All the streets within, and some outside the walls, are cobbled. You would be hard pushed to get a vehicle much wider than our 'Smart' down a lot of the streets. It is wonderful to see how they have mixed the 'old' buildings with the 'new', nothing seems out of place, dating from the 1st Century to the present day. Just outside the wall they even have a brand new Bull Ring!
Palm Sunday weekend saw the first 'Bull Fight' of the year in Evora. We happened to be in the vicinity of the ring, not quite aware of what was going on. During the afternoon they had a special 'Family event'. Many, many families turned up to bring their young boys to compete with the matadors. We don't exactly know how, but we saw the cows/bulls being dropped off at the ring and the children dressed as Matadors. We heard the jubilation within the ring as presenters told who and what was going on, obviously everything was in Portuguese so we didn't understand!!!!! We left the area to have a wonderful ride in a horse and carriage.
The evening event was for the 'grown ups'. It was a full Portuguese 'Bull Fight' which we made sure we were not around to observe!
The site we were staying on is the only one near Evora. Many people use the site as a stop over on their way to Lisbon or Spain or the Algarve and only stay one night which is a shame because there is so much to see and do - both in the walled city itself and in the surrounding countryside.
Here are a few of our highlights:
We took a trip out to see some of the megalith sites around the city - the area is known as the "Iberian Mesopotamia" and this particular stone circle is one of the oldest and largest in Europe. It was good because you could walk around and among the stones, rather than just gaze at them from behind a fence as you have to with Stonehenge.
Next, on to the aqueduct - an amazing construction originally built in the 16th century to transport much needed water from a spring 19kms away straight into the heart of the city. Although a large section of it had to be replaced in the 19th century the most ornate part nearest to Evora is still intact and the aqueduct is still in use and is the major source of drinking water for the city.
And then we saw one of these offering tours of the city
So we went for it and what a good decision it was - a 45 minute tour of all the major sites of the city - absolutely brilliant despite a few hair-raising moments battling with car drivers for right of way - there is no concept of "slow down for horses" in Portugal - if anything they speed up and zoom past as fast as possible!
And here's Julie enjoying a refreshing drink after our tour with the Roman
temple in the background
One thing we had to do while we were in the city was to visit the Capela dos Ossos (chapel of bones) in the church of St Francis. The chapel was built in the 15th century by a macabre monk and is decorated with designs made from the bones of 5,000 human skeletons. And, just to add to the atmosphere, in addition to the hundreds of grinning skulls, there are the shrivelled corpses of a man and child hanging from the wall at one end of the chapel. There seem to be many stories about the purpose of the chapel but most of them agree that it is to do with reminding us all of our mortalilty - an inscription in Portuguese above the entrance to the chapel translates as "we the bones lie in wait for yours"
It wasn't anything like as spooky as we expected it to be just very very odd!
Evora is definitely worth a visit should you find yourselves east of Lisbon. We spent 6 nights there and still didn't do/see everything the town has to offer. One thing which we found particularly wonderful on the site, was the amount of small tents which arrived at the beginning of the Portuguese Easter holidays - families with very small children happy to camp in simple 'pop up tents' with very limited facilities.
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