Colin and I took advantage of an "opPORTunity" (to quote our dear friend Rick Steves) over Easter weekend and hopped a flight to Northern Portugal. It was a good trip for Easter weekend, as Portugal is full of all sorts of religious sites. We stayed a couple nights in Porto, seeing countless churches and enjoying street concerts. On Easter Sunday, we took a train to the nearby small town of Braga, which is home to the gorgeous Santuário Bom Jesús do Monte ("Shrine of Good Jesus of the Mountain"), a hilltop Catholic pilgrimage site. After Porto, we took a train through the Douro River Valley to the tiny town of Pinhao, set amongst the port vineyards and absolutely gorgeous. After that, we trained to the university town of Coimbra and took a day trip to Fatima. It was a busy but awesome trip, and we took TONS of photos.
In Braga, we learned that the Portugese love steps. You'll see this in the pictures below of the Bom Jesus, as well as in any photos of the alters in Portugese Churches. The Baroque staircases up to the Cathedral are known as the Sacred Way, the construction of which began in 1722. In Braga, Easter is celebrated with fireworks booming and processions of the Crucifix.
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| Stations of the Cross line the hike up to the Cathedral |
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| Procession of the Crucifix |
BRAGA
PORTO
Back in Porto, we enjoyed the scenic bridges, port houses (and tastings) and churches. Porto's buildings are covered with ornate tiles. The ceilings are high and often decorated with beautiful designs. The doors are colorful and the people are lively. We enjoyed just walking around and taking it all in. While Colin didn't necessarily agree, I think Porto looked like a mix between an Italian town and Mexico. Its definitely a bit run down in places and rough around the edges, but also has a sort of worn-in charm that is appealing.
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| We did a port tasting at the Calem port house- close to the middle name of our new nephew North Callum Cassidy! |
PINHAO
Next up, we headed to the Douro River Valley to celebrate our 1 year anniversary. We found an old Quinta-turned-Bed-and-Breakfast and stayed there for a night and 2 days. It was SO BEAUTIFUL. Located in the hills and surrounded by port vineyards, Casa Visconde de Chanceleiros has no end of beautiful gardens. The house is beautifully decorated with blue and white Portugese tiles (alejos) and has a pool that overlooks the vineyards. It has an honor system at the bar that Colin enjoyed very much. You just write down how many glasses of port you end up drinking, with self service at the poolside kitchen or in the bar area inside. This opPORTunity brought us one of our key repeated phrases throughout the trip, "No person should have this much port!" We repeated this mantra, but that didn't really stop us... it took several tastings before we concluded that we were not, in fact, huge fans of port!
Since the Manor (as they call it) is located a ways outside the town of Pinhao and we arrived by train, we ended up eating all our meals there, and they were delicious! We greatly enjoyed playing ping pong and hanging out with the resident dogs, Molly and Cookie. We wish we brought our tennis shoes so we could have played tennis too! We did a lot of eating, drinking, lounging and enjoying the gorgeous weather and scenery. It was pretty luxurious. We felt so lucky to be able to celebrate our awesome first year of marriage at Chanceleiros.
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| Douro River |
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| Tiny Pinhao Train Station |
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| This guy loved the honor system. Look at that full glass! ;) |
"No person should have this much port!"
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| Molly, resident English Bull Dog (obviously I'm obsessed) |
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| "No person should have that much port!" |
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| Mmmm... our final lunch at Chanceleiros! |
FATIMA
Next up, we headed south to Coimbra and Fatima. Fatima is another Catholic pilgrimage site (much more well-known than the Bom Jesus). To give a little background - On May 13, 1917, the Virgin Mary appeared in the oak tree photographed below, giving 3 messages to 3 little shepherd kids, including the premonition that WWI would end soon. On the 13th day of the next 5 months, Mary appeared again and repeated her messages to the children. On October 13, 70,000 people assembled around the oaktree during a horrendous rainstorm, which cleared suddenly to a vision of the sun bouncing in the sky, writing "God's fiery signature." Afterwards, as each of Mary's messages proved true and more people came to visit, they built a Cathedral which holds the graves of the 3 shepherd children, a small Chapel of Apparitions next to the oak tree, and a massive modern international Church of the Holy Trinity representing the many cultures of people who have come to the site.
We were blown away at the sheer size of the site, and imagining what it must look like to see it full of people who still come on the 13th of every month to pay their respects.
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| People walk kneeling up to the Cathedral |
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| Graves of Lucia and Jacinta, to whom Mary appeared. Jacinta died soon after from a flu epidemic, but Lucia lived until 2005 as a nun. |
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| View from the Cathedral looking to the Church of the Holy Trinity |
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| Chapel of Apparitions |
COIMBRA
Finally, we toured the town of Coimbra. We listened to a beautiful fado show in a converted chapel, which was very cool. While fado is typically sung by women, the Coimbra tradition is for a man to do the singing. I absolutely loved the Portugese guitar, but we were so tired at this point it almost put me to sleep!
Then we checked out Coimbra's old university, founded in 1290. We had another major nerd alert occasion in the old library of the university, which houses around 30,000 books. We couldn't take pics because the books are so old, but both found it to be very cool. In the library, there are shelves upon shelves of beautiful old books to gaze at, with corner staircases up to the next floor and ladders to reach the highest shelves. The craziest part was to hear a certain shrieking nose ("eee eeee!") as we entered the doors, and learn that the library has some bats that live in the building, welcomed by the librarian to get rid of the insects inside! Gross! Sorry to leave you with that vision... the next posting will be about our mini 1 year anniversary celebration at home!
