One of the sightseeing tips we'd gotten from a local in Belmonte was to go to the historic village of Monsanto. This rang a bell, as it had been highly praised in several of my library guidebooks, but I hadn't read much in detail about it since it was so out in the middle of nowhere that I didn't expect a visit to be possible. However, with a rental car everything is possible, and Josh and I decided to prolong our stay in the mountains by another night in order to See all the Things. "It's so amazing and unique," the nice lady in the café had said of the village, "The houses are built into boulders and you can't tell them apart." Something like that. Sounded pretty rockin' (har har) to me, so off we went, headed over tiny roads south and east toward this mystical place among the super stones.
The roads took us away from the Serra da Estrela, though their jagged ridge was always present in the landscape. In sharp contrast to their rough outline came the lush, green valleys and olive orchards flooded with white flowers, dotted with quaint stone houses. Sheep grazed, donkeys donkied, dogs and cats were sometimes overly social, sometimes not. The little towns we passed through had names like Casteleiro, Meimoa, Penamacor, Bemposta, Salvador, Bispo. Some looked well-tended, with well-dressed elderly citizens sitting on doorsteps in the sun. Others looked like the zombie apocalypse had stripped them of life and color and then moved on to juicier destinations.
Monsanto is a little village built into a mountaintop amidst ancient granite boulders, with traces of humans dating back to the Early Stone Age (and I'll just say now that it's nice to have something pleasant to associate with that name in addition to the weight of all the bad juju it usually carries). Not having reread the guidebook passages I'd skimmed over before, we discovered it in a rather exciting if not backwards kind of way. This involved driving up the mountain road and parking at the edge of town, then taking a rough footpath up into a landscape of giant boulders and soft, wildflower-dotted grasses to see what we could see. Other than the aforementioned Things, we found that Things to See included quite a glorious, expansive horizon, red-roofed hamlets, and, oh, look at these very, very old stone walls! Oh! Look at that old tower up there! Wait, is that tower connected to a giant, beautifully kept 12th-century Templar castle? --Why yes, how nice of you to notice.
And just like that we were transported to the Middle Ages, walking the now humble footpaths around the keep, peering into the moss-covered chapel, looking out across the lands once treasured so highly by those who fought to maintain them from this stronghold so many centuries ago.
Only after "discovering" the castle (and boy, was I not expecting to stumble across that) did we mosey into the town itself. True to the word of our café host, it was truly a remarkable place. A classified historical village and touted in all the guidebooks as "The Most Portuguese Village in Portugal" (but who voted that, really, and why, since it is so unique and generally atypical of more typical Portuguese villages? /end), it appears to have grown out of the mountain, with houses and walls built into, around, over, and even under the massive granite monoliths. The structures blend into their environment in a way that is certainly admirable for today's standards, though I would not want to heat them in January, no sir.
After a good meal and a walk around the very, very sleepy village, we drove back down the mountain and then continued east. Our café host had told us that we couldn't go to Monsanto without taking a little detour to the nearby town of Penha Garcia, almost on the Spanish border. It is also built up a mountain and has a castle at the top, as well as a picturesque reservoir on the far side. It was getting late and we still had to drive an hour back to the hotel, so we just drove up to the castle and walked around the top for a little while before turning north again, in time for the late afternoon glow and a hot pink sunset above the star mountains.
The next day was our last full day, and as we were both flying out of Lisbon very early the next morning, we figured we'd better head in that direction. Our café host had raved about the little town of Óbidos, a fortified city situated between Lisbon and the coast. "You'll love it!" she exclaimed. After doing some reading up on it in advance (for a change), I decided that indeed, I would like to see this charming place. This meant that we probably wouldn't end up seeing Lisbon, and indeed we didn't, as the time it took to a.) drive to Óbidos, b.) explore Óbidos, c.) drive to the hotel near the Lisbon airport and check in, and d.) return the car to the rental place nearby, left us with not enough time or energy to go into the city proper and enjoy it, especially if we had to get up at 5 a.m. the next day and embark on international journeys.
The drive back west was pretty uneventful and involved a lot of scanning through Portuguese radio stations. By this time I'd gotten used to the sound of Portuguese, and I was still impressed by how much it sounds like Russian. It's got the nasals, the throaty consonants, the shta-ing, and as someone who speaks neither language and has very little idea what I'm talking about, I was highly amused and think I would very much enjoy learning one or both of them.
Óbidos was, indeed, quite adorable as far as medieval towns go, though about as unlike Monsanto as you can get in terms of architecture. Where Monsanto was granite gray, Óbidos was white with bright colors trimming all walls and doors; instead of boulders, bougainvillea blossomed out of each convenient crevice, adding to the color explosion; and where Monsanto was quiet with empty streets, Óbidos was bustling with tourists and the souvenier shops that catered to them. After several days in sparsely-peopled vineyards and mountains, this felt overwhelming and cheap. We were near Lisbon, after all, and in a hub of other touristy destinations near the coast.
Despite this aspect, it was certainly a beautiful place and I was glad to have spent some time there. The tile work inside the church and city gate were particularly impressive.
In some places you could see the transition of trim colors over the years.
It was a bit of a shame to have missed out on Lisbon, but I am glad that we traveled the route that we did. Neither did we see any of the beautiful southern coast, but I don't regret that either. I figure that, for me, Lisbon is only about 3.5 hours away by plane, with cheap direct flights from Hamburg. And from Lisbon you can take trains and other modes of transportation to many other worthy places, but not necessarily to the very remote ones that our rental car allowed. The tourism shock on the last day just went to show how authentic the rest of the trip was, not to mention our adventures in places where no or very little English was spoken, or the person-free landscapes we explored.
A marvelous week, and precious to spend with a very dear friend. We parted ways at the airport and I soon fell asleep on the plane, the direct sun warming the window behind the shade. At one point I woke up over a mountainscape of shining lakes amidst snowy peaks, the snow then ending abruptly and clouds blocking all else from view.
By the time we flew into Hamburg, we weren't seeing much of anything at all aside from dreary February. It was cold and had been raining all week, and I was slightly sunburned, feeling wonderful.
