Thursday means Evora

Caro woke up feeling a bit bad. Her eye hurt and she suffered all day with sinus issues 

We caught a 9:30 bus to the ancient city of Evora. 

I was originally planning to stay over night here when planning our trip but decided to go there as a day trip ( better connections to our next stop, Seville from Lisbon rather than Evora). 

Evora is a 2000 year old city. It has Roman ruins, medieval churches, and largely intact medieval streets and buildings located within the old city walls

The city map:

The Roman ruins

We paid to see the cathedral (unlike yesterday). We wound our way up narrow steps to the roof. Up there you could tell why Evora was built here. You could see for many kilometres in all directions. 

The cloisters were nice and the cathedral ( construction beginning in 1280) was also nice 

After checking a few more of the city highlights we found a restaurant where locals eat and Caro,after looking her list of Portuguese foods to try, picked a pork,clam potato dish while I had breaded chicken,salad and rice. They serve rice here without any sauces or anything. Pretty blah (!) IMHO. Overall the food was good. 

We had pretty much “had it” by 2:30 and so, with a 4 PM return bus ride to wait for we found a shady park to relax ( 34 degrees today).

At the bus station we needed 20 cents each to use the bathroom and as we needed change we went to a store where I asked for a pop and change for the bathroom. The lady there got snarly and said “no change” ( at least I assumed so as she spoke in a torrent of Portuguese ) and then asked if I still wanted the pop. I don’t think so!

Anyway we got change elsewhere and all was well in the world. The buses are very nice here (and have wonderful A/C )

Later: how ironic I wrote the above comment about the bus!!

About 20 minutes into our 90 minute trip we heard a helluva BANG!  The driver stopped and checked and found we had a destroyed tire in the back right hand

We limped into a town nearby and an hour later an empty bus arrived at the same time as our original bus was repaired by a fellow with a service truck.  We loaded up with our original driver taking us in the new bus. 

Interesting to see all the stork nests on the high towers

We arrived in Lisbon about one hour and fifteen minutes late. We grabbed the metro and were in our place 30 minutes later.