1 year, 177 days since the start of the 1st lock down in March 2020
We took the car out today and visited various little hill towns near to Evora. Our first stop was the little town of Reguengos de Monsaraz but as that was not as interesting as we had expected, we reset the SatNav to the nearby hilltop town of the same name - Monsaraz. This was much more impressive. We managed to park just outside of the city walls, having learned our lesson from the previous towns we had visited. The views were amazing and we stopped for a coffee to enjoy them although for some strange reason we were plagued by wasps. These are the city walls of Monsaraz complete with Portuguese flag and a stunning blue sky.
We drove onto another sleepy Portuguese town called Mourao. This is exactly the sort of place we had hoped to find and we enjoyed their ‘menu do dia’ with lovely pork and desserts. I was driving and so did not go for the glass of wine that was included.
Our next stop - and we were flagging a little - was the Alqueva dam. We mainly visited as Colin likes dams and this one happens to be the biggest dam and artificial lake in Western Europe! It was indeed impressive but also slightly annoying that we arrived just as two coaches of tourist also arrived, photo bombing each photo I composed. We walked right across the walls of the dam looking down far below to the valley - I’m not that good with heights but looking through a view finder is distracting. We finished up by visiting the interpretation centre where the coach of tourist worked to our advantage as it would normally be closed but had opened just for them. Although the talk was unsurprisingly in Portuguese, the centre had bilingual display and we learnt a lot, especially about the special bat cave recreated to relocate a roost of rare bats.
Last stop of the day and we really were flagging now was to the little town of Moura. The light was lovely and flocks of swifts screamed up and down the streets. We stopped for an ice cream in a little park called the Jardim Dr Santiago with thermal springs. We sat in the last rays of the evening sunshine and exchanged WhatsApp messages with residents of our Crescent regarding the introduction of a CPZ - we know how to enjoy ourselves on holiday!!
