Day 35: Triple UNESCO, Coimbra

Today was an exhausting day. There's a trio of UNESCO World Heritage sites in cental Portugal that we had decided to visit (a pair of monasteries and a convent/castle), and although each looked nice, none of them seemed to warrant a long visit. And with short-ish driving distances being what they are, we figured we could tackle all three of them in one day!

Up early at 7am, one of our earliest starts so far. Packed up and left Lisbon by 8:30 and headed northwards out of the city. The first destination was about 1.5 hours away, a monastery in the small town of Alcobaça. Lots of rain around today and very low temperature as well so we rugged up heavily! Got a good park and checked out the monastery, originally dating from the 11th century.

Very plain and unadorned inside, very spartan and a good reflection of the monks who lived here for hundreds of years. Bought a triple site ticket (includes here, the other monastery and the convent/castle for later) and headed into the inner cloisters. Interesting to start picking out architectural details as we've seen so many different similar buildings now. Manueline style ceiling vaults, picking the difference between early and late gothic columns, later additions like baroque belltowers and so on.

It wasn't a huge site though, and we were back in the car by 11:15. According to Shandos's schedule, we'd gone from 30 minutes behind to 30 minutes ahead! Schnitzel seemed very content to have been left in the car, as he doesn't like cold and he doesn't like rain - inside was neither of those things!

30 minute drive to the next monastery, this time in the town of Batalha. This monastery was slightly newer than the previous, but larger and more ornate, reflecting the growing power of the church and the Portuguese monarchy. This was at one point their main religious centre, and an entire dynasty of Portuguese monarchs are buried here (including the famous Henry the Navigator, not a king but a prince credited with kickstarting the Age of Discovery by opening the route to first the Azores and later western Africa).

A larger site here so we spent a bit longer looking around, including checking out the beautiful stained glass windows. Weather had cleared slightly but still a bit miserable, though thankfully we didn't get too wet. Our next site was directly east before we'd have to turn northwards for our final destination, so we decided our best lunch option was McDonalds. One of the things that fascinates me about Maccas is how their menu is constantly adapted for local tastes - you can always get a Big Mac, but here in Portugal you can get four different types of soup or a "bifana" - a diamond-shaped bread roll with two thin slices of grilled pork. We opted for a pair of those, and ate in the car rather than suffer sitting outside in the cold with Schnitzel, or inside without him.

Final stop for the day was about 45 minutes drive further east, a convent and castle combination in the town of Tomar. This turned out to be an interesting site - the oldest part was the earliest thing we'd seen so far, a circular Romanesque Catholic temple originally built by the Knights Templar in the 11th century, just after they'd come back from the Second Crusade. The rest of the building was newer (Renaissance and so on), and the attached convent was newer again, but it was an interesting site to wander around and discover various parts.

It was a little confusing at first since we arrived in the midst of a heavy rainstorm and didn't get our bearings properly, but managed to sort ourselves out in the end. The convent was also fortified as a castle, and some of the walls and towers were still standing, so we wandered around this for a while as well. It had a great defensible position over the town, and apparently held out against a siege during its first year of operation. It's been a strategically important spot over the centuries as well, since Spain and Portugal have often had tense relations and Tomar is near an important river crossing.

All three sites done, we turned northward for the town of Coimbra where we had an apartment booked. Coimbra is home to another UNESCO site (Portugal's oldest university), which we planned to look at in the morning. The drive took longer than expected: we couldn't use the freeway since it was electronic tolling only, and we didn't have the requisite tags or passes. So it was second-tier highways for us, continually getting stuck behind trucks and caravans.

Finally arrived in wet and cold Coimbra around 6pm, very tired but happy we'd achieved our goals. According to our Airbnb host, this year is the coldest winter on record in Spain and Portugal - we could definitely believe it! Neither of us felt like venturing far, so I found a convenience store just down the street and bought some spaghetti sauce to have for dinner with our leftover spaghetti. And of course a couple of sneaky Portuguese tarts! Off to bed early, hoping for better weather tomorrow.Read more