Day 5 - A Pilgrimage, A Walled Village, and a Ferry to Seafood!

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After a couple of quick, one night stands in Salamanca and Porto, it’s time to relax for a couple of days in the capital city of Lisbon. But first, there are a couple of stops along the way. The first is the famous Catholic pilgrimage city of Fatima. The nuns at St-Margaret's would be proud that I remember most of the story of Lucia, Francisco, and Jacinta, and the apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary in 1917. I remember as a child that the 2 places we should want to go, other than Rome and the Vatican of course, were Lourdes and Fatima, pilgrimage sites and modern miracles, with Fatima being the most recent.

There were evidently 3 secrets of Fatima, not that I remembered the details, but I did remember it had something to do with the end of WWI and the prediction of a future WW2. It turns out that while Francisco and Jacinda died soon after the apparition in the Flu Pandemic in 1918, Lucinda became a nun and lived to the ripe old age of 97, dying in 2005. The facility includes the old church, built in the 1940’s near the site of the apparition, there are several other buildings, including the new church dedicated by Pope Paul VI sometime in the 1980’s. There is also a path from the top of a slope, leading to the holy water fountain that people traditionally travel down on their knees as a form of devotion. While we were there, there were several people making that journey. There is also an eternal flame where you can buy wax models of body parts, throw them into the fire and pray for healing of that part.

The surrounding area is mostly parking, as during peak pilgrimage times, the site is totally packed. Fortunately, this is the off-season for the devoted, and we were able to tour the entire site. The old church also contains the graves of Lucia, Francisco, and Jacinda, and a beautiful fresco stations of the cross. There were services and singing being performed at various times in both the old and new churches as we visited. The new church is beautiful in it’s simplicity, with a really impressive abstract Christ on the Crucifix out front.

While not particularly religious any longer, I was surprised at the feeling of peace and calm that came over me during our visit. Fatima really brought back some of my earliest childhood religious instruction, and I’m really glad that we came. We looked at a few of the souvenir sites, but couldn’t find a good Blessed Virgin t-shirt, so we went away empty handed.

Soon it was time to get back on the bus and resume our journey to Lisbon. I hadn’t really paid attention to our next stop, and soon we were arriving to a small village called Obidos. Obidos is a small village of about 3000 people. It is located at the top of a hill, and was built up as a completely walled village in about the 14^th century. There was some significant damage in the earthquake of 1755, but most of the village was rebuilt. We were warned as we entered that while walking the top of the perimeter wall was possible, various signs indicated that the steps were very steep and there were no railings, so that walking could be dangerous.

Of course, neither Jody no I had the good sense to heed the warnings, and the first place we headed was the top of the wall. We didn’t walk the whole wall, as we only had a couple of hours to visit here, but we did climb around enough to take some great pictures! And they were right, the steps were very steep and dangerous, but no one has ever accused us of doing the smart thing.

Our real mission, besides exploration, was to buy some t-shirts, and get some lunch. There are only 2 roads in Obidos, the high road and the low road. The high road has all the shops and the quick restaurants, and the low road has the hotels and the serious restaurants. Since it’s only a 10 minute walk across the entire town, we decided to take the high road (both physically and metaphorically) and check everything out. Then we could take some pictures from the wall at the other end of town and return by way of the low road (physically of course). In the end we got lots of great pictures, spotted a couple of good t-shirt shops and settled on a quick restaurant. Of course, by the time we got to the restaurant, we had less than an hour for lunch. We asked the waitress what would be quick and she said either a salad, or the honey mustard chicken would be quick. The Portuguese tend to take their meals seriously, and don’t particularly like to rush. So we picked the honey mustard chicken, and it did arrived quickly, we were just amazed at how much food it was. There were about 6 strips of chicken, a pile of au-gratin potatoes, and a salad, but it was delicious!

We managed to finish with 10 minutes to spare, just enough time to stop by the t-shirt shop and pick out the t-shirts we had spied earlier. T-shirts complete, we headed back to the bus, right on time. That’s when I reached in my pocket to get out my phone and realized it wasn’t there! I thought about where I had last used it and realized I must have left it on the table in the restaurant. Jody let Dominic know where I was going, and I headed back into town. Luckily, the town was very small, and European service is typically slow, so no one had yet cleared off our table. Sure enough, my phone was right where I left it where the wind had blown the tablecloth over it so I had not seen it there. With a complete sense of relief, I picked up my phone and headed back to the bus where everyone cheered my return. I will definitely be more careful from now on, as so much of my travel is tied up with my phone. I really dodged a bullet!

It was time to head to downtown Lisbon and check into the hotel for the next 2 days. We are staying at the Altis Grand Hotel in Lisbon, and as the name implies, it is really grand! We checked I to our room, caught a little siesta and got ready for dinner tonight. At 6:45 we headed over in the bus to the ferry terminal where we road a ferry across the Tagus river to our seafood restaurant on the opposite shore. The restaurant is Restaurante Marisqueira, a family style seafood restaurant. Everyone is seated in long tables and course after course of seafood is served. We started with prawns and some sort of battered fish appetizers, then onto crab legs, shrimp, mussels, salad, and whitefish. We finished with coffees and pineapple, orange, and melon with whipped cream for dessert. It was all delicious and we were stuffed!

By now it was getting dark and the bus was coming to take us back to the hotel. A series of best hits of the 60’s sing-along on the bus and we were back before we knew it. Tomorrow we will explore Lisbon, we can hardly wait!

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