huge road trip - about six hours up to the Duoro Valley, which is where most ports are produced. However, they do not stay there - after only one year of aging, they are sent down the river to age further in Porto. We explored one of the quintas - wineries - where Fonseca port is made. It was shockingly empty as we did an hour long tour of the vineyards and tasted two of their fine ports. The views from there were incredible - steep mountains all leading down to the duoro river. We had lunch and drove the rest of the way to Porto, where we checked into our crazy hotel. More on that later. We had a bottle of wine outside on the hotel's patio where we met two very nice English couples who were vacationing on their motorbikes. The six of us went to dinner together at a nearby restaurant, where Matt and I finally tried the famous local cod and we were given a celebratory bottle of champagne for our honeymoon. We got into lively discussions with our new friens about the national health system, the Simpsons, and everything else under the sun. Then we returned home to our Baroque Suite and went to bed.