Evora

Again with the food!

Checked into this lovely hotel inside the walls of Evora. 

   

We split up for dinner: Deb and Lori ate at the hotel restaurant. Here are their dinners. Shrimp in puff pastry and pork loin in pepper sauce with sausage and asparagus. Sheila, Cindy and I split a pizza and 2 bottles of wine(!). Michelle walked into town with others and also had a great dinner. 

         

And night caps happened. 

Wednesday:

Tour of the Cork Factory

It takes 25 years before you can extract the first cork, then every 9 years. It’s not until the 3rd extraction until there is good quality. So 43 years to stop a bottle of wine!

Cork tree

Extracted cork

They boil the cork for 1 hour to make it flexible. 

He’s holding an axe. Said he heard some of us were drinking wine with screw caps.... 😂. This is actually an extraction tool. 

Cork seemed fragile to us but it’s very durable and waterproof. Things that are constructed of 100% cork can be thrown in the washing machine. Apparently that’s the way to tell the difference between the imitations being sold on the street and the more expensive pieces we found at the factory and in shops. 

And then shopping in the factory store! We didn’t see how to get these pieces in our carryons, so we stuck to purses, trivets and jewelry!

Tour of Evora, a walled city. 

Surprise -Another church! This one, St Francis of Assisi church. This was a monastery of Monks of St Francis that created the Chapel of Bones as a meditation place. 

This altar is the model for the much larger cathedral. 17th century. 

Chapel of the Bones includes 5000 skulls and skeletons. Most were of poorer people in sometimes unmarked graves, so there is no record of who’s bones are here. (Monks as grave robbers??) The purpose of the bones are to demonstrate that, after death, we are all equal.  Engraved above the door is (loosely translated): We bones that lie here are waiting for yours. Sweet. 

No this isn’t the Acropolis but it is ruins of a Roman temple inside the walls of the city. 

Then: lunch! Here’s Cindy’s:

And Lori’s ( we liked the glass....)

Really, we had food too. Here we are with our waiter, Ricardo:

Then shopping! We found a cork bikini, and a cork wedding dress. 

     

Then a bit of sun before our 4-hour bus ride!

We are meeting very nice people on the tour. We are “the Michigan girls”. There are a few pairs of women traveling, several couples but no other group of 6!