Mafra National Palace

Last night we got a real battering from a storm, the wind picked up and the rain lashed it down for hours. It was so hard Wanda’s walls were flexing which made the plastic on the kitchen window squeak so first thing this morning Russ superglued it to the wall so now it can’t move.
In the car park where we slept there is a little coffee shop so we stopped in there at 9am and the selection was pretty small so we had what we think was some kind of pecan pastry slice. Then we bought tickets to the palace at €6 euro each and ventured inside.
It was the palace of the former royal family who had to abandon it when Portugal became a republic sometime around 1909. It was absolutely vast, they even had there own balconies to enter the adjoining church so they didn’t have to mingle with the paupers during mass. Huge paintings hung in almost every room of famous scenes throughout history and godly scenes from the bible of angels worshiping the royal family. It was very extravagant and lots of the rooms seemed to be there for nothing other than a walkway to another room but I suppose that’s where the servants would stand and wait to be called upon.
From the palace we walked around Mafra for 30 minutes looking at the local shops and streets until the bascillica opened and then we went in there for free. The church again was huge and we saw the upper balconies that the royals would use during prayers. There were lots of side rooms off of the main church and each one had a huge stone statue or medallion inside of a patron Saint so depending on what you were praying for or believed in you could pray to that Saint, it was all very elaborate and must have cost a fortune.
From there we went back and collected Wanda, and drove to the intermarchè about 5 minutes away and done our washing and drying and got some shopping and then we came back to the palace car park dumped our grey water and filled up with fresh water. At 2pm right on que it started raining again and the wind picked up, we settled in for the rest of the day watching Dexter on dvd until some Dutch people turned up in a motorhome next to us who were very noisy. At 9pm as we started to run out of power they opened a bottle of wine and got louder so we moved Wanda to the other side of the car park where it was a lot quieter.
If the weather holds dry tomorrow we’ve found a couple of free interesting places to explore so fingers crossed that we can get out and stretch our legs, and hope we get a night with no squeaks tonight.Read more