A three-fer today: Three castles plus a Roman ruins site for good measure. Then, dinner with the locals – all with about 100 miles of driving.

It’s my guess that virtually every town in this region of Portugal, and I’ll bet elsewhere in Portugal and nearby Spain, has a similar historical background:

The pre-Roman culture, called the Castro culture, existed from the Bronze Age until the Romans came around the first century BC: 2,000 to 3,000 years ago. A castro, or castle as they became known, was a fortification on top of a hill.

The Romans came along and said, “Good idea. We’ll do better.” And they took over and improved the castles. Then came the Visigoths and others who kicked out the Romans (don’t rely on this for your College Board exams, kids). Then came the Moors (Muslims from Africa and elsewhere). The Moors weren’t all bad; they tended to treat all religions and sects fairly, they had the accumulated knowledge of the Greek and Roman eras (lost to Westerners in the Dark Ages), plus knowledge of their own.

But the Portuguese eventually launched the Christian Reconquiste. King Alfonso I took back Monsanto and I assume other castle towns in the region from the Moors in the 12^thCentury.

The Reconquiste occurred during the time of the Crusades, launched by the knights from Europe who sought to conquer Muslims everywhere so as to reclaim Jerusalem. The Knights Templar were one such crusading group. Alfonso deeded control of Monsanto and again, presumably, other castle sites, to the Knights Templar in 1165.

Each team that controlled the castle built and rebuilt it in their own style and with their own technologies. When you look at the walls and turrets made of granite, each piece cut to size and laid in place, you wonder how they could do it without our heavy equipment. Nothing like a few thousand low-class workers and a few decades to get the job done. Everyone built and rebuilt except, that is, for the Brits who in the 19^thcentury stored gunpowder in the Monsanto keep and blew the whole thing up in a blinding flash.

It was interesting to see how the fortifications were built around the huge boulders of granite that litter the hill side in this region. That keeps construction costs down.

In the case of both Sortelha and Monsanto, the castle was built at the top of the highest hill in the area, the one with steep slopes to deter the enemy. Around and below the fort is a walled city with narrow streets and stone houses and shops. Presumably in olden times the shops were places of craft work; today they sell tee shirts and serve tourist lunches. We had really great cheese sandwiches. Thick, toasted homemade bread with an olive oil and herb mixture slathered on both sides. Gotta try that at home!

But there must have been other workers outside the town walls, specifically those growing the crops and animals needed to feed the town. At a time of invasion, I’d hope, the agrarian types would find refuge in the walled town. I’m not sure if everyone would fit in the castle and especially in the keep – the last line of defense. You can bet there was a pecking order. It’s hard to find a good knight but pig drivers are a dime a dozen.

We had fun visiting these medieval towns and castles. Of the two, Sortelha is the smallest, most compact and requires the least exertion to visit. It’s clearly been fixed up by the government – all the roofs sport brand spanking new tiles, the signage is easy to follow and the street appeal is high.

Monsanto is a larger town and sports a larger castle, but the castle is located a fair distance up the side of the hill. It was a climb of perhaps 30 minutes from village to castle. The village itself requires a climb to traverse; it’s built on the side of a fairly steep hill (as is Sortelha). I suppose a townsperson would have lots of motivation to run up the hill to reach the castle in times of need but the mostly gray-haired tourists we saw today weren’t quite as spirited in their climb.

We topped the day off with a stop in our home base town of Belmonte, a fairly good-sized town with, of course, its own castle. We arrived after closing time (about 5:30 PM) so only viewed the outside. Standard issue Medieval castle from all that we could see.

On the way into Belmonte we stopped at the Roman ruins site. All the signage was in Portuguese and my ability to translate is based on Portuguese’s similarity to Spanish. And since my Spanish vocabulary is muy pequeño to say the least, I probably got this all wrong. But the site was clearly a village of some sort, covering an area of perhaps a half-dozen football fields. All that remain are the foundation outlines of the various buildings stood there in Roman times. The most interesting part was the Roman baths, which the sign said were important for both sanitary reasons and as a place for socialization. I wonder how Roman spa fees stack up against what the YMCA charges?

You may recall that we’ve been eating pretty high off the hog so far on this trip. Tonight, we decided to join the locals. After all, we’ve spent the day driving through one small village after another. They all appeared to be prosperous, neat and clean but the streets were deserted (maybe there’s a futbol thing going on today). We found a small shop on the main drag of Belmonte. There were a half-dozen small tables under an awning outside and a bar and a few tables inside. We joined two groups outside: three youngish guys in denim and a middle-aged lady and a younger woman wearing elevator sandals (three inches I’d judge). They were joined by a white-haired guy; the young woman gave him a kiss. Grandad, mom and daughter? The patrons, including us, were slightly outnumbered by the flies.

We ordered two omelets with crab. Soup was on the menu but, “no soup” our waitress told us in broken English. But the omelet was OK (the “crab” was synthesized in Asia, I’d guess). We topped it off with our favorite go-to caloric source when traveling: Magnum ice cream bars on a stick.

But don’t laugh: dinner, beer-and-coke-zero and dessert came out to one-fifth of what we paid out of our kids’ inheritance funds last night at the fancy pousada restaurant.

Incidentally, the Pousada do Convento de Belmonte, where we’re staying, is built on the ruins of a 16^th century convent. I always though convents housed nuns, but all of the rooms are given the name of monks. Our room is the room of Frei Xavier, who appears to have been a scribe of some sort. Pousadas in Portugal are a chain of luxury hotels based on historic sites. The chain was originally run by the Portuguese government but is now run by a private firm.

Tomorrow we roll up our tent, hitch the pony to the VW Pronto and off we go to Porto.

The closest either of us has ever come to being Catholic was the 18 years we spent as a Minnesota Lutheran. Close, but no cigar. The liturgies bear a resemblance (we can hum along in a Catholic mass) and the doctrinal differences escape me. Martin Luther probably had an ax to grind back in the day but I forget the differences as soon as I learn them.

Which is to say we felt a bit out of school when we dropped in to Fátima to see what all the fuss is about. And fuss there is. The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fátima is indeed an amazing complex of religious buildings and structures in the town of Fátima.

All of this came to be because a 10-year-old shepherd, Lucia de Jesus, and her two girl cousins, aged 9 and 7, tending their sheep on May 13, 1917, saw a blinding light that became a “Lady more brilliant than the sun.” The Lady, holding a rosary, told them that they must “pray much” and return to the same spot (Cova da Iris) on the 13^thof the next five months at the same time. That they faithfully did, except for August. On August 13 a local administrator had called them away, so the Lady appeared to them on August 19 about a half mile from their home in Ajustrel. On the last day, October 13, about 70,000 people witnessed the apparition.

As I understand it, the Lady of Fátima urged the three young girls to pray often and strenuously for those who do not believe that they might be saved.

Here comes the really controversial part. Lucia, who became a nun at the age of 14, wrote in her memoir (actually her third memoir, written in 1941) that the Lady had revealed three secrets during the July 13 visit. Lucia revealed the first two: a description of Hell that would make Dante cringe and a prediction of World Wars I and II. She refused, at first, to reveal the third until her bishop commanded her to do so. The document was sent to the Vatican and finally released in 2000 by Pope John Paul II.

I hesitate to dive into the revelation contained in the third secret. When it was released the Vatican issued a statement (according to Wikipedia) that the secret described by Lucia “implied that the secret was about the 20th century persecution of Christians that culminated in the failed Pope John Paul II assassination attempt on May 13, 1981, the 64th anniversary of the first apparition of the Lady at Fátima.”

Sister Lucia died in 2005. Pope Benedict XVI approved expediting the diocesan phase of canonization for St Lucia (along with Mother Terresa and John Paul II), which was completed in 2017, leading to the probable completion of the canonization process sometime in the future.

The Fátima story has created no end of controversy, especially the three secrets part. Conspiracy theorists, parsing each word, can create an untold number of interpretations of the secrets. Others point to discrepancies that invalidate the whole story. The Catholic Church has, it appears to me, walked a thin line between endorsing Lucia’s account and keeping the faithful from extending Lucia’s story too far.

Pope John Paul II was a believer: he credited Our Lady of Fátima with guiding the path of the bullet that narrowly missed his heart during the attempted assassination. He had the bullet embedded in the crown now adorns the statue of Our Lady of Fátima.

Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) summed up his reading of the third secret by saying (Wikipedia):  “What remains was already evident when we began our reflections on the text of the ‘secret’: the exhortation to prayer as the path of ‘salvation for souls’ and, likewise, the summons to penance and conversion.”

So what’s a Minnesota Lutheran to make of all this? Do I believe or do I disbelieve the visions of a 10-year-old, reported 30 years after the fact?

Beats me.

Having visited the site, having seen the breathtaking structures constructed on the very field where Lucia and her cousins fed their flock, and especially having seen the obvious devotion, piety, attornment and belief of the hundreds of faithful there today, it doesn’t matter whether Lucia’s words are true or not. I have to agree with Cardinal Ratzinger: Her words have had a tremendous positive outcome for the faithful.

Travelogue wise, Judy and I toured the site (see the pictures). We didn’t see everything; that would take days. We also walked a mile or more to the village of Ajustrel where Lucia and her cousins lived. Her home is preserved as are the olive groves and fields around the town. The town itself is a quaint little village lined, as you might expect, with an array of trinket shops. It was a peaceful and enjoyable stroll. 

The whole experience was unexpectedly uplifting. We had another upper 70s clear blue-sky day, as we’ve come to expect. And seeing people of all shapes and sizes proceeding on their knees from one end of Fátima to the other was truly inspiring.

We checked out our Sixt rental car about 9:30 after a thirty-minute walk from our hotel, dragging suitcases and ourselves along Lisbon’s mosaic stone sidewalks – what a clatter our roller bags made! Fátima was about an hour and a half and Belmonte another two hours. The A1 and A3 are very fine motorways, just like I75 (70 mph) with service areas every 25 miles or so. Couldn’t ask for better. The country side composed rolling hills and small mountains (no snow-capped peaks; the summits didn’t even break the timber line.

We’re staying in a Pousada – the Convento de Belmonte – which is, as the name suggests, a former convent made over into a swanky hotel. It comes complete with a swanky gourmet restaurant where we ate tonight. This presents good news/bad news/good news: we had a great meal – Sea bass for Judy, wild boar for me with assorted wild mushrooms to start and crème Brule to end. Judy polished off a half bottle of green wine (OK, I helped) and I had a generous pour of a Portuguese red whose name I promptly forgot. That’s the good news. The bad news is that we’re stuffed and a bit tipsy – a lot tipsy, truth be told.

The good news is that I’m so far gone I can’t type any further. All I can say is that if they rouse us out at 2 AM to sing matins I’m going to write up a really nasty note on tripadvisor.com.

Tomorrow: exploring old small towns of central Portugal, whatever that turns out to be.

A more relaxed day so far (we haven’t yet had dinner). We walked about 15 minutes to our meeting point for our all-day tour to Sintra. Our group of eight included two ladies, friends from San Francisco and Dublin; a family of three from Sicily (only the son spoke English and some Portuguese); and a second-year student from Austin traveling in Portugal for a week by herself.

This has been a day that, strangely, has been filled with recollections, an emotion not common when visiting a city you’ve never been to before.

Portugal was the final leg of my parents’ final trip, at age 85 (I believe) in a long life of travel around the world. This time it was a cruise from Brazil across the Atlantic to Portugal. While in Lisbon my dad toured Sintra with Enrique, our friend from Madrid, Mom stayed at the hotel: “It’s just an allergy,” she said. It turned out to be a life-threatening bout of pneumonia and aspergillus infection from which she took three months to recover. As we climbed the steep path through the palace’s garden I wondered, “How did Dad do this at his age?” And, I thought, “Tick Tok. He was only 14 years older than I am right now!”

Second, while walking to dinner this evening we strolled down a wide pedestrian thoroughfare lined with shops and with enough linen-covered dining tables in the middle of the street to feed a small New Hampshire town. Along the way was a man playing a wood saw with a violin bow. Beautiful and unique, sure, but it brought back memories of a night with my mom in Montmartre, Paris where we saw a man playing the same instrument. That memory has stuck with me for these fifty-plus years and it brought back a stream of memories from that trip.

And dinner: we’re back after a most memorable meal, one that featured some of the best fish we’ve ever eaten and some of the best service we’ve ever experienced. We couldn’t decide between the corvina and the pompo fish – fresh and on special tonight – so our waiters served us two courses: first a half-serving each of corvina and then a half serving each of pompo. Another waiter (we had three) suggested his favorite desert, which we split. Another waiter suggested a green wine from his home district just north of Porto. We’ll pass through that region in a few days. The green wine brought back another flood of memories of my mom. On the same Paris trip we visited Barcelona. After chasing her up one side of Barcelona and down the other for three days – that woman could walk your legs off – we went to the Barcelona waterfront and had the most marvelous paella with a bottle of, you guessed it, green wine.

Sintra, our target for today, started out as a monastery, turned into a royal summer palace and ended up what it is today: a major tourist attraction. And a great attraction it is: weirdly interesting architecture (I hesitate to use the word “beautiful’), a very interesting a different formal garden and great views of the Atlantic Ocean.

The garden portion, planted on the side of a mountain and through which we walked to reach the palace, looked like a totally natural forest, not a garden like Versailles. But in fact it was a “romantic” garden, carefully planned with exotic species (including, for example, sequoia trees). This was, after all, the early nineteenth century.

The palace itself was dictated by the King Consort, Queen Marie II’s husband. I guess the queen’s consort doesn’t have much to keep himself busy (see Prince Phillip, for example) so Fredrick bought, with his own money, the decrepit monastery and turned it into a summer palace to beat the heat when things got hot in downtown Lisbon. It’s an eclectic mixture of Moorish, Baroque, Manueline/Portuguese and gothic architecture styles. You have to see it to believe it!

I swore when we left home that I wasn’t going to prattle on and on about history. But darn it all, the story of Sintra is really, to me at least, interesting. So fair warning: skip what follows and look at the pictures. I’m doing it just for me.

First, the monastery part. Remember how Vasco de Gama conquered India and stole the spice trade from Venice and the Arabs? Back in the late 1400s? De Gama and his successor Albuquerque brought incredible wealth to their king, Dom Manuel I. And what does any good Catholic king do when he gets filthy rich? He builds a monastery, this one on top of the hill where his daddy liked to hunt. Manuel also built countless other edifices, so many that today Portuguese architecture is termed Manueline. To quote Wikipedia:

The Manueline (Portuguese: estilo manuelino, IPA: [ɨʃˈtilu mɐnweˈɫinu]), or Portuguese late Gothic, is the sumptuous, composite Portuguesestyle of architectural ornamentation of the first decades of the 16th century, incorporating maritime elements and representations of the discoveries brought from the voyages of Vasco da Gama and Pedro Álvares Cabral.

The monastery housed 18 contemplative monks from 1493 until the earthquake of 1755 destroyed everything except the chapel which, some would say, was spared by God. Nonetheless, it remained in ruins until King Consort Ferdinand II bought the place and built it into the summer kick-back palace.

Ferdinand II was born in 1816 in Austria, a member of that mixed up mess of 19^thCentury European aristocrats. Don’t get me started, but just to give you the flavor, Ferdinand was first cousin to both Queen Victoria and her husband Prince Albert. I never figured out why, but he ended up marrying Marie II, the Queen of Portugal. Ferdinand was a nobody, according to the rules, until he fathered a child by the Queen. He then became King Consort Ferdinand II.

Marie’s story is as tangled as her (second) husband Ferdinand’s. Remember Napoleon’s invasion back in the early 1800s? The then king of Portugal, Joao VI high tailed it to Brazil rather than face the music back home. When the Portuguese finally restored order, Joao faced a problem. He had fallen in love with Brazil and declared Brazil and Portugal united as one with headquarters in Brazil. After the revolution he had to decide who to send back to Lisbon to be king: his elder son Pedro or his younger son Miguel. Miguel had been exiled by the revolutionary forces, but Joao feared that if he named Pedro as king his boys would squabble and fight a civil war.

Solution! Send granddaughter seven-year-old Marie to Portugal to be queen, with Miguel as her regent and betrothed  to-be husband. Miguel agreed with his fingers crossed. As soon as he and Marie hit shore, he sent Marie off into exile and declared himself king. That did indeed kick off a six-year Liberal War that resulted in Marie II returning from Brazil to take over as Queen. When her first husband died, she married Ferdinand who fathered 11 children. Marie died giving birth to her 11^thchild.

And brother/father Pedro? He was King of Brazil as Pedro I and briefly King of Portugal as Pedro IV before Marie took over. And, he’s the one standing on top of the statue in our square just outside the door of our hotel here in Lisbon. Look for a picture of Judy pointing to a statue off in the distance. That’s Pedro IV and he’s our guidepost when searching for our hotel.

After Sintra our guide drove us to an ocean viewpoint at Cabo da Roca and the seaside village of Cascais. All in all, a pleasant and interesting day. But like I said, it was a slacker day. Judy logged only 13,185 steps and  mere 4.37 miles but did up the floor count to 58. “I was really amazed that you could almost keep up with me climbing those hills at the palace today,” said our 40-something lady guide to Judy. Good goin’ old girl!

Tomorrow, the hop-on hop-off bus on our own (no guide) to see what we can see. The bus starts running at 9:30 so we can sleep in a bit.

 

Some would argue today was a disaster, at least it started that way:

• In Philadelphia instead of going to the Irish Pub for a sit-down dinner we fall into the Irish pub’s quick dine kiosk across the aisle from the main event.
• Our flight from Philadelphia is delayed for three hours; they have to find a replacement airplane (one engine is bad on the first bird)
• We arrive at Lisbon a little after noon. Our Free Walking Tour Lisbon departs at 2:30. Will we clear immigration, get our bags, find our driver, get to the hotel and check in in time to meet our tour? Tension.
• We lose 20 minutes searching for our driver.
• On the drive to the hotel we get an email informing us that our tour guide is sick, and our walking tour is canceled.
• I find another tour starting at 3:00 at the Dom Pedro IV statue. Look for the guy with a white umbrella.
• 2:55 we’re at the statue (which, thankfully, is across the street from our hotel) but no white umbrella. Instead, a guy with a yellow umbrella. We go with him.

From there, we had a nice 2:30 walk through the old sections of Lisbon. Someday I’ll figure out where we went on a map but it’s too late to do that tonight. Sorry!

Similarly, it’s too late to get into the details of Portuguese history. I can summarize it by saying:

• This place has been overrun by one herd of invaders after another. You’ve got your Celts, your Romans, your Visigoths, Moors and Christian crusaders. The Spanish ran the place for a while; so did Napoleon. The Brits have always had a strong alliance with corresponding political and economic influence.
• Bartolomeu Diaz found a way to get to the Cape of Good Hope. Vasco de Gama built on that success to establish a trade route to India and the sources of spice craved by Europe. Alfonso de Albuquerque developed the spice trade, bringing untold wealth to King Manuel back in Lisbon. He spent the dough on palaces and crusades to rid the world of Muslims (no wonder we have problems today). This all took place mostly during the era from 1490 to 1570.
• Diaz and de Gama, in the course of discovering the Cape of Good Hope route, ran into Brazil. Portugal exploited Brazil, bringing untold wealth back to Lisbon in the form of gold in the 17^thand 18^th
• Today the Portuguese extract untold Euros and dollars from tourists around the world. Unfortunately, the tourist jobs don’t pay very well but, hey, at least the unemployment rate is at historic lows.

Our walking tour group was interesting: We were the oldest members of the twenty-odd person group – by a decade or two. And there were two of only three or four from the U.S. The remainder came from all over the world and, except for a couple of Aussies and Irish, they all come from countries where English is not the mother tongue. Not your typical Overseas Adventure Tour group we’re used to, that’s for sure. I’ll bet there wasn’t a single knee replacement or afib case in the entire group, present company excepted.

The “free” guided tour isn’t, of course, free. Tips are solicited and expected. But it leaves everyone free to value the tour and pay accordingly. It turns out that freetours.com and the local free tour agency (of which there are several in Lisbon and every other city you care to name) get a cut before the tour guide takes home his or her share.

The tour guide also up sells the customers to take a paid trip later on. We, of course, being the seasoned, savvy travelers that we are, fell into Pedro’s trap. We signed up for the 7:00 PM Fado tour. We hiked back to the hotel by 6:45, giving us enough time to, well, you know, and still be at the Dom Pedro IV statue to take the next trip.

The Fado trip was worth the pain. We hiked up a whole bunch of new hills (Lisbon is nothing but hills; there isn’t a flat spot to be found) to a restaurant in the Alfama district where Fado has its current home. There were two parts to the evening (not counting the cardio): tapas-like dishes, including smoked meats and sausages, cheese, bread and a fizzy white wine and the Fado music.

Fado is a music of the people, somewhat like blues in the sense that the themes deal with the everyday lives of the common people. The music tonight was provided by two guys playing guitars, including a 12-string Portuguese guitar, who accompanied, in turn a woman and two men. One song said something like, “I live to gaze into your eyes even though you aren’t mine.” Another said, “Let them be crazy in their love just like we used to be.” You get the idea. The musicians were excellent, the food hit the spot and we’re glad we did it.

But then we were all by ourselves to find our way down from the top of Mount Whatsitsname to our hotel some ¾ of a mile away. Google Maps performed admirably, we didn’t get mugged (Lisbon is said to be a very safe city) and my iPhone had 1% charge remaining when we got into the hotel elevator. Judy’s logged 15,000 steps, 20 flights of stairs and 5 miles on her shoes today. Not bad for 11 hours on the tourist trail.

Tomorrow we’re on a guided tour to nearby Sintra.

That’s it, time for bed. I’ll find a couple of snap shots to give you a visual idea.