We spent most of Sunday getting from Tomar to Évora. The tracks to Évora are under a long repair job, and so there are no trains in or out of Évora right now.
From Tomar we caught the train to Oriente station in Lisbon. This itself was a bit of an adventure as the tracks were out for a couple stations near Santarém, and so everyone got off the train, onto a bus for about 40 minutes, and then back on another train.
We had a couple hours to kill in Lisbon, so checked out around Oriente station. It's the former site of Expo ??, with all the architecture you'd associate with a world fair.
The bus to Evorá went over the 17.2km Ponte Vasco da Gama, a bridge over the Rio Tejo. That was a pretty cool bonus for taking the bus.
Most restaurants are closed on Sunday so we asked our hotel in Évora for recommendations for dinner, rather than just walking around town to pick one.
The recommended restaurant had clams on the menu, which Heather had been looking forward to eating. They were great, served in a corrriander and garlic broth. Mmm good. We'd never thought to pair clams with corriander.
On Monday toured around Évora. Saw the roman ruins, the sé (cathedral), nice cobblestone streets etc etc. It's a very pretty town to wander around. Found some cool souvenirs -- cork is grown in the surrounding area, and we bought a trivet that's a cross section of a branch; and a bread basket from a knob (?) of a tree.
We had dinner at Tasquinha d'Oliveira, our restaurant splurge for the trip. The owner worked at O Fialho for 15 years, a legendary restaurant here, before opening up his own about 10 years ago.
The door was locked when we arrived (on a Monday night!). The owner only lets in people who he wants -- I guess we passed his test because he let us in. While eating, we saw him turn away a number of would-be diners, so we were lucky.
Appetizers were stuffed crab, and mushrooms with mint, garlic and a vinagrette. Very good.
For dinner, Heather ordered clams in the corriander broth (same as yesterday), and I tried the blackened pork with clams. Both were amazing. The secret I suppose is in the broths.
We had some wine remaining, and the owner brought us some extremely soft goat cheese, with a pumpkin & almond compote on the side. This was amazing, and matched the wine perfectly. I could have just eaten that all night.
We finished with a sampling of the desserts, and 20-year old tawny.
Overall it was the best meal we've had this trip, although the best course is still the duck Heather had in Guimarães.
Tuesday was another day of travel, finally getting to the Algarve for beaches and relaxing.
Took a three-hour bus south from Évora to Albufeira; another bus to Lagos, and finally a third bus to Sagres. The whole journey took about eight hours.
Our hotel (Mareta Beach) was a five minute walk to the beach of the same name. They had messed up our reservations and so we didn't get the beach view and balcony that we'd been looking forward to (had an ocean view though).
Sagres (and most of the Algarve that we passed through) turned out to be not our scene -- we found ourselves pining for cobblestone streets and medieval old towns. The beach was nice, but PEI has better.
So we packed up our stuff this morning and headed for Lisbon. We'll have four nights and three days to see it.
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