Aljezur - Two weeks working in paradise

Getting to our workaway location in Aljezur was not very easy by public transport. So luckily for us the hosts Tim and Alexandra offered to pick us up from Lagos, a city not too far away from Aljezur that was much easier to get to by public transport from Evora.

When we arrived at the bus station after our long bus journey we were greeted by Tim and Pablo their dog. Straight away we felt very at ease and Tim (an Australian) was really friendly and chatty. He told us a little about himself, Alexandra and Pablo and explained that Alexandra would not be about that evening because Germany were in the World Cup final and she had gone to watch it with some friends that night (Alexandra being German).

On the way to their place Tim decided to take us on a scenic route off of the main high road where we enjoyed a nice view of the countryside area of Portugal, Pablo was let out for a run part way along the way and he chased after the jeep as we went along. After he felt he had run enough he got back in the car and we drove the rest of the way to the house.

Carmen and Pablo

 When we arrived we were shown around the property and where we would stay. We stayed in a converted donkey shed, which was really cool and had a bedroom and a living room, with a bathroom next door. Out around the back of the donkey shed there was a little courtyard where three other rooms were located, which had other guests staying, as part of their guesthouse business. There was also a kitchen as well if we ever wanted to cook something for ourselves (although we only ever needed to once as they took care of our food for us the rest of the time).

Relaxing in the hammock in the courtyard

After showering and changing into clean clothes we went in to watch the 2^nd half of the World Cup final with Tim and Pablo (Pablo taking up half the couch), whilst Tim also cooked us a lovely chicken stew for dinner. I must add that Tim is a most excellent cook and all his meals were delicious (more on that later). We also met a girl called Anna at the meal, who was one of Tim’s ex pupils (he is a drama teacher at an acting university in London), who was staying there as part of a holiday with her friend, who happened to be ill that night. Luckily for us that night, Germany won the World Cup final, which meant that Alexandra would be happy the next day.

We met Alexandra the next morning for breakfast and we were shown around the grounds and were told what our work was going to involve. The main aim was to clear and tidy the area around the vegetable garden and shed, and then build a fence around the vegetable garden to make it look neater. We also had to redo some sections of the fence around the outside of the property as it was getting some holes in it.

We got stuck in over the two weeks we were there and it was quite enjoyable work. We worked about 3 hours in the morning and then did a couple of hours in the afternoon, once it had cooled down a little bit, as the middle of the day was pretty hot. Carmen really enjoyed working with the machete, hacking at weeds (a definite highlight for her). We also collected Eucalyptus tree off cuttings from the woods nearby and cut them down to size to then later use as fencing. We cleared a lot of weeds and long grass around the vegetable area and around the shed. This was quite time consuming, but after two weeks it was done and we were very pleased with our work.

Carmen fixing the fence

Getting stuck in clearing the area

The finished vegetable garden with fences

Work aside there were lots of other things we did whilst we were in Aljezur. First and foremost I must mention Tim, our cook. He cooked most of the meals we had (lunch and dinner), and he is a very very good cook, he made us a lot of very lovely dishes. Spaghetti was a particular lunchtime favourite of his, which he adapted in lots of different ways, adding garlic, chilly, cheese, oil and some other spices depending on his mood.

Some of our particular favourites included his BBQ chicken, which he did on his homemade BBQ, another was aubergine stew, but the best of all was pizza night. This was when they invited round a friend and Tim made homemade pizza in his own handmade clay oven which really gave the pizzas the most amazing taste. He made quite a few different variations and we sampled a bit of everything (mozzarella and chilly garlic being our favourite). It was the best pizza either of us had ever had, and finally after 26 years it had made me a pizza convert! One other highlight I might add related to food was a lovely cake made by the two girls who were staying there. It was an orange and semolina cake, with some added cream or ice cream, again very nice. They alternatively also made a raw vegan cake, which was very similar with orange, semolina, ground almonds and apple.

Tim taking the pizza out of his homemade oven

Delicious pizza!

We had many nice evenings whilst staying in Aljezur, we met a few of Tim and Alexandra’s friends who came over for some food and conversation, even meeting a local yoga teacher, who Carmen later in the week had a class with (Carmen ended up doing a few classes over the two weeks we were there). The evenings also allowed us though to stargaze, we had never seen so many stars in the sky before. Due to hardly any light pollution and being in a rural setting with no clouds gave you really clear nights, you were even able to see some satellites and shooting stars. Pablo was also a source of constant amusement throughout our stay, running away and getting lost on two separate days, causing us to have to go look for him.

Whilst in Aljezur during the middle of the day when we had time off we visited the nearby town to see the castle and the local area, as well as visiting the nearby beaches, which are lovely, although the water is freezing cold! One beach that we went to had a river that joined the ocean. What you could do was start upstream and just let yourself be carried along by the river, and it took you on a fast ride down into the ocean, it was good fun, although it got very shallow in some areas, so you were flying along, literally with your belly scrapping the sand as you went.

The town of Aljezur from the castle

Beach in Aljezur

There were two main cities that we visited with Tim and Alexandra. The first was Lagos, a popular place for beach lovers, you will find many tourists there who go there to party all night and get roasted on the beach all day. Lagos was a very touristy city, and did not appeal to us very strongly as it just did not have a very Portuguese feel to the place, it felt like any old beach resort anywhere in the world. There are a few places of note inside the old city itself, including the old slave market but nothing I would say is worth making the trip specifically for.

One of the beaches in Lagos

However the second place we visited, Sagres was much more to our liking. It had some stunning views along the Portuguese coastline both north and east. It was known hundreds of years ago as being the end of the known world, and whilst sitting on the cliff looking out over the Atlantic Ocean it was easy to see why people thought this. Tim and Alexandra also took us to Letzte Bratwurst Vor Amerika (Last Brutwurst before America), as the name suggests a Bratwurst stall where we had a lovely Bratwurst (our first ever). We then later visited one of the beaches in Sagres for a nice dip and relax.

The coastline around Sagres

Enjoying our Bratwursts!

After our two weeks in Aljezur with Tim, Alexandra and Pablo we were really sad to have to leave, we will miss them all, having fallen in love with the place, but unfortunately our flight was booked long ago so we had literally run out of time. However we promised we would stay in touch and were invited back at any time, which we will most likely do!

All of us together outside their house

Evora - Roman ruins and a chapel made of bones

Evora was a short stop for us, just a couple of days before starting our workaway experience in Aljezur. We stayed at a campsite just outside of the old walled centre of Evora, which we were pleased to discover also had a swimming pool. This actually came in very useful as the temperatures reached over 40 degrees!

Setting up our tent was a real challenge as the ground was incredibly hard and we did not have a hammer or mallet. We managed to eventually after a very long time get two pegs into the ground using big rocks to bang them in, whilst bending every other peg we had. To keep the tent standing up we had to improvise by tying it with bungee cords to a tree and putting tent ropes under big rocks, but it eventually stayed up. After this taxing work we were ready for a relax by the pool!

Evora is actually quite a small city with a population of only 56,600 and does not really require more than one day to explore it. The old centre is where all the sites are (being an UNESCO world heritage site) and is almost totally enclosed by medieval walls. The social centre of Evora is Praca do Giraldo and this is where all the locals hang out and sip a coffee. This is the place that all roads lead to in Evora.

Praca do Giraldo

Just around the corner from Praca do Giraldo is the famous bone chapel (Capela dos Ossos) which is actually part of the Church of Sao Francisco. It is as the name implies a chapel made out of bones. The walls and pillars are totally covered in skulls and other bones from 5000 dead monks and cemented into place. There are also two dissecated corpses hanging from ropes on the walls, one of them being a childs corpse.

Inside the Chapel of Bones

The chapel was built by a Franciscan monk who wanted his fellow monks to contemplate life and remember the fact that it is transitory. This is clearly shown in the famous warning at the entrance: Nós ossos que aqui estamos pelos vossos esperamos (“We bones that here are, for yours await").

Chapel of Bones with inscription above entrance

There are a couple of other quotes like this around the chapel: "Melior est die mortis die nativitatis (Better is the day of death than the day of birth)" and the poem: -

Where are you going in such a hurry traveler?

Stop … do not proceed;

You have no greater concern,

Than this one: that on which you focus your sight.

Recall how many have passed from this world,

Reflect on your similar end,

There is good reason to reflect

If only all did the same.

Ponder, you so influenced by fate,

Among the many concerns of the world,

So little do you reflect on death;

If by chance you glance at this place,

Stop … for the sake of your journey,

The more you pause, the further on your journey you will be.

All in all it made for quite a spooky experience. It would probably be even better if you could go in there at night.

Some of the other sites we saw included Evora Cathedral, Evora University, the cities aqueduct and a park that housed the Palace of Dom Manuel. Last but not least we also visited the Roman Temple (Templo de Diana) that was originally constructed around the 1st century AD but later destroyed during the 5th century by germanic invaders. However some of the base and pillars still survived to this day and were used for various buildings over the years until it was classified as an archaeological site in 1869 including a butchers and a castle stronghouse. It is still impressive to marvel at.

Evora University courtyard

Temple of Diana

After a long day in the old city centre we had another dip in the swimming pool before heading for an early bed, as the next day we had an early bus to catch to the south of Portugal to start our workaway experience.

A week in Lisbon

Lisbon is an interesting city with plenty to offer for almost every kind of tourist or traveller. It has beaches, nightlife, historical sights, good food, culture and friendly people.We had a very varied visit to Lisbon, staying there for just over a week, it allowed us to see the city at a leisurely pace and enjoy it more. Whilst there we stayed in a room in a flat belonging to a Portuguese girl. It was nice because we had access to a kitchen, meaning we could cook our own food (something we had been looking forward to).

We were lucky enough to be in Lisbon at the time that an airshow was going on in the nearby town of Cascais (a popular beach destination for tourists). Due to this we also benefited from cheap train tickets. There were hundreds of people lined up on the beach and next to it to see the airshow and we sat with them and were not disappointed. It was a lovely day and we were treated to some stunt helicopter flying and then some planes doing formations and trailing smoke behind them. After the show we were even lucky enough to get to sit inside one of the helicopters! 

The beach at Cascais

Us in the helicopter

Before we headed back to Lisbon though we also had a stroll along the seafront all the way up to a place called Boca do Inferno (Mouth of Hell). It is named this because of the way the water violently crashes and sprays up against the cliff rock walls. On the way back to Lisbon we also went past the town of Estoril and saw the famous casino there, which is a popular landmark.

Boca do Inferno

We did one other day trip whilst we were in Lisbon as well; this time to the very popular place called Sintra, known as the City of Palaces. One of the hardest decisions about visiting Sintra is choosing what palaces you want to see, as there are 8 palaces, and a castle. We tried to see as many as we possibly could, and we managed to see 4 palaces (Pena Palace, National Palace, Seteais Palace and Quinta da Regaleira) and the Moorish castle, but we had to choose only one to actually go inside to explore. We decided to visit Quinta da Regaleira for a couple of reasons, one that it was less popular than the famous Pena Palace and two because from what we had read about Quinta da Regaleira offered something a bit different and a bit more interesting than Pena.

Carmen with the National Palace

Seteais Palace

Pena Palace

The Moorish Castle

We really enjoyed looking around Quinta da Regaleira, it has a lot to offer. The palace building itself is not as big as many of the other palaces in Sintra, but what it lacks in terms of size it makes up for in design, and beauty. The main residence is over 4 floors with an alchemist lab in a tower on top. This is where the owner used to practise alchemy. The best part about visiting this palace though is the grounds, they are vast and are a lot of fun. The grounds include lots of underground tunnels and hidden passages, towers and wells, it was like being part of an Indiana Jones adventure.

The highlight though and most popular and most photographed place in the whole grounds was the Poço Iniciático (Initiation Well), which looks like an inverted tower, where at every 15 steps there is a plateau, in total there are nine plateau's leading down into the ground. The nine plateaus are supposed to signify the circles of Hell, the nine sections of Purgatory and the nine heavens of Paradise, as told by Dante. It was a really fun visit and would highly recommend it to anyone else visiting Sintra.

Quinta da Regaleira Palace

Tower in the grounds

The Initiation Well

There are many things to visit in the city of Lisbon and we tried to squeeze in as many as we possibly could. Belem is one of the most popular areas of Lisbon owing to the iconic Belem Tower along the waterfront, which can make for a very nice picture. The tower looks very nice from the outside and when you climb to the top you get a nice view up and down the waterfront, however inside the tower is nothing special, so I would say at 5 Euros the ticket price is probably a bit expensive. Luckily for us, however, we got it for free as they allow one day a month free admission to both Belem Tower and Jerónimos Monastery.

Belem Tower

Jerónimos Monastery was the other main attraction we visited in Belem and it is a very impressive building, late gothic apparently and took 100 years to build between 1501 and 1601. It is seperated into two parts, the church and the monastery. Within the monastery is a huge cloister with beautifully carved pillars, arches and windows; it felt very tranquil and peaceful. Contained in one of the rooms off of the cloister was a very interesting exhibition of the history of the monastery compared to the what happened in Portugal and what happened in the world at the same time.

Jerónimos Monastery exterior

Jerónimos Monastery cloister

Our last stop in Belem was to the famous Pasteis de Belem, this is where they make the equally famous Pasteis de nata. Pateis de Belem was first opened in 1837 specifically to sell Pasteis de nata, which had become a very popular snack sold by the monks at Jerónimos Monastery since 1820 to try and gain extra revenue. However, when the monastery was shut down Pasteis de Belem bought the recipe and still make them exactly the same way now. Pasteis de nata are basically an egg custard tart sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar; they are delicious. Unfortunately we only bought one each, and could have had a few more of them, but the queues to get them were huge, trailing out the door and along the street!

Carmen showing off the delicious pasteis de nata

Just walking on the streets of Lisbon is a nice thing to do in itself, you don't even have to visit particular sites, just take in the small windy streets of areas like Alfama, the oldest neighbourhood in Lisbon, which reminded us of Moroccan cities. A particular favourite place for people to visit here is the Castelo de São Jorge, which overlookes the neighbourhood and makes for some nice photos. Another area that is really nice to just walk around is Bairro Alto, probably the most touristy part of the city where you will see people taking pictures of streets and buildings on nearly every corner. This section of the city includes the most photographed street in Portugal and the oldest book store in the world (Bertrand Bookstore). It has lots of shopping areas and restaurants, as well as little eateries and praça's (squares) where locals congregate. It is an area full of life and is just nice to sit and people watch.

Archway in downtown Baixa

The most photographed street in Portugal

Although this was the longest we had stayed in a place (apart from Madrid and whilst doing the workaway in Spain) we were still a bit sad to leave Lisbon as we had become quite settled, but it was on to our next destination, Evora and experience the summer like heat in Portugal!

Aveiro, Coimbra and Peniche - Couchsurfing, oldest university in Portugal and jacuzzi

After our short visit to witness Sao Joao we were off to see the coastal city of Aveiro and enjoy our first couchsurfing experience in Portugal. On arriving in Aveiro we were met at the station by our host Mario, who was kind enough to take our bags with him to work and leave us to explore the city in the meantime, after giving us some rough directions about where to go.

We explored much of central Aveiro, strolling through the old centre, seeing the fish market and the traditional Moliceiros boats, which are colourful fishing boats that are now a popular tourist attraction, where people go on cruises around the numerous canals. The key feature of these boats being the funny images and captions painted on the boats, which are often a bit rude in their humour. The canals are a beautiful setting and have been said to have similarities to those in Venice.

 

Moliceiros canal boat

With the caption reading: Much bigger and thicker than mine at home

After we finished exploring most of the centre of Aveiro, we were then later picked up by Mario after he had finished work and went back to his place via the supermarket where he picked up a few things to make a meal for us that evening. 

When we arrived back we were shown around his house (formerly his grandparents) and it is filled with lots of cool pieces of artwork. We were shown up to our room where we had a comfy mattress on the floor. We were then introduced to a lovely snack food of fresh cheese and pumpkin jam on bread, which is something I would never have thought of combining, but it worked extremely well together. We then had a shower while he started to cook us all a meal. 

After the shower we saw Mario put the last finishing touches to his meal, adding a bottle of beer to the mix and his own homemade sauce/spice mixture to the pot (an interesting combination). After letting it simmer for a short while it was ready. 

We sat down to the most delicious meal we had eaten in Portugal so far; feijoada (beans and meat), served with boiled cabbage and rice. Neither of us could get enough of it, having seconds and mopping up the sauce and juices with bread. The way we ate is like we haven't eaten in a week!

After the meal we sat talking late into the night, partaking of some wine and local spirit, it was a fun night and we learned much about each other. Mario’s work involves 3D printing, which was really interesting, he showed us some of the things he was making from, printers that he himself had built; we even tried them on! 

Trying on Mario's 3D printed glasses

Mario is in charge of his own company and works ridiculous hours, seeming to go home only to eat and sleep. But he really seems to love his job, he just needs to remember to occasionally take it easy every once in a while!

Our next day in Aveiro he dropped us off at the beach and we strolled along the beach front, walking out to the lighthouse and back along the beach front stopping for ice cream and some creamy Portuguese sweets. In the evening this time we went around to one of Mario's friends house where we met a whole group of his friends and had another nice meal before heading out to Praça do Peixe (fish plaza) in the city centre to go to the many bars. It was a fun night with much drinking and dancing, culminating in Carmen driving Mario's car back to his house as Mario was too drunk to drive.

The following morning we got up late and were very sad to be saying goodbye to Mario as we had had such a great time. He asked if we wanted to stay another night, which we gladly would have if we hadn't already had accommodation booked at our next destination. We will try and keep in touch and hope to see him one day come visit us in England or Romania!

Posing for a picture with Mario just before we left

Our next stop was Coimbra, a city famous for its university (University of Coimbra), the oldest in Portugal. The university is situated on top of a hill and is an impressive site with nice views from the top over the town. Coimbra is a small city with lots of tiny cobbled streets and buildings with traditional architecture. We stayed in the heart of the city and were lucky enough to witness a live dancing and music performance from the courtyard right outside the guesthouse we were staying in. 

Traditional Portuguese dancing

A contender for the highlight of our stay in Coimbra was when we went to a little restaurant just outside the old centre of town, away from all the hustle and bustle of tourists, which we had found out about from the internet. Here they served the popular Leitao (Roasted suckling pig), a gorgeous dish of pig roasted in a pit whole and then cut up into pieces, served with crisps. The tender, juicy, flavour intense meat will just melt in your mouth. The owner of the restaurant was kind enough to give us a sampling of her homemade garnish as well, which worked really well with it too.

The delicious Leitao

The city of Peniche was our last stopping point through central Portugal before heading to Lisbon. We took the opportunity for a bit of rest and relaxation here, settling in at a nice campsite, with some great facilities (jacuzzi, swimming pool and gym), all for a ridiculously cheap price. 

Carmen relaxing in the jacuzzi

 Peniche is only a small place, without much to see or do unless you like water sports, in which case you are in heaven as there is a lot of surfing and other water based sports available due to the high winds that are around the peninsula. However, it is a very beautiful place to relax and enjoy the scenery and sunsets, and to just watch slow pace of life of the locals, many of which fish out on the cliff tops. It was a nice break and set us up well for our next stop in the capital of Portugal, Lisbon.

Sunset from Peniche peninsula

Looking out over the Atlantic Ocean