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Published: September 27th 2015
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So Lisboa lost out . The morning started off hot and we decided to pack up and move to Alcobaca . More motorways along the way. More fines probably. We have become rather complacent as we possibly rack them up. I guess as Glenn says there is nothing you can do about it so why bother worrying.
Our destination was the monastery in the town on Alcobaca . There is nothing to commend Alcobaca apart from a reasonable coffee shop where we drank coffee and ate apple cake . There is also an excellent easy to find parking space for hundreds of motorhomers. Free to park as well which is a bonus and always welcome.
We walked to the town which was disappointing. Very few shops and very little action. Some empty factory type buildings along the street and looked ugly. The church could be seen for miles . Baroque and heavily statued it stood on the main square . The square was a bit of a barren sort of place with sand on the ground and with a Post Office one end. The shops did start to open as the morning progressed.
Entry to the
church was free. To be fair I think the town would have struggled charging as there was little to see. It was a bare church, very stark and plain and with a high roof. There was little if any decoration in the side chapels which felt strange given it looked so Baroque outside . I cannot say either of us like it much . The centre of attention were the two tombs of Inez de Castro and Pedro . Ok the story goes , boy loves girl a bit like Romeo and Juliet they come from the wrong side of town. This was never going to end well. He was going to be king . She was not in his league . He loved her , she loved him. That is not enough though. Mum and dad on his side did not approve. She was not the sort of girl they wanted their son the future king to shack up with. She did not bring a dowry. She had no relatives of any importance and more importantly they needed alliances and Inez brought nothing like that to the marriage bed . So they had her killed . Fernando was a
bit like an elephant who never forgets and when he became king he had Inez dug up and made Queen. He forced all his noblemen to acknowledge her as Queen and made them kiss her decomposing fingers . He must have been mad, bad and downright angry. What a love story though. You could not make it up. When she died she was buried in his royal chapel and when he died he was buried close to her so that on the day of judgment as they woke up again they would be see each other and be together forever. Good old love story . Sadly he is still waiting one side of the aisle and she is the other. The tombs were beautifully designed and executed but the whole place felt a lot sadder than I had expected and the tombs were not quite in the grand setting I felt they deserved.
We hoped that our next stop which would be Batalha would excite us more than this place did . Sadly we are both finding this trip not as rich historically as previous ones to Spain and Portugal. The first time we came to the North we saw the big cities of Segovia, Burgos and Salamanca. They had the wow factor with fabulous cathedrals and interesting city centres. The second visit took us south to the Moorish splender of Seville, Cordoba and Granada with palaces and gardens. This time we feel that we are just finding the small things that we missed first time round. There are not the wow factors nor the wonderful cities and we are failing to find anywhere to go to at night. . We are just crossing the t’s and dotting the I’s of the country.
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