Bus Trip

This past weekend I had the chance to join a retreat trip with a local Portuguese church. We visited some cities north of Lisbon. One of the other teachers from school, Anna went with me. We were the only 2 American's on the trip with about 40-50 Portuguese. Our first stop was Obidos, a walled in city with a picturesque medieval appearance. The bus was on a pretty strict schedule so we only had about about 30 minutes to walk around. The weather was overcast and rainy all day but despite the raindrops we made the most of the sightseeing time. I loved the quaint look of the narrow streets and the way the trees have been made to grow right alongside the buildings.

The second stop we made was in Aveiro, a city that dates back to the 10th century. This town is know as the "Portuguese Venice" because of the canals and boats that are reminiscent of Venice, Italy. There were tornado warnings in central/northern Portugal over the weekend which brought strong rain, winds, and even flooding near the coast.

We spent the night in Esmoriz at a Bible Camp. Esmorz is a town located just south of Porto in northern Portugal. Across the street from the Camp was a gym where 2 Portuguese teams were playing a volleyball match. It was fun to watch part of the game. (Anna and I played with the teachers last Friday against the students. I'm happy to report that the teachers won 2 out of 3 games!!)

Saturday morning we rode the bus into Porto and had a little bit of time to walk around the streets and take in the older section of town. Again it was cold and rainy but that made the sky look dramatic in some of my pictures. It was another fun trip to see part of northern Portugal. I also enjoyed getting to meet some new people and be immersed in Portuguese for 2 days! Anna commented to me that if we did trips like this every weekend we'd pick up Portuguese quickly. The laughter and new sights were a refreshing change from my usual weekend spent at the apartment. I enjoyed sampling some yummy pastries at different cafes we stopped at. I've learned that the Portuguese like to take coffee stops!

Weekend Getaway to Setubal and Evora

I had a 4 day weekend because of the Carnaval holiday in Portugal. My rooommate wanted to take a trip to Seville, Spain but the amount of time on a bus to get there would have been about 8 hours so we decided to look for a closer option. Friends recommended that we travel south to a small town on the coast - Setubal and then on to Evora a city further inland. There were a lot of legs to our trip starting with the walk down the hill to catch the train, the 40 min. train ride to Lisbon where we took the metro for about 30 min. to the train stop where we caught the train that would take us to Setubal.

Once we arrived in Setubal we were a little lost because the train dropped us off in a different location that we thought. One of the first signs we saw was pointing towards a bullfighting arena. It's not often you see that on a sign so I snapped a picture. After wandering for about 10-20 minutes with no success we asked someone for directions and the lady was kind enough to walk us right to the bus station. She spoke some English and was very friendly. She thought I had a good Portuguese accent (from all of the 3 Portuguese words that I said)! She shared a little about herself and asked where we were from. Gina and I grabbed sandwiches for lunch from a small cafe and decided to see if we could find our way to the coast. In our wandering we did make it to the water and then worked our way back to the bus station wandering through the narrow twisted streets of the old part of town.

At the bus station we caught a bus that would take us to Evora - our final destination. Evora is a walled town since Roman times but has a Moorish influence that shows in much of its architecture. The bus ride was about 3 hours total. It stopped a lot in little cities along they way picking new people up and dropping others off. It made a stop at 2 different bus stations along the way. The bus driver would turn and look at Gina and I and shake his head that this wasn't our stop. When we finally arrived in Evora he turned around and nodded his head. Probably thought we were somewhat crazy!

At the bus station we were hoping to find an information spot that would have a map to point us in the right direction but that didn't happen. Outside were a bunch of taxis so our fallback plan was to get a taxi to take us to the hostel address if we couldn't navigate our way there. After about 10 minutes of wandering we finally stumbled down a road that gave us a view of the city walls. Once inside the city walls we found some street names that matched up with our map and made our way to the hostel. The hostel was nice, although it smelled a lot like smoke. We ventured out in the few hours of daylight that remained. I'll show you some of the highlights in pictures below:
Giraldo Square - our hostel was on a side road off the main square. These 2 buildings were on either end of the square. Gina buying some roasted chestnuts from a street vendor.

 

Views from the roof of our hostel and a picture of the inside of the hostel.

Ruins of a Roman temple from the 1st century

 
Cathedral

Church of Graca - interesting carvings on the top - representing the world powers at the time

S. Francisco's Square - a Gothic cloister with a chapel made of the skulls and bones from 5,000 bodies. Very interesting and unique! I don't have any pictures from the inside - but the chapel was off to the left of this picture.

Water Aqueduct - it started out small inside the walls and got taller and taller. It was interesting to see how they'd built right into the arches.

Public Garden - with ruins of a palace from the 16th century. Peacocks and other birds were roaming around the park.

Other miscellaneous shots from the city!

It was really cold Saturday night - probably in the 40s and no heater in our room. We bundled up for bed and were ready to head up and out the next morning. It's been different adjusting to the cold being inside and outside and feeling chilled all day long. Sunday we wandered through the rest of the city before catching the bus back to Lisbon and retracing our path on the metro and finally the train back to Cascais. It was a fun weekend of adventures. I'm thankful now for 2 more days this week to rest before school begins again on Wednesday!