8. April 3 Evora To Lisbon then home on 4th

3 April

Someone asked Laurie the other night if she wanted any wine and Jason, who has done the majority of driving on this trip, blurted out “Don’t give her any wine, she’s the back seat driver!” Very, very funny. Jason and I later agreed that would be a perfect New Yorker cartoon.

Two things about this trip:

First, over the course of the trip we’ve strolled down any number of extremely narrow streets in old towns and it struck me that the typical wall-to-wall houses had one door and one window on the second floor. I imagine that these places, although charming from the outside, must be relatively dark and claustrophobic with next to no air flow. But I guess back in the day just being inside the town walls and the protection it afforded overrode all else.

Houses on narrow streets

Also, we’ve gone up and down any number of medieval steps to enter cathedrals and palaces and I’ve noticed that back in their heyday, these places didn’t bother to design in handrails. Sobering that this only would occur to me now that I’m old, but I don’t bound down steep granite staircases of stone like I used to. It’s a longer trip to the ground when I fall than it used to be so I’ve had to be careful on this trip. Anyway, hats off to whoever invented the handrail.

Staircases showing later handrail on right (later invention)

We had the morning to walk around Evora and even though the town can be crossed in twenty minutes, we found neighborhoods we’d not seen before. Here in Portugal it seems like there’s one huge ornate cathedral for every ten people and sure enough we came across another towering church, wondering how we didn’t notice it from afar. Would have liked to tour the inside but this one had an entrance fee and after two weeks of free cathedrals, we decided to move on.

With pasties, cheese and a lump of heavy (physically heavy) bread, we checked out of our hotel and before heading to Lisbon stopped to see Portugal’s equivalent of Stonehendge. The megalith monuments east and west of Evora are reported to be between 4,000 and 7,000 years old. We stopped first to see Almendres Cromlech, a 5,000-year-old monument of fifty or so stones just outside Evora. What struck us as most fantastical is that this megalith was not recognized for what it was until the late 20^th century. This means that local farmers walked around and through the monuments thinking “Oh. They’re nice.” Did they think another farmer put them up recently?

Almendres Cromlech

The second megalith site we stopped to see, Almendres Menhir, might have been, as Jason suggested, the location where Viagra was discovered. Information posted near this megalith described its shape as "ovoid". I didn't know that word was used to describe a shape such as this. The structure's a wonderfully intimidating statement.

Almendres Menhir "ovoid"

Last stop on our trip before checking into our airport hotel was a visit to Parque Natural da Arrabida, a protected area about twenty miles south of Lisbon. This national park was supposed to have some of the best views in Portugal and since we had time on our hands and needed a place to picnic with our bread and cheese we gave it a shot. We drove up and up to the top of the park where we hoped to find an overlook and have a great lunch. The views were in fact all the guidebook cracked them up to be – astounding views down to the coast. But even if there had been picnic spots, which there weren’t, an outside lunch was not to be due to howling winds. So we picnicked in the car with our rock-hard corn bread, cheese, chocolates and “still” bottled water. While taking in the view at one pullout, Tour de France type cyclists blew by us going downhill at the highest speed I’ve ever seen anyone go on a bike.

Around 4PM we checked into the Star Hotel next to the airport and settled into our crypt of a room. Typical fare I guess for European airport hotel rooms. Really, who cares at this point? A final game of Scotch Bridge before dinner where Jason, a normally awful card player, kicked our butts.

4 April – Back to Gloucester

Jason and Laurie were out of their room the next morning by 4AM since they had to fly from Lisbon to Hamburg, then to Moscow and connect to Tokyo to ……………… I forget their actual itinerary, but it wasn’t pretty.

Maria and I had an 11AM direct to Boston. Our flight was about 7 or 8 hours with great films. Anyone who is a Dick Cheney aficionado should see “Vice”.

It’s a long story but I was able to score an Oxycodone pill for the return flight and it made all the difference. A painkiller should be given to everyone in coach if the flight is longer than four hours. Only way to travel. The happiest eight-hour flight I’ve ever had. I had previously indulged in physician-prescribed Oxycodone four years ago for a real reason so I know I’m not prone to addiction. The flight to Portugal two weeks ago, like all my previous flights, was Oxy-free and my old rusted body had not been pleased. What a difference on the return trip. I definitely know how I’m going to handle long flights in the future.

Once we got our seat on the plane, before I took a hit of the oxy, we heard a woman a few seats away talking to another passenger – and talking – and talking. She droned on and on with the hapless guy just nodding his head over and over, not saying anything as far as we could tell. After forty-five minutes her babble became as alarming as a screaming baby so Maria and I braced ourselves for a longer than necessary trip. But then a woman in front of us, who clearly had had enough, got up, crossed the aisle and shooshed the gabber. It worked! It was about that moment that the oxy kicked in.

When we first got too Portugal, trees were just starting to bud and by the end of our trip Portugal was completely baby green. Now back here in Gloucester the trees are just starting to bud so I get to see two Springs. Very nice.