Europe > Exams: Tomar (Day 6)

Hola todos,

We woke up pretty early to check out of our Airbnb and get an Uber to the train station. (The Uber was super cheap! Only about €5 or $5 for something that would have cost $10-$15 in DC, at least.) We got onto our first train easy enough and started our Portuguese transportation adventure.

As a side note, I strongly recommend traveling new countries by bus or train, at least in part. What you learn firsthand about rural life, the countryside, and the nature of a country or region is unmatched. And you don’t have to stress about driving!

We had a total of three trains that we took to get to Tomar. I will note that we had to pre-book the train tickets and got a discount for booking them far in advance. However, the tickets for most trains were sold out a few days before our trip.

The Train Path from Porto to Pombal

The Train Path from Pombal to Lamarosa

The Train Path from Lamarosa to Tomar

We had a short wait in the small town of Pombal after   the first train. I walked about three minutes from the train station to find a cute little café. Between my guesses at Portuguese words based on Spanish and their poor English, I bought some pastries and coffee. They didn’t accept card, though, so they had to give me directions (in Portuguese, of course) to an ATM in the center square… where I ran, got cash, and came back. This is one of the fun experiences you can only have in small town travel! The women running the cafe were so kind and patient.

Then we got on a short train to Lamarosa, where we had an hour and a half wait. The other girls wanted to get breakfast somewhere nearby, so we walked around a bit, trying to find a grocery store, corner bodega, or cafe.

To understand what this adventure was like, I have to explain to you what the town of Lamarosa is like. There seem to be a bunch of houses, but we saw very few people. There was only one small corner grocery store that could hardly support a large population. The center of the town’s center of commerce had one open café, one closed café, and one small corner store. Granted, it was Saturday morning. But still!

We saw probably about 15 people walking around, and this is clearly a small town where everybody knows everybody.

But we walked about 5 minutes in the wrong direction from the city center because there wasn’t great signage coming out of the train station. A nice woman was coming out of her house and I asked her how to get to a café. She was just getting into her car, and she offered us a ride. So, we ended up riding with her about a kilometer or so into the city center. She pointed out the open café, the open grocery store, and the town church. She also said hi to pretty much everybody. Her name is Ana, and she had just moved back to Lamarosa from Switzerland, where she had been working for 10 years. She moved back to Lamarosa during Covid so that she and her two small children could live closer to her parents.

Ana!

Briefly, I want to interject that I don’t recommend getting in cars with strangers, especially in a place where you don’t speak the language. But, there were four of us, she was a woman, she was alone, and I got good (not psycho) vibes. 

We went to the grocery store, which pretty much had nothing that we were looking for in terms of breakfast. I bought some fresh baked bread rolls, though. Then we walked about a block to the local café, which also had no breakfast items either. They also only had espresso shots, so that’s what we got! We sat and drink our espresso for a few minutes, and ate the bread rolls.

Then we walked back down to the train station. We waited for probably another 20 or 30 minutes before our train came. The small town kindness of Ana was just another example of the adventuring that you can only get when you go to a tiny town that’s not used to foreigners and where very few people speak English.

Tomar

When we got to Tomar, we went to a hotel across the street from the train station to check our bags for the day. We’d heard that a hotel in the area did that, so we figured we’d give it a try so we didn’t have to lug our bags around all day. The hotel was Hotel Trovador and the workers behind the desk were so kind! They don’t have an official policy, but they placed our bags in a closet for the afternoon. (They didn’t charge, but we tipped.)

Then we walked into town in search of lunch. We stopped at a cute local cafe called Legenda Medieval.

The employees didn’t speak English, but a local woman who was a customer kind of did, so we successfully ordered lunch with an English menu and some gesturing. Then, it was off to the main attraction!

Convento de Cristo

I expected to spend like an hour and a half here and then be done. But we actually spent about 3 hours touring, and it was totally worth the time (and the €6 entrance fee). It used to be a primary stronghold of the Knights Templar, and then was turned into a convent. It was built in the twelfth century and then renovated and added to throughout the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries.

It’s massive. It’s beautiful. Pictures can’t do it justice. We kept walking into new rooms and courtyards that were “*gasp* Wow!” worthy.

This is a massive painted wood carving that looks like stone with gold leaf. It depicts various biblical scenes and characters. The picture can’t show the scale of this thing… it’s huge.

Y’all. The stonework detail. By. Hand.

Original paintings on the ceiling of the entrance.

This is a great day trip from Lisbon, or a good “traveling from/to Lisbon from/to Porto” trip. I was a bit skeptical, to be honest, but the town is so cute and the convent is amazing.

To Lisbon!

We walked around Tomar a bit more before getting some savory pastries to go and catching our train to Lisbon.

We got into Lisbon and again took an Uber to our Airbnb. (We were going to metro, I promise! But it was faster than the metro and we were trying to avoid a late check-in fee. And then we found out it was €5. No brainer!)

We met our host and she toured us around the flat. It’s a fifth-story apartment, and we have the whole unit. We’re in a fun, chic neighborhood, and I can’t wait to explore it more.

There was also an in-unit washer! We *really* needed to do laundry, so we did a quick load and then got settled in for the night.

Step tracker: 117,238

Besos,

Tina the ExploraDora

Europe > Exams: Porto (Day 5)

Hola todos,

Well, we landed in Barcelona safely (and I managed quite a bit of sleep on the flight) and got some coffee. It's safe to say that our body clocks are messed up again after having settled into an Iceland routine since we didn't sleep enough on the overnight flight, it was only four hours long, we had a layover in a time zone two hours ahead, and then landed in Porto an hour back from that. Phew!

And, of course, we couldn't get to Porto without one final installment of drama. After boarding, our flight was delayed on the tarmac for about an hour because the fog was too thick in Porto for planes to land. The universe was conspiring against us getting to Porto!

At that point, I just took a quick plane nap. Brief unconsciousness was going to be better for all of us.

But We Finally Made It

We got a metro ticket from the airport into town, and our Airbnb was about a 7-minute walk from one of the main metro stations. Kaitlynn (who landed yesterday afternoon) actually met us at the metro station and walked us to our Airbnb.

It’s a nice little flat near so many downtown tourist attractions, and we had the whole unit to ourselves. We freshened up since we hadn’t had a change of clothes or brushed our teeth in too long. We had a lot of Porto to cover, so we set off!

We started out with a quick walking breakfast from the cafe across the street. We ate some delicious local pastries (to be featured on a coming food section!) and started walking around Porto.

The house facades are covered in tile—this is an assortment of the tiles I saw!

Igreja e Torre dos Clérigos

We went to the Clérigos church and viewed around. The Catholic influence and architecture here is a stark contrast to Iceland’s austere Lutheran chapels. The gold leaf and intricate designs were beautiful.

Then we pre-booked guided tour tickets at the Palacio and, while we waited about an hour and a half, hiked across town to the Monastery. The views over the bridge during the walk were the best we’d seen yet. Absolutely stunning. It seemed like with each step we got a new and improved view.

We thought the view couldn’t get any better. But then we climbed a small little hill to get to the monastery.

The monastery view was jaw-dropping. Even though it was kind of cloudy, the visibility of the city, the Douro river, and the house rooftops was absolutely amazing.

I simply can’t do it justice here.

We then made our way back to the Palacio for our tour, but had some time to visit other sites first.

Catedral do Porto

This cathedral was built in the twelfth century, which is just impossible to fathom. Truly. Some of it was redone in the 1700s, so there is an infusion of Baroque style into a mostly Medieval piece of architecture. But you can tell some of the original walls and structures are still there. It’s nearly impossible for my modern mind to believe these kinds of buildings were made without electrical equipment.

Paço Episcopal do Porto (Bishop’s Palace)

This was a grandiose palace for the Bishop of Portugal. The architecture was very Baroque-inspired. It was kind of like touring through the various rooms of the White House: some rooms had different paint colors, each had seemingly different themes, portraits, etc. We couldn’t spend a ton of time here though because we had to head to our guided Palacio tour!

The staircases were really cool and we took a girl gang photo. I don’t know what to tell you.

Palacio da Bolsa

This building used to be a government building but burned down in the 1700s (if I remember the tour guide correctly. And I might not have—I was exhausted and overwhelmed.). It was then gifted to the Chamber of Commerce and entirely rebuilt and redesigned with them in mind. They only had guided tours of the building (which is also an active office building), but I’m glad we did the guided tour. Our guide was a wealth of knowledge on the smallest details: the themes and hidden meanings in murals and paintings; the design of the wood panel flooring (each piece fit together like a puzzle, removing the need for glue or nails); which rooms served which past functions and what they’re used for now, and more. I have such an appreciation for the building after that tour. It was definitely one of the highlights of the day in Porto.

Next we grabbed a quick to-go lunch from a little cafe near our Airbnb, which was also near our next stop. We had a little picnic in a grassy park and rested our feet for a few minutes. But not for too long! We had to get going to our timed ticket entry at our next stop.

Livraria Lello

This is a bookstore in downtown Porto that is rumored to have inspired JK Rowling's descriptions of Hogwarts. She spent some time teaching English at the Universidad do Porto literally across the street from Lello, and she allegedly named a character after the twentieth century dictator of Portugal.

This is called the most beautiful library in the world, and it is quite impressive. There is a cool spiral staircase in the middle of the main floor, and they have a curated collection of classic literature in at least five languages (that we saw). However, I still think that El Ateneo in Buenos Aires takes the cake.

Museu da Misericórdia do Porto

Our next stop was the Museo da Misericordia, or mercies. This was more of an informational museum about the history of the charitable organization. It was a hospital, orphanage, and sanitarium, and did other general benevolence outreach at different points throughout its history.

City Hall

Our next stop was City Hall, right in the heart of Porto's busyness. The building is large and beautiful, but we had the most fun with the "Porto." sign out front.

São Bento Train Station

We also went through São Bento, a train station with tiles that were individually hand painted on the ground and later arranged on the walls. They depict the transportation history of Portugal.

I'm continually amazed by the intricacy and beauty of European art.

We also saw the most beautiful McDonalds in the world: the building was used for royal government purposes but was later purchased by McDonalds. They kept the beautiful interior design and chandeliers but added Big Macs.

Via Santa Catarina

En route to our next stop, we walked along the Via Santa Catarina, which is one of the main streets in the Porto shopping district. There were lots of window shopping opportunities, and this was the most crowded street we were on all day.

We tried to go to the Museo de las Almas, but it was inexplicably closed. We got there well before closing time, so we're not quite sure why we couldn't get in. No matter, we had one more location to cross off our extensive Porto list.

Mercado do Bolhão

It was getting pretty late in the afternoon, so the Mercado was not fully open. Lots of stands had closed for the day. But it was still cool to see the breadth of offerings (flowers, fruits and vegetables, meats and seafoods, deli foods, nuts... the list goes on and on).

We headed back to our neighborhood for dinner. We went to little place not too far from our Airbnb for some local cuisine. The weather was *amazing*, so we ate outside with a full view of the plaza. It was so picturesque!

We went back to the Airbnb to charge our devices and get some water (the restaurant was charging us per bottle :( ) before our last adventure of the evening.

Clérigos Torre at Night

The tickets that we purchased earlier that day would let us climb to the top of Clérigos Tower to see the city at night, or so we thought. As it turns out, we had purchased the wrong kind of ticket and could only go to the Tower during the day! But never underestimate the power of four kind women with smiles... we sweet-talked our way into getting in since we couldn't come back the next day.

We climbed all 200 (or so) stairs to the top and got... fog! A heavy nighttime fog had rolled in, so we could see blurry groupings of lights in the landscape but not the full city. It was beautiful outside though, so we weren't complaining.

We headed home (with the obligatory gelato stop on the way, of course!) and packed up. We had a train to catch in the morning!

I was thrilled to be horizontal again and let my body recover from the day’s extensive walking. We climbed 77 flights of stairs between all of the hills in the city streets and the many staircases we explored at various sites.

Porto Overall Thoughts

Porto is a beautiful city. There is so much history and vibrancy. The wide cobblestone streets seem narrow when you have two-way car traffic and pedestrians in the road. Decorative tile of all shapes and patterns abounds, which is both visually overstimulating and cohesive simultaneously. Street musicians (with varying degrees of talent) add background music to the melody of different languages, honking horns, and general city bustle.

It's also nice to thaw out a bit after Iceland but not be dripping sweat. And everything is so much cheaper! Than both Iceland and DC. We all keep making comments about reverse sticker shock whenever we buy coffee or lunch or tour admission. Even our Uber to the train the next morning was a third of the price it would have been in DC.

I'm really sad that we missed out on an entire extra day of touring. That would have allowed us to both slow down and see more. And after doing all of the things on our list, I am confident I could have cut quite a few attractions from the list and swapped them for an espresso and postre on a street side cafe without detracting from my experience.

I'm so grateful the weather was amazing while we were walking around. It was warm enough to not need layers, but we had tons of cloud cover, so it wasn't too hot. It was a bit humid, but there were some breezes that came though.

Porto is a “must see” if you’re coming to Portugal or the Iberian Peninsula. Do it and thank me later.

Step tracker: 98,214

Besos,

Tina the ExploraDora