Tomar and Conimbriga
So sleep last night was lacking. Typical second night syndrome in Europe - it's hard to go to sleep when your circadian rhythm insists that it's 5PM back home. And even worse, I'd stayed up late last night trying to set up the payment for the electronic tolls before midnight struck, which had me wound up. So it had been a short night.
But even despite the bad night of sleep I was up and ready to go. There will be time to sleep later.The weather looked a bit iffy so we decided to stay around Tomar in the morning, and see if we could do our planned drive to Conímbriga during the afternoon.
Breakfast was included, so we hurried to get a table before the Gate One tour group claimed all of them. They had a few busloads staying at our hotel, and they were leaving today. This looks like a nice hotel for bus tours - large, and on the edge of town where buses can park easily.
Breakfast was self-serve and fast, so we decided to take a little walk around parts of the town before climbing up to the castle and the Convent do Cristo, which didn't open until 9:00 anyway.
Beautiful Muchão Park is right next door to the hotel. I can almost see it from the window.
After a walk in the park, we charged the hill and got to the castle a little after 9:00.
As it was a bit wet out, we went to the convent first. No point in getting soaked first thing in the morning!
We enjoyed the convent more than we thought we would. Lots to see, ranging from beautiful azulejo tile work,
To nice vistas with endless green - one benefit from all the rain here,
I had hoped that these jugs would be full of wine, but alas, only olive oil.
Many beautiful cloisters within the convent. Sometimes it was hard to remember which we'd already walked through.
This Manueline Window was particularly ornate. There is a church here but it was hard to get good pictures, so none here.
Just more courtyards,
And corridors. Lots of sleeping quarters here. The place was huge.
Once we had finished with the convent, we walked the castle walls, which wasn’t so exciting. The views of town were largely obscured by vegetation, and it was still spitting rain so we headed out.
We took a different way down to the town, and walked back to the hotel for a few minutes. Just long enough to get some locations in town where we could buy wine! Since we hadn't had much luck setting up any wine tastings, we figured we'd just go buy some, and hope we recognized some of the wines we'd had for dinner.
We found the first store and bought 3 bottles; two we were familiar with from our dinners, and the third we couldn’t resist, because (1) it was named JP, and (2) it was €2.99 for the bottle. Then we went to the second place. Even better - it had food!
The weather was looking nicer now, with some breaks in the clouds. We grabbed a cute outdoor table and ordered a few dishes. We had more mushrooms, then a cod fritter.
We finished up with a meat and cheese platter. We really liked the white wine that we were served, so we added two bottles of that to the check, at the exorbitant price of €8 per bottle.
Finally, making use of the wine checks! It would have been a real shame if we'd lugged them all the way here, only to return empty.
A view of the castle and convent, high above the Praça de República. The setup reminds me of Salzburg for some reason.
Now it was time for part two of today – since the weather looked OK, we grabbed our car and headed north about an hour to the Roman ruins at Conímbriga. Of course, the toll highway was one of the electronic ones. We passed 6 or 7 cameras along the way. Those tolls will add up; hopefully they will all get paid properly…
Still, it was an easy trip. And when we arrived, the weather was grey and gloomy. But this was a great site! Lots of ruins to see and walk around.
The mosaic floors here were spectacular.
Amazing detail and geometric patterns. Even with a finger in the lens...
The ruins of one large villa were amazing! What a massive peristyle in the entryway,
Surrounded by beautiful mosaic floors. And then there was a massive dining room, bedrooms, etc. Lots of work going on to restore these ruins.
This massive first-century housing complex on the edge of town belonged to Cantabra, who was a particularly rich citizen of Conímbriga. It had forty rooms with five peristyles.
In all it was over 35,000 SF in size, and it had its own private bath complex. Wow!
There is a small museum on the grounds and admission is included, so we spent a few minutes there before heading back south towards Tomar.
Since we had made great time, we were able to spare a few minutes for a detour to Penela. We didn’t know anything about the town other than that there was a castle there – surprise. Since we could see the castle from the road as we drove by, we figured it would be easy to get to. Just keep going up!
I found street parking close by, so we climbed the rest of the hill and stormed the castle.
We had the place mostly to ourselves. The weather continued to look unsettled but so far the rain was holding off.
We met two workers who were busy stringing up decorative lights on the parapets! They didn’t mind us though.Stunning views in every direction! These castles are just so scenic. Too bad there are so many of them - we will never get through our to-do list!
In front of the castle there was a catapult. Perhaps we can take the castle by force?
After enjoying the views, we braved the electronic toll highway back to Tomar. I was uneasy about driving on the e-toll highways, but the non-toll roads were pretty crummy in comparison.
Back at the hotel, we took an hour to relax on one of our two balconies, enjoying the evening view despite the chill in the air. We finished the little bottle of Port wine which the hotel had given us, and then started planning for dinner.
We went to a local place called O Tabuliero, and had a ridiculously cheap dinner with a shared main dish and two desserts, plus a bottle of red wine, for less than €40. I can’t get over how cheap the food is here! And tasty too.
We had a pork and mushroom dish served in a cream sauce, with fried potatoes and rice for €15. It was more than enough for two.
We ordered the desserts - €2.50 each – partly because we were embarrassed at how inexpensive things were.
Back to the hotel for a good night’s sleep, if the pattern holds. A view of Praça de República by night. You can just see the lighting on the castle walls in this shot.
The town looks quiet in the evening. Probably because it's not dinner time yet! They eat dinner late here, but we are ready to head back and rest up for tomorrow.
Our hotel looked nice with the nearly full moon overhead.
But first, before bed, another nice relaxing bath with a glass of the JP wine. It wasn't bad for the price. A little rough around the edges. Kind of like me! We saved the rest for later.
I’m still fretting a bit about the electronic tolls but not much more I can do now. I have to take the same road again tomorrow when we leave Tomar for Porto. I’ll keep an eye on the website and see if they start registering our trips and debiting my toll card. It should work... Soon, I hope!
If it doesn’t happen soon, I’ll find an office in Porto and see what I can figure out before we leave Portugal.
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