After a day in which nothing panned out the way we planned, we were due for a solid. Or, maybe a solid and a half, as the following are the exploits of us two over the course of 36 hours. Buckle up and prepare yourselves for a whirlwind of adventure and big bites of a deliciously obscure historia sandwich. Welcome to this epic-sode.
Epic Sunrise
Per ushe, I’m up just before six. Normally there’s an ambient luminescence at this hour – but due to yesterday’s time change, it’s nearly pitch dark, with the faintest hint of glow sketching out the horizon. This is the magic hour and no one is up, not even the birds.
I’m a morning person, ready to eat big sweets, drink lots of coffee, write or draw or go running right out of bed. In this extra gift of time, I grab the laptop and head out to the porch. I’d love nothing more than to slurp down some brown, but I won’t subject my sleeping wife to the disturbing exasperations and gurgles our little in-room espresso-machine chokes out.
An idea forms – grab one sandal and tuck the phone snugly into the top strap, set the whole contraption on the thin edge of the deck railing, and start the time-lapse feature on the camera. Stasia and I discovered this feature just yesterday and the upcoming sunrise is a great place to test it.
Epic Breakfast
Renewed and refreshed after a solid night, we’re ready to put a dent in the breakfast buffet that comes with the room. We enter the restaurant Divinus, and are immediately struck by the architecture.
It’s a remarkable room, once a cellar, with a series of pointed archways complimented by vaulted ceilings via ribbed arches. It’s hard to believe such detail and high design went into essentially a storage area. The floor, we later learn, is the original 1434 stone slabs, a bit worn by 600 years of abbots feet, rolling amphora, and trotting tourists. It’s just stunning and the quality of vittles rises to meet it.
Epic Explore
It occurs to us that as huge as this convent is, we haven’t really seen much of it. Just long hallways and a couple restaurants. That hardly explains the towering structure – what is taking all that space? It’s always more fun to explore on a full tank so we set out for the Cloister bar which occupies a lovely, cloistered courtyard which it must be admitted, has a touch of the epic. Our lunch, a wine-accompanied Bolognese and Caesar salad are both “good” (though semi-bland fare like this makes me long for black pig lizards… sigh, nothing can compare).
You know I eschew complaining, but King João doesn’t and he has all but given up on being served a proper Caesar. My dear Portugal, you can add whatever you want – curried chicken, pineapple, pickled cabbage, corn kernels, arugula – but you have to get the dressing right. Also for pity’s sake, please stop serving those tooth-breaking, store-bought croutons – you’re better than that!
But what’s this descent into mundanity, we were getting our epic on.
Epic Chapel
There’s a stairway we noticed that needs ascending and our curiosity is rewarded with one of the more elegant and less gaudy temples of God our precocious peepers have perceived. This working cathedral, which just hosted a wedding a day before, is as mighty and holy as this little countryside might ever hope to be dominated by.
The vaulted ceiling is miles above and later when we have a tour, the ricocheting reverberation is so severe, I wonder if it was difficult to understand the parish priests spouting Latin in this echo chamber.
The floor is a patchwork of giant, carved, decorated marble slabs – tombs, each one, purchased by benefactors of the church. The closer the tomb to the bishop, the costlier it was and the more favorable the entombed’s chances of being admitted into heaven. There’s only so much real estate and I wondered what happened when really high bidders came forward after the front row was taken… did they replace the existing inventory or just buddy up? How entrepreneurial were these bastards?
And here’s your hosts, Saint Jerome and Laaaaady Espinheirrrrrooooo! (wild applause)
Saint Jerome was quite a celebrated character – having translated the old testament from Hebrew and Greek, he married it with the new testament to form the modern bible. He also taught students, wrote biographies on biblical figures, and penned commentaries on other writers. Our man was on quite the academic path until an underdone turnip gave him a nightmare (the turnip bit I borrowed from Scrooge). He dreamt that he was being flayed by angels for giving too much attention to classical studies and not enough to religion. Just a bad dream, that’s all. I have them – who doesn’t? – but he took this vision literally, gave up academia, and started what was soon to become a trend amongst other disillusioned medieval minions – a life of devotion and penance in form of self-flagellation (in his case this was administered by banging a rock against his chest – so you’ll usually see his likeness with a rock in hand).
I have to say I was dismayed at this story, which not only went against the ‘education-first’ spirit I had picked up from the Coimbra chapel but also played into the tired tropes that make most free-thinking people chafe against organized religion. As much as I find it distasteful, anthropologically speaking these people believed in it – enough to paint a series of allegorical blue tile cells that relate the tale to the illiterate masses. Stasia had the cool idea to use the translator app on the scripted descriptions – and the effect is further enhanced by the way Google imperfectly applies the translation, in rotated strips of English.
The other celebrated personage is the Lady of Espinheiro (thorn-bush), the namesake of this convent. In 1420-something, a woman claimed to see the Virgin Mary appear above a thorn bush. That’s all it took. A single person said they saw something, and within a dozen years there were so many pilgrims from across the country crowding around, the local bishop had the convent built. The phrase I like to use ‘Thoughts are things’ suddenly takes on a different connotation.
Epic Dogpeople
There’s an in-convent library which is a ponderous collection of old tomes and crappy modern paperbacks in various languages. I would guess it’s a lending library, but the inclusion of what appear to be important antiquated volumes leaves one scratching one’s head. The scratching becomes even more pronounced when you see the dog portraits that surround it all. They are amusing, but we find the human hands part disconcerting. They all appear to be from different artists and there’s no clue why they’re here.
The room adjacent has many religious paintings from the 16th century, and two of them catch our eye. The depiction of Jesus in the motif of Saint Sebastian is fascinating if only because we just learned of this motif from Stasia’s visit to an extensive Rennasaince exhibition the other year. The other is the Assumption of Mary, where King J welcomes his Mom into the pearly gates accompanied by a celestial jazz band.
Epic Cycling Adventure
Stasia’s going to spend the day painting, so I decide to rent some wheels and get out into the country. Jorge, the nice guy who drops off the bike doesn’t speak English but we pigeon our way to a set of bike instructions and route recommendations. The translation is “Turn after the abandoned rail station”, though at the time I think he’s referring to the location of a restaurant.
I set off on my aluminum horse, a chunky black e-bike I name “O Porco Preto”. To get on my way, I need to zig-zag through a small town until I hit the highway. Wind in my hair, I’m snapping photos and feeling carefree until a loud dog behind a gate shocks the hell out of me and I almost lose my phone and my balance.
I’m loving this escape into the countryside and the weather is smashing! There’s one thing though – the seat post isn’t very long and for a long-legged bastard like myself it’s important to be able to fully extend, both for power and comfort. I put it out of my mind – there’s nothing I can do about it and this countryside is getting increasingly beautiful. I pass ranches, farms, cattle, sheep, evidence of cork farming, and an abandoned old station. Wait, didn’t Jorge say something about that? Hmm… doesn’t look like anything is around here.. must be another one.
After climbing my way into a town, I check my map and see I’ve completely missed the turnoff. That’s weird, I didn’t see anything. Back down I go.
That little abandoned station turns out to have a tiny dirt path next to it that leads into a bigger horse/bike/walking path and suddenly it’s all clear to me what my friend was trying to communicate. The rest of my journey outbound is on this amazing country trail, through the rolling forest, cattle land, and oaken plains. It’s quite a dreamy trail – sorry if this video gets you a little carsick.
I am starting to feel the urge to pick a spot to turn around though, because it’s been two hours of constant pedaling and I still have to make it back. A tiny path that looks like a driveway shoots off to the left.
I would have missed it but at the same spot is a bunch of bulls on one side and a ‘stork pole’ on the other. We’ve seen these throughout the countryside – tall poles with roughly assembled nests at the top and many with fake storks in them – we always thought they were decorative or maybe served some kind of scarecrow purpose. The fake storks move and as I get a little close, begin to fly away. Wow, all this while….
I take the tiny path which winds upwards and this looks like an episode out of Little House on the Prarie or some period piece film. At the top of the windy bumpy dirt road is the chapel of course and suddenly I’m on cobblestones again, still climbing up and up and all the way up until I see a cafe.
I park the bike, walk in like a gunslinger from parts unknown – everyone staring at me (the music screeches to a halt – not really) – and with a husky voice from hours of riding I say “Cerveja Preta”. The guy at the counter even has a mustache, this is so old west. The music resumes, everyone continues what they were doing, and I mosey on out to the patio where I share 10 minutes of air with about 200 flies and a group of locals, engrossed in their own banter and occasionally stealing glances at the gringo.
My way back is mostly uneventful – I make a bad life decision by taking the highway route back in favor of speed, regretting every meter of it. I do find that halfway, there is another gorgeous country bike path that will take me nearly all the way. 30 miles and dang are my quads sore from never getting to fully extend.
Epic Salon
While I was out winning the west, Stasia has been encamped in our monastic quarters wielding pigments and water. I come home to find her time extremely prolific – 13 different squares of Sumi-e and the results are striking! When that woman gets into a groove and the light is right, she’s a machine of creativity. Her bird designs are bold, confident, and whimsical. Her flowers are popping out of the paper.
Her fish are fun and playful, but in an effort to make them appear underwater, she overworks the paper on the first few. It’s a reminder of a quote from Watson when he says “the mark of an artist is knowing when to quit”.
Epic Arbor
In these days of media-sponsored, eternal youth, it’s refreshing to see trees act their age. The forest-dwelling, leafy upstarts that compete for resources live in a world where their success might be a fast track to becoming an Ingatorp or milled down Mästerby at your local Ikea. While they’re out-growing each other, one tree has left the rat race and retired into the fold of an Iberian convent courtyard.
Old man Olive greets us every morning, being a stone’s throw from our balcony and he’s still going strong at 1100 years old. He’s not trying to pass himself off as a mere Centurian, oh no. This millennial has the look of someone who’s seen some shit and has decided to thrive nonetheless.
Epic Ossuary
In the old, walled portion of Évora lives the Bones Chapel, probably the most visited site in this part of the country and well worth the trip – it is really something special.
Built in the 17th century on the initiative of three Franciscan friars, its whole purpose is to convey the message of the temporariness and fragility of human life through the presentment of death. While it appears to have initially been a way to conserve public space (there were 42 monastic cemeteries in the area taking up valuable real estate and yes, they did exhume 5,000 skeletons), the Bones Chapel brings an intimacy with our own mortality, a raw connection with the final shared experience, the inevitable answer to Plato’s lament, “Must not all things at the last be swallowed up in death?”.
The Latin above the entrance translates to “We bones, are here, waiting for yours”. Additionally, there are inscribed pillars around, one of them containing a passage I found chillingly contemplative.
Where are you going in such a hurry traveler?
Pause… do not advance your travel;
You have no greater concern
Than this one: that on which you focus your sight.Recall how many have passed from this world,
Reflect on your similar end,
There is good reason to reflect
If only all did the same.Ponder, you so influenced by fate,
Among all the many concerns of the world,
So little do you reflect on death;If by chance you glance at this place,
Father Antonio da Ascencao
Stop… for the sake of your journey,
The more you pause, the further on your journey you will be.
Outside the macabre chapel is a response, an uplifting work of art, a refreshing reminder of the part we actually know something about – family, love, and living.
Epic Megaliths
We’re going to get really old today. On our Évora exit, the prospect of connecting with our prehistoric analogs is too much to pass, so we set out for Almendres Cromlech, one of ten different megalith sites in the Évora region. Stand down Stonehenge, the Almendres monument precedes you by 2000 years. You weren’t even a wink in your Druid daddy’s eye.
The monument, which admittedly was partially knocked over before being righted by scientists in the 70’s and 90’s, is located about 5-10 miles deep in the heart of a stunning oak and pine forest. The site proper is a bedazzling array of menhirs, some 10 feet tall and weighing, well, more than I can lift, though I didn’t actually test that.
This collection of more than 100 anthropomorphic boulders are at the top of a hill – the top. There was no help from gravity here, these suckers were transported to a considerable elevation. It’s an amazing feat of mankind (though we all know the aliens helped) and to be inside the circle and imagine the bygone aura of a 7,000 year old pagan place of communion is something special.
Leaving our ancient relatives, we take the dusty back roads to the highway – en route to Alcácer Do Sal, the next leg of our propitious peregrination.
The Itinerant Three TnTs 
Loved the Bones Chapel â every large city should have one. And love Stasiaâs birds â she really captured their spirit.
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