Adventures With Harvey

Many-a-Monastery

Greetings one and all and welcome again to the latest exciting instalment of ‘Adventures with Harvey’, this time coming to you from a rather rainy Porto, the place which put the Port in Portugal! 😊

I believe most countries have a very small number of significant historical events that define them as a nation. For New Zealand those would be the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840 and then the ill-fated Gallipoli military campaign in 1915 when New Zealand was, for probably the first time, seen as a distinct nation in its own right rather than a colony of the Mother Country.

So what are those events for Portugal? You’ve already heard about one of them in the last edition, the Lisbon earthquake of 1755. In the opinion of your humble author the second, and perhaps more important event, was the Battle of Aljubarrota which was fought in 1385 when 8,000 soldiers of the Portuguese defended their country against 42,000 Castillian invaders (including allies on each side). Despite being outnumbered by more than five to one, the brave and clever Portuguese were successful in repelling the invading force, thus ensuring that Portugal as a nation would continue to exist rather than being swallowed up by what would become modern-day Spain. Located just near to the town of Batalha, we visited the battle site along with a world class audio-visual presentation showing the prelude to and enactment of the battle itself. Such a fascinating historical insight and a real David vs Goliath story!

However, as is my wont, I seem to have gotten a little ahead of myself. You see, after leaving Lisbon we first headed west to the town of Sintra which many people had implored us not to miss. One thing we’re finding difficult to predict is the number of other tourists we’re likely to find in a given location. Right now it’s winter and the tourist low-season, so most places aren’t too busy and most Harvey parking spots aren’t too full. However, Sintra was the exception, it’s most popular attractions were just teeming with people… and with good reason! In centuries gone by this was the sometimes headquarters and oft times playground of the Portuguese royalty and their friends and relatives from elsewhere in Europe. There are a plethora of castles and palaces, many of which have been added to by different generations of owners over the centuries, the Palácio Nacional de Sintra (from 1415) is a classic example of this because you can see where the various additions have been made by the different architectural styles of the windows. We also visited the majestic Palácio Nacional de Pena (from 1493) however our 2 favourite stops were the hilltop ruins of Moorish castle (pretty much next door to Pena and dating from the 8^th century) and the Quinta da Regaleira Sintra (from 1904) which had the most amazingly landscaped gardens including many caves and grottos. The highlight there was the Initiation Well, a spiral staircase descending 9 levels to the base of a gloomy entrance cave. You’ll have to check out the photos of the castle, such an impregnable stronghold at the top of a very steep hill, along with the 3 palaces – all so very different but magnificent nonetheless! We certainly got our 10,000 steps in each day, climbing up and down the steep hilly town and within the palaces themselves.

What have the Taliban got to do with a rural winery north of Lisbon? Well, when they blew up the Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan in 2001, the millionaire art collector Jose Berardo was so outraged at the wanton destruction of culture that he decided to do something to balance it out and so created the amazing Bacalhoa Eden sculpture park. What an incredibly peaceful place, with all manner of art from giant buddhas to an African safari park (complete with life size herds of elephants, rhino, giraffes and monkeys) to a mini Stonehenge and a bright blue army of terracotta warriors. We were so impressed that we bought some of his wine too, although I’m not sure the lovely Anita was convinced about the bright blue fizzy wine at €2.99 a bottle.

Continuing north, our next overnight stop was the quaint little walled town of Óbidos. Originally a port town protected by a stone wall with impressive ramparts, the harbour gradually silted up and these days you only just catch a small glimpse of the faraway water from the top of the walls. It was a beautiful sunny afternoon to walk the walls then explore the narrow little cobbled streets, our favourite things about this town were the lack of cars (none inside the walls) , the multitude of cute little gift shops, and of course Ginja, which was partaken of at a tiny old inn decorated with hundreds of bottles and hunting paraphernalia.

Next was Mosteiro de Alcobaça, a gargantuan monastery built in 1153 which at its peak of operation was home to no fewer than 999 monks, such numbers being sufficient to enable the performance of mass 24/7! Inside is a WWI memorial to an unknown soldier which has 2 armed guards watching over it, we happened to stumble on the changing of the guard while there, yet another candidate for the silliest walk you ever saw! 😊 Inside you’ll also find the beautifully ornate tombs of Pedro and Ines, the subjects of a famous, tragic and slightly creepy love story. Pedro was the Crown Prince who fell in love with Ines, one of the Queen’s maids, their affair being kept a secret until the Queen passed away (during child-birth as it happens). At this stage Pedro made the relationship public however his father the King forbade them to marry and, a little while later, had Ines killed. But here’s the creepy bit… once the heartbroken Pedro acceded to the throne (and had her killers executed), he had Ines disinterred, her corpse clothed in a white gown, perched on the throne and proclaimed Queen. That’s a bit gross if you ask me!!!

Briefly returning to the topic of war memorials, one thing very different here on the Iberian Peninsula is the distinct lack of anything commemorating a world war. Spain was neutral in both wars so there’s not a single monument to either of these conflicts anywhere in Spain. You occasionally see some memorialising of the civil war or some other conflict but they’re much smaller and less frequent than you see anywhere else in Europe or NZ. Similarly, Portugal was neutral during WWII and only a belated participant in the Great War, suffering relatively few casualties, meaning there are only a small number of WWI memorials around the place. It’s been quite different lately not to have some type of war memorial as the focal point, or at least with great prominence, in the different towns we visit.

A little further up the road is Batalha which you’ll remember as the site of our 1385 nation-defining battle – but that’s not all you’ll find there. To commemorate the victory the Portuguese built another massive monastery & church (it’s only 18km up the road from Alcobaça – goodness knows why you need two of them so close together), although not quite as large and impressive as its neighbour you still need to walk for ages to see the whole thing and the architecture is stunning! There is also an unfinished section without a roof but it looks like construction was halted a few hundred years ago. From Batalha we also did a day trip over to Fatima, one of the most visited sites in Europe for Catholic pilgrims, something like 6 million making the trek annually. The story goes that in 1917 the Virgin Mary appeared to 3 small children tending their flocks, promising to return on the same day in each of the next 3 months. On each subsequent visit the crowds grew culminating in more than 70,000 faithful/curious/skeptical there to bear witness on the third and final visitation. These days there is a massive cathedral at one end of a courtyard which must be at least 1km from end to end – at the other is probably the only modern Catholic church your author and his travelling companion had ever seen, it looked very much like a modern Pentecostal church or convention hall with a seating capacity of 9,000! Also on the site was the largest ever candle-burning station as well as another small shrine supposedly on the exact position the Good Lady appeared to the 3 youngsters. Your author was heard to wonder aloud how many of the 6 million annual visitors were, like us, non-Catholics – we suspect not very many! As an interesting side-note, 2 of the youngsters in this story sadly succumbed to Spanish Flu so never reached adulthood, the other little girl lived to the ripe old age of 97, passing away only in 2005.

On our way to Coimbra, a lovely university town on the banks of the Mondego River, we stopped at Conimbriga, where there were significant Roman ruins including remains of houses with mosaic floors, an aqueduct, thermal baths and a forum. Those Romans sure knew how to build things to last.

In Coimbra we furthered our Portuguese cultural knowledge with an evening at a fado performance. This is a musical style also known as Portuguese blues and involved a couple of guitars along with vocals. In Coimbra it is mainly sung by the male university students, who still wear black capes to class, and usually involves serenading young women. The university there dates back to 1537 and has one of the oldest libraries in the world. It was a beautiful space that Anita mistakenly thought might even inspire me to study. Interestingly the library also has its own colony of bats, which are kept to eat insects that might damage the books.

Finally for this blog we were headed north to Porto, but on the way diverted inland to Lamego, famous for its 600 step staircase up to yet another church, and a stunning drive through the Douro Valley. A deep valley basin, it was hard work for Harvey up and down the hills, even with the beautiful motorway containing numerous tunnels and viaducts. Looking down into the vineyards from the viaduct it seemed like life hadn’t changed much in the valley in the last few hundred years; stone huts and terraced vineyards, most of which must be tended and harvested by hand due to the terrain.

We arrived in Porto yesterday afternoon after tending to our weekly water, waste, rubbish and fuel requirements, and parked up in a gorgeous spot on the southern coastline of the city. It was a blue dome day and so realising that the next week is going to be wet, we found a little café on the beach in the sun where we settled in for the afternoon. Pure bliss!

Well that is all for this edition – Porto is our last stop in Portugal and then we are heading back towards Madrid and the north of Spain for hopefully some warmer spring weather. We’ve been thinking of everyone in NZ affected by the cyclones and flooding – our hearts go out to you all, even as we are very grateful to be away and having this amazing adventure.

Much love, Dave, Anita and Harvey.