Evora

After being in Merida, we went to the Portuguese town of Evora. Evora is a smaller town but absolutely beautiful. I could immediately tell a difference between Portugal and Spain. Portugal has more people driving on the streets, the architecture looks much more Mediterranean and the churches were generally a little more plain than they are in Spain. Portugal produces about 90% of the world's cork, and so there's cork everything, from postcards to shoes to picture frames to purses. They also love blue tile work, and so blue porcelain is everywhere.

Evora's main claim to fame is its "Bone Chapel". As the plague decimated European populations, many cities simply ran out of room for graves. So, in Evora, they took out a ton of old bones from the older gravesites to make room for the newer bodies. Once they had all these bones, they were trying to decide what to do with them, when they came up with an idea to decorate a chapel with them, as a reminder to all of how short life is, and to make sure to live by the commandments today. Above the entrance reads "Here lie our bones, we're waiting for yours".

There was a really cool old cathedral we went to see with the coolest spiral staircases. The staircases went up probably about 4 floors without any landings, and I almost felt dizzy after making it to the top. It was also amazing because as I looked closely at the stone, what I had thought was granite was actually beautiful white marble, but so covered in lichen moss and grime that it was almost entirely invisible.

As this post would be incomplete without mentioning food, the food in Portugal is great. They eat tons of codfish, cooked different ways. I had mine for the day in a light oil sauce with tomatoes and potatoes. The real gem though are the pastéis. They are amazing. Warm crisp creamy and with plenty of cinnamon on top, they're good enough that I had four and went back for more. One of the workers told me they were the best ones in town- which is why he entered his application there. He said that in the past 2 years of working at that store, he's gained about 30 pounds.

The city was beautiful with a few Roman ruins and lots to see (including what is possibly the first lego brick ever made?), especially with a much larger cultural difference between Spain and Portugal than I had anticipated.