Day Ten and Eleven – 40 Days and 40 Nights

Day Ten and Eleven – 40 Days and 40 Nights (January 5 and 6, 2011)

For some reason, we managed to sleep in a fair bit yesterday morning. Our original plan had been to drive back down Nazaré and the Batalha monastery, however the sky looked a bit ominous and both of us were fighting colds (a losing battle, as it later turned out). Given both of those compelling arguments, we decided to explore Tomar instead.

We took a bit longer than usual getting ready and eventually packed into Aurelia the Yaris for our short voyage into town. We started the day at the Templar Castle, perched on its defensive hill overlooking the town. The drive up the hill was exciting – I love steep winding roads, especially in hire cars. We found parking right in front of the main gates – one of the advantages of off-season travel is the abundance of parking opportunities that reveal themselves at every turn.

We spent a good two hours poking around what remains of the castle. We’ve discovered that these old castles and monasteries in Portugal are surprisingly well maintained, and much restoration work was being done at the Tomar castle. We’ve both read books recently about the Templars and the lives of monks in monasteries in the middle ages, so the castle was especially interesting for us. Again, the off season travel meant that we had the castle almost entirely to ourselves, which I think added to the atmosphere.

Somewhat oddly, the exit deposited us at the back of the residential section of the castle, on a dirt back with a sign pointing us back to the parking lots. Unfortunately the threatening clouds had revealed their piece de resistance – it had started to rain quite heavily while we were exploring. We made our way rather hastily back to Aurelia and drove back down the hill into Tomar.

Den, the owner of the cottage we’re staying at, suggested parking at the town market, as it’s just between the old part of town and the new, and more importantly is free. We hadn’t programmed Tracy, trusting instead to luck and our directional abilities, despite years of evidence proving that this is probably not a good choice. History, it seems, doesn’t always repeat itself and we found the parking lot almost immediately, albeit somewhat by accident.

We made our way into the old part of town and were astounded at how quiet it was. Apparently January 5th at about lunchtime is not a good time to explore Tomar, if you’re looking for a bustling place. We walked almost the whole way through the town looking for a place to have lunch, and finally settled on La Bella, a stylish looking place near the church and praça at the end of town. We both had pizzas, which we actually quite enjoyed, even with the embarrassment of having Italian food in Portugal.

After lunch we felt that we had to spend some time wandering around Tomar, exploring and taking some photos. It appeared, after we finished our lunch, that those few stores which had been open when we arrived were closed for their lunches. It was a ghost town. We wandered a bit, but the rain got quite heavy, so we admitted defeat and had a drink.

One of the many things that I’m finding I really like about Portugal is the sanity of beverage prices. We ordered a glass of wine and a bottle of beer in a cafe in the centre of the old town and were charged a grand total of €3.10. Compared to what we would normally pay in London for the same order, this is absurd. Not that I’m complaining of course.

The rain had actually managed to get a bit heavier, so despite the fact that it was only 3pm, we felt that the best option for two sick people was to declare it a draw and go back to the cottage for a quiet afternoon of reading and recuperation. This turned out to be almost exactly what we both needed and we quite enjoyed our afternoon and evening, even summoning the energy to barbeque some chicken and pineapple in the evening.

Things were going well until about 4 in the morning when I woke up with a fever – despite the warmth of the room I couldn’t stop shivering. I took a few ibuprofen and the fever fortunately broke, but I didn’t manage to get much sleep in the meantime.

Morning took its sweet time in arriving. The rain, which had been quite heavy at times overnight, seemed to have mostly stopped and I was feeling quite a bit better. We decided to go ahead with our plan for the day – my birthday celebration of a trip on the train to Porto, lunch at the Taylor Fladgate winery on the terrace overlooking the city, and an afternoon of port tasting. It must be mentioned that port is one of my very favourite things, especially Taylor’s port.

We drove to Entroncamento to catch the 8:30 train to Porto, arriving in Porto just after 10:30, and navigated the only slightly confusing Porto metro system, finding ourselves at the top of the hill on the port house side of the river, just off the rail bridge. Porto is an interesting city – as with most things in Portugal it seems, it’s apparently entirely vertical. We could see the port houses spread out below us, but knew that the Taylor’s house was somewhere at the top of the hill. We, however, couldn’t see it. We deduced that either they were subtle enough not to have a giant sign like the other houses, or it was simply not visible from where we were. Gosh we are smart.

We decided to start walking towards the main cluster of port house signs, thinking that failing anything else we could find somewhere to have a restorative beverage on the way if the walk became too much for us. Honestly, the Portuguese need to either develop all-weather outdoor escalators or stop building their cities on great bloody hills. We walked about halfway down the hill before Jamie had the bright idea to get me to ask someone where Taylor’s was. I found a slightly open cafe and did just that. It seemed, from what I could gather from the stream of Portuguese that I got in reply to my question, was that we had to walk all the way down the hill, follow the river for a while until we found a church, then walk back up the hill.

These directions turned out to be quite accurate, which surprised me – who knew I could understand Portuguese? We found Taylors without much hassle and after trying a very tasty dry white port, went on the short but very informative free tour. I’m always amazed at the size of some of the barrels in wineries – the largest at Taylors holds more than 100,000 litres of their late bottled vintage – never have I so wanted to go for a swim.

After the tour, we had a surprisingly tasty and even more surprisingly affordable lunch in the terrace. Again Portugal comes up top trumps in the quality for price sweepstakes. After lunch, it was back to the tasting room so that I could select my birthday present – Jamie had decided that this year she would, in addition to taking me to Porto for the tastings, buy me a bottle of whatever I wanted. This turned out not to be the case as she refused to pony up for the €2,950 bottle of Scion Very Old port (a barrel had been discovered intact after being lost/hidden for 150 years). Instead, I got a superb bottle of 2003 vintage that apparently I’m not to open until 2019 at the earliest, and should probably drink by 2050 according to the information on the internet.

We made our way back down the hill after our purchase and sampled a few more quite tasty ports, before walking back up the hill again to catch the metro back to the train station. As expected, we arrived just after the train had left and therefore had a 45 minute wait for the next one. Fortunately, there was a cafe just over the road where we had quick coke before catching the train back to Entroncamento.

While on the train, the heavens opened with what I think must have been a lost Indian monsoon which somehow ended up here. The ten minute walk from the train station back to the car was enough to drench us to the bone, despite heavy jackets and umbrellas. The drive back to Tomar in that rain was frightening to say the least, especially when a lightning bolt hit something rather important in Entroncamento and took out all the power for the city, including all traffic lights and street lights. Driving in the pouring rain through a completely blacked-out city is not so much fun, but even less fun is driving on a blacked-out motorway in the torrential rain with rivers of water running down the road.

Despite the rather fraught conditions, we made it back to Casa Rosden with no incidents other than an unseen pothole causing a big bump. We ran up the stairs where Ros and Den met us with a birthday card and a bottle of birthday wine for me – this is exactly why we love staying at B&B’s when we travel – the fantastic people we meet on the way. Overall, despite the fever and the monsoon, it’s been a fantastic birthday, and I’ll look back on it fondly in 10 of 15 years when I open that bottle of port.

Day 10 pics:


Day 11 pics: