We met our three REI guides, Jorge, Raoul and Nuno, and our fellow riders at our hotel at 9:00 this morning. This is a very small group, consisting of the six of us and a young couple from Minnesota, Lauren and Justin. After a brief overview of the week, a more detailed overview of the day and a safety briefing, we loaded our gear into the vans and set out for the town of Arraiolos, a typical Alentejo village of white-washed cottages about 45 minutes from Lisbon. The Alentejo region is in southeastern Portugal, is typically very sunny and dry (hopefully, we've seen the last of our rainy weather), and consists of rolling plains (I think this means we're going to be riding some hills).
In Arraiolos, we had our pedals installed and our bikes fitted. We're riding hybrids, so it took a little bit to get used to the shifting. The bikes are outfitted with GPS systems programmed for our destination, so it's like turning on the Google Maps app on your phone and having a line drawing showing where to turn along the way. Our 14-mile route today to Evora was considered a warm-up ride, on country roads through numerous olive orchards and cork oak trees, with only a few short hills.
Evora is a UNESCO World Heritage Site enclosed by medieval walls, but dating back to the second century B.C. when it was an important Roman town, primarily because of its wealth of wheat and silver, as well as its location on a trade route to Rome. We toured Evora's medieval Cathedral of Santa Maria and then walked to the Capela dos Ossos (Chapel of Bones), constructed in the 15th century with bones unearthed from various Evora churchyards. There are literally hundreds of skulls staring at you as you walk through the chapel and the arched patterns on the walls are made up of arm and leg bones. Supposedly, this was the work of three monks who were concerned with society's values at the time and saw this chapel as a reminder to all of the transience of material things and the undeniable inevitability of death. It's a very macabre reminder, to say the least!
We had a lovely group dinner with culinary specialties of the area, including a shark soup which was quite good. After dinner, we strolled to the floodlit Roman ruins of the Temple of Diana (which we had ridden by on our way into town) and contemplated the fascinating history of this small town.
Ruins of the Roman Temple to Diana
Evora Cathedral
View from the coister
View at the top
Chapel of Bones
Love the picture additions to the blog! (good work Dad). Also, thank you for the Camino postcard Mom, that was super cute :)
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