Evora Portugal - Best Hotel


Advertisement
Portugal's flag
Europe » Portugal » Alentejo » Évora
June 5th 2016
Published: July 16th 2016
Edit Blog Post

Now on to Evora, the drive took two and a half hours. We read that driving in Portugal was dangerous and there are a lot of accidents but once we got out of Porto the roads have been almost empty. Maybe that is because we drive on the toll roads. We also rented a car with GPS and this is a must, there are lots of roundabouts and without GPS it would be easy to take a wrong turn. Our hotel has no address and the directions say take exit 6 and follow the signs to the hotel. There were no signs to the hotel but the hotel is called Convento Do Espinheiro, and we followed the signs that said Espinheiro and yea we found the hotel. This is the most beautiful hotel we have ever stayed in. They give a tour of the hotel property at fibe but we are hungry and head into town. The town is a walled city, we park outside the walls and walk in, we spend the first half hour just trying to find the city center and the next half hour finding a restaurant. Restaurants in Portugal do not open until 7:30 but we are hungry now. We find a cafe and I order a hamburger with fries. What I get is a hamburger paddy with gravy on it with fries and sliced tomatoes. Not what I expected but it tastes good.

We have been traveling for over a month and this hotel is the perfect place to take a down day. They have an indoor and outdoor pool, with dry heat and steam saunas. We spend the day around the pools, I got some excersise swimming laps and we enjoyed the sauna. At five we had a tour of the property. The property was a monastery built in the 16th century. Convento or convent and monastery meant the same thing in the 16th century a monastery for monks, no women. The property is a smaller version of other monasteries we have seen with a church, dorms, kitchen, cloister and meeting rooms. The church has mass twice a month and you can book the church for wedding. We also toured the Kings room where John II stayed many times. So cool we did not have to leave our hotel for a tour.

At six the hotel had free wine tasting in the cellar that was used to store water in the monks time. The restaurant at the hotel was the wine cellar where the monks stored wine and olive oil. The hotel still makes olive oil out of the olives grown on the property.

We had a great multi course dinner with wine paring. We usually don't splurge for meals but the restaurant was so beautiful we had to indulge. The meal was one of the best I have ever had. Now I have had pig cheeks.

The bathroom in our room had a fancy toilet. We pressed a button and a tube came out ane squirted the wall. We loved our stay at this hotel and we are not sorry we missed seeing more of Evora.


Additional photos below
Photos: 16, Displayed: 16


Advertisement



17th July 2016

Thanks.
Yes. Lovely hotel and You, Cindy, too. Where is Reykjavíkur? I love it too.

Tot: 0.14s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 11; qc: 52; dbt: 0.0951s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1; ; mem: 1.2mb