There are moments in life that get packaged into “A Tale” rather than just “a story”. You tell it practically the same way each time you share it, and you tend to share it a lot. Each new person you meet, they’re going to hear your Tales as part of the get-to-know-you process. Here is our tale of meeting our city for the first time.

We could roll back time reaaaaally far to get to the beginning of this thread; like all the way to our first inkling of moving. When we were kinda-sorta serious about moving to Portugal but no firm plans at all, one of the things we kept chewing on was when we were going to actually pull up stakes and go. A lot of that was “when can we afford it” and “when can we logistically manage it” and so on, but a thought began to percolate for me. We were moving to a new city, in a new country, knowing basically nothing about them. The culture would be different, the customs, the food, everything. So, how could we increase the chance that we’d like being there? And the answer I came up with was “go at Christmas time.” Not that Lisa and I are particular Christmas lovers, but you can’t ignore how the seasonal cheer ramps up. Downtown will be covered in lights. Music everywhere. People generally rolling friendliness saves with advantage. (Sorry, non-nerds.) Yeah, that seemed like the best way to stack the deck in our favor.

So a hundred dominoes falling later, we actually went to San Francisco for Thanksgiving in 2021 with portions of Lisa’s family, then caught our flight from SFO to Lisbon. We got to our first night airbnb, then into our apartment the next day. We were absolutely pooooped. Exhausted. But, we’d heard from the Braga American immigrants group that the municipal tree lighting festivity would be going on that night and the immigrants would grab a table at Café Vianna to catch the goings on. (To my fellow immigrants reading this in 2025 and beyond: yes, that’s right, the entire crowd of immigrants that night fit around a 10-top at Café Vianna. How times change, right?) It seemed like a good way to meet people and also just crack the ice on seeing what we’d got ourselves into. We left our apartment around 7 or so and made the 15-ish minute walk to downtown.

That’s how long it took me to fall in love with this place. 15 minutes.

Our old apartment was on Rua Dom Pedro V, which goes through a couple of quick name changes before becoming Avenida Central; don’t worry about the details if you don’t get this, all that matters is it was a straight line walk for us to end up at the fountain for the tree lighting. You hit the pedestrian area halfway there, and that’s when it started. Picturesque family scenes as the locals started gathering for the festivities. This was late 2021, remember, so things were juuuuust starting to loosen up in public spaces. They hadn’t even had the tree lighting the year prior, and attendance was relatively sparse but the people who were showing up seemed extra-excited to be reconnecting with their community. The air was crisp, the lights were on all up and down the pedestrian zone… it was, in a word, perfect. It was exactly what you’d want from the start of the holiday season. The gathering at the cafe was as warm a welcome as two new arrivals could hope for, and we’re friends with, I think, everybody we met that night.

The best part to me is that none of this is revisionist history. As we were walking back to our apartment at the end of the night we talked about what a great night it was, how much we loved the experience and the people that we met. Looking back, even knowing that we basically psyched ourselves out (picking the best possible time to “meet” our new home, going to festive occasions etc…) we still feel like it was a perfect first impression. And it seems to have worked, because here we are.

Believe it or not, as meandering as the stories can get here on the Ramble, we actually do try to keep an eye on the word count and also try to at least have a loose shape to the story of any given day or trip. Having been on the other end of plenty of disorganized or just plain boring vacation stories over the years, we try not to inflict those horrors on our friends. Sometimes we end up leaving things on the cutting room floor, so to speak, that in retrospect are stories that we think will stick with us. Here, then, are a couple of things we left out.

(Fun fact: since we don’t advertise or broadcast ourselves to the four corners, we probably know 80-90% of y’all personally. So, Hi!)

Back in 2012 we started off our honeymoon in Dublin. While we didn’t mention our hotel by name, it was The Westbury and it was just lovely. We loved its central location and being nestled into a kind-of-pedestrian area, plus the hotel itself was grand and they took care of a couple of American newlyweds splendidly. They took our bags off of us when we arrived early, and when we came back later to properly check in our luggage was already in our room, along with a bottle of champagne and serving of strawberries, by way of congratulating us on our nuptials.

Fast forward 13(!) years, and we’re back in Dublin on the tail end of our jaunt through the British Isles. Lisa has earmarked exactly one destination in the city for this trip: Cloth, a fabric store. Although honestly, calling Cloth a fabric store is kinda like calling the Vatican a church. I mean, yeah, but that’s a massive undersell. Cloth is small but exquisitely stocked, with knowledgeable staff willing to chat with you about any old thing, confident that eventually the talk will turn to textiles. (Another fun fact: they are the only supplier of Irish linen actually in Ireland. Although maybe that’s not so much a fun fact as a weird one.) So, on one of our free mornings we grab directions from Ye Olde Google and head out on a pleasant 15ish minute walk. Imagine our surprise when we saw where we had arrived.

That’s right, Cloth was literally attached to the Westbury in a shopping venue. Suddenly we are both full-on tripping down memory lane, going back and forth with “remember whens….?” and generally having a grand ole time. It was an unexpected delight that morning.

When we went to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells, we also, almost as a matter of course, visited The Long Room. When we visited it back in 2012 it was full to bursting with books, being the college’s original library. While they had certainly expanded into a larger and more modern building, the Long Room continued to house older books of interest. Now, however, it was undergoing a massive renovation to catch up with current standards for preservation (humidity and temperature control for example.) The room no longer held any books at all and was mostly a historical curiosity as far as visitors were concerned. However, they had decided to make good use of the space by displaying the planet, in its entirety. Entitled “Gaia” by artist Luke Jerram, with the magic of modern tech it manages to project an accurate scale image of planet Earth onto a giant sphere; the image moves to give the illusion of the sphere rotating albeit faster than 1 revolution per 24 hours. It is a truly spectacular object to spend time with, and the frission of such a modern piece of art to be hanging in a 300+ year old library that smells of old wood and leather. Honestly we’d have bought a ticket if “Gaia” was the only thing we’d get to see.

The end of this trip is logistically the beginning. As I think has been discussed, the reason we hit the road in the first place was to end up in Dublin around this time; everything else we did was backtracked from here. So, we’ve seen the Giant’s Causeway (which neither under- nor over-whelmed us) and we’ve toodled all over the Isle of Man (which was pretty good at whelming, all things considered). On a crisp morning, eaaaaarly for a vacation, we returned our car and boarded the packet steamer for a 3-ish hour sail to Dublin, Ireland.

Arriving in new cities in the morning can be tricky. If you’re carting luggage, you’re rolling the dice that your lodging will hold it for you even though your room probably isn’t available yet – although, true, most decent hotels don’t have a problem with this, gods know short-term rentals are a crapshoot. Even if you drop your bags, the time gap between then and check-in can feel daunting to utilize, especially if you’re at the end of a long journey. Fortunately for us it was a quickie this time; unfortunately there was a huge football match going on in Dublin and you couldn’t hire a cab or a rideshare for love nor money. So, the two of us and about sixty Manx schoolkids on a field trip piled into one bus and trundled into the heart of Dublin. (And here’s a pro-tip: Dublin is the first city in Europe we’ve been in for quite some time that was cash only on its public transit. The harried driver waved us through, but we were moments away from being completely screwed.) Once we reset ourselves, we made straight for a place held dear in our hearts: Trinity College of Dublin.

Trinity College is one of the first places we visited on our honeymoon back in 2012, and it has lost none of its charm. We didn’t go on a tour of the whole campus this time, though; we were there to see the revamped presentation of the Book of Kells. Since we were last there, they’ve erected an elaborate entrance with numerous displays about the history and significance of the Book, which is nice since, when you actually get to see the book, it can be underwhelming. After all, for the sake of preservation they only display one open page, it’s under serious glass, and no pictures are allowed. Completely understandable precautions, but that still doesn’t make for the most enthralling exhibition. Fortunately, before and after the actual display space are just chock-a-block with less precious but still interesting artifacts as well as a detailed lineage explaining why we even care about this particular book. After the Book of Kells display you actually navigate across the campus to an entirely new structure that has been erected, with further displays including an “immersive experience” that plays out much like the currently popular “living Monet/Van Gogh/etc etc…” exhibitions across the world. And, of course, there’s a gift shop.

Popping out from Trinity College we made our way back to our hotel for a pit stop, then it was a quick jaunt to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. This was on the recommendation of family, and it was a fairly up-and-down experience. On the one hand, it’s a beautiful building owing to a steady influx of tourist income. On the other hand, the steady influx of tourist income stems from the fact that the place is like Disney Catholicland. Seriously, there’s a pop-up gift shop inside the sanctuary. I’m not Catholic and I still had my nose fairly bent out of shape. Still, if you want to tick the box on iconic locations in the city, it’s worth a quick visit. After a low-key dinner we tucked ourselves in for the night, ready for our flight home the next day.

Ok ok, so we made it on to the Isle of Man, it’s a quirky little trip we took, great – what exactly does one do when you’re visiting? The most / only famous thing that goes on is the “T.T.”, which they locally say means “Tourist Trophy” but apparently is a general abbreviation for “time trial” in motorcycle racing. Thanks to the beautiful scenery, the legal gray area that envelops the country, and a culture of no speed limits whatsoever, it has become a very popular stop on the motorcycle racing circuit. Popular, and deadly. The Wikipedia page for fatalities on the Isle of Man Mountain Course has 270 entries, for a race that’s been running for a little more than a hundred years. It’s not just entries from antiquity, either; there were 3 deaths in 2023 while 2024 had a single fatality. My brief perusal didn’t see many years that had none. Even when the race isn’t going on, you still see signs of the race. We know this, because we were nowhere near the time of the T.T. and we still saw plenty of barriers and signage.

Hang on, John; you weren’t there for the race so what did you do? It was a trip that didn’t look that much different from our other trips to the U.K., which I mean in a good way. We saw ancient sites and natural beauty and, occassionally, poked around town to see what was what. On the north end of the island we visited Maughold Church, which is a nice enough old chapel but, more interestingly, it houses a collection of tombstones within its graveyard that date back a thousand years and more, illuminating early “viking” influences on the island. (We’re not doing the “who is or isn’t a viking” debate on the Ramble; they’ve got Christian-looking gravestones with stories about Loki on them, that’s good enough for us.) Almost two dozen headstones were gathered under an awning, not-exactly preserved but at least kept out of the worst of the elements. Signs explained with brief summaries of what you might be able to pick out of the carvings if you looked closely enough.

We also toodled to one of our classic out-of-the-way spots where the road ends up barely one lane with no visibility around hairpin turns, tucked in amongst the rolling hills. In this case it was a double-dip of ancient and (relatively) modern attractions. First, the Ballafayle Cairn which was a nice specimen of its type. Granted like almost all of them it had long since been de-nuded, but the sense of scale was still lovely to see, and seeing it set high on the hillside, with views (on a clear day at least) of land in four different directions helps explain why it was probably a chosen site in the first place. That scenery also explains why there were two different viewpoints, named after residents of the island who would come and take stock of the world down through the years. The more prominent was “Charlie’s View”. Charlie being a landowner and a “Sir” of some sort or another, his memorial viewpoint sees regular upkeep, plus there’s statuary and a lovely little weather-break for hanging out there on a windy day (of which there are probably plenty).

And then there were the Bee Gees. (Sorry, the what now?) You heard me, the Bee Gees. Apparently the famously-Australian musical brothers were in fact not-so-famously Manx-born before the family crossed the equator at some point. We had no idea of this bit of trivia before we arrived, but as we walked along the promenade in Douglas one afternoon Lisa squints into the distance for a moment before asking “is that the Bee Gees??” The statue she was looking at was probably a hundred feet away, and facing away from us to boot, but it was hard to imagine who else it could possibly be. If you are familiar with the Bee Gees tune “Ellan Vannin” (for which you’d admittedly have to be a pretty big fan), you might like to know that it is based off a poem of “traditional” origin on the Isle of Man. Still, if you aren’t expecting the Bee Gees, and are suddenly faced with a life-sized, life-like bronze representation of them, it’s startling.

Hopefully the chill vibe of this post is coming across, because our time on the Isle of Man was indeed a chill time. Not in a boring way, but a truly relaxing one. We ate well, if not spectacularly. We touristed well, if not breathtakingly. We relaxed, enjoyed the cool weather, and generally idled in a pleasant state. On our final morning we rose early, dropped our car at the ferry terminal, and prepared to make our way to Dublin.

Lisa often plans our trips. (This is all me this time, my bride is “on assignment”…) She’s great at it, and she likes doing it. There are specific moments in the planning process that I play a key role in, but she has said for years that in another life she would have been a travel agent, so mostly I stay out of her way. That said, who doesn’t like taking a break once in a while. So, this whole trip was my baby, soup to nuts. Flights, lodging, restaurants, I took all of it off her plate. (I am not trying to play the hero here; if you know me well this should sound more ominous than heroic.) I learned everything from her so really there isn’t a lot of difference in me doing. Excceeeepppt, I am unhealthily attracted to the corners of maps. There are a couple of spots I’ve had my eye on for years, and this trip was an ideal opportunity to check out the Isle of Man.

Granted, the “ideal opportunity” still involved some careful timing of multiple ferries and three different cities; when you’re dealing with micro-nations you have to grade on a curve, ok? Still, the pieces of the trip were dovetailing nicely. We landed in Dublin like we said last time, and took a bus to Belfast. Next we’d be taking the “Isle of Man Steam Packet” to Douglas on the Isle of Man and then ending up on another… er… steam packet?… to Dublin. What is a steam packet, you ask? Well, it goes back to the 16th century and… whatever, it’s an antiquated term for the ships that brought mail and stuff to the island, and now it’s your typical ferry for cars and people. The trip takes 2-3 hours depending on which leg you’re talking about; there are also flights but at least one member of my family doesn’t care for really small airplanes. So, what’s the deal with the Isle of Man? What’s the attraction?

My dirty secret is that I knew very little about the place before we made our plans to go. I first poked around it years ago along with places like Inishmore and Islay (both small islands although not nations). What I knew back then was that it had a scattering of the old megalithic sites we enjoy visiting, aaaaannd they speak English. However, by the time I was actually setting this trip up I knew that the weather was that same crisp, cool weather as the rest of the British Isles, the terrain looked absolutely beautiful, and there were just enough historical curiosities to keep us interested if we end up feeling tourist-y. Plus, there’s the curiosity of the “nation” of the Isle of Man. Even more than Ireland or Scotland, Isle of Man exists in a liminal state, with its own governing body and kinda-sorta self rule, but they use the pound as their currency and still kind of “collective bargain” with Great Britain, e.g. they also are not part of the European Union. They have leveraged their strange legal existance to become a tax haven, not that this pays off for the average tourist.

We arrived in the capital town of Douglas, picked up our rental car, and headed for Port St. Mary on the southern end of the island. We were booked into a charming bed & breakfast, Carrick Rooms, which was honestly one of the nicer places we’ve stayed in quite awhile. Charming hosts, a comfortable room, and centrally located in walking distance to dining and transport. We didn’t use the car at all on at least one of our days. Instead, we checked off an extra bucket list item thanks to a famous literary inspiration – a genuine steam engine. Tell you all about it…. shortly.

Rome puns! Who doesn’t love ’em? Anyway… by this point in the trip, I had my sea legs under me so I was ready to get out and about. Which was fortunate, because the whole point of the trip was coming up on the agenda. A Caravaggio exhibition is a tricky thing, it turns out. Between the muddy authenticity of some of his signature works and a PR machine that has been working steadily since the artist was first brought to prominence (which is not to say ‘discovered’, merely touted) by Roberto Longhi in the early 20th century, making sure that Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio remains installed amongst the artistic firmament, getting a grip on what exactly is going on with the artist can be tricky. After all, I’m no art historian; I’m a passionate amateur who has the dumb f#*@ luck to be indulging an art education with a so-far-endless series of A+++ field trips. So, ok amateur, what did you get out of your latest expedition?

There’s two ways to look at this, and I tend to prefer the second. The first, for completion’s sake, is that the exhibition is somewhat overblown. The exhibition contains 25 works ascribed to Caravaggio from all over Europe… but 25 is also the number of Caravaggio’s paintings that are permanently on exhibition in Rome. Not the same 25, but still… it is not an exhaustive undertaking. Compare it, for example, to the Donatello exhibition Lisa and I went to in Florence a number of years ago – that one took up two separate museums that worked together to curate the thing. This was four modest rooms. Then there was the thematic break-up of the rooms, which seemed a bit helter skelter. “Making a Name in Rome” seemed to set us on a historical look at his work, but then you had “the sacred and the tragic” for themes and “invigorating the darker shades” to highlight the techniques he is most admired for. All fine, but scattershot. Not that I’m an expert, but I will say that Lisa and I have been around the block enough times that we have actually had long discussions about the curation of some exhibitions we’ve been to. I’ve got some chops, at least. So, yes, there’s a case to be made that museums gonna museum, magnets aren’t going to sell themselves, and maybe this isn’t quite the generation-defining show that they want you to think it is.

The other way of looking at it, though, goes something like this: relax. It’s four rooms full of some truly amazing work. You had to go to Rome to see it. This is not a bad way to spend your time. So yeah, take it easy and enjoy yourself. And the truth is I did enjoy it. Experience-r of field trips or not, I hadn’t seen a lot of these paintings, and certainly not in the context they were in, placed next to each other as they were.

Of particular interest was one of the most iconic “Judiths” we’ve ever seen (although I had seen this one before, who cares?). We’ve talked about this before, but in brief: the biblical story of Judith and Holofernes has been the subject of numerous works of art through the years; given its position in the Bible, it has been “allowed” by most regimes and patrons, but it provides artists a pretty wide-open opportunity. Do you feature the demure wife taking on a burdensome task? Do you minimize the murder as almost besides the point? Or, as some artists have certainly done, do you take this as a chance to depict a woman exerting her power fully in a way they rarely ever get to do? Those are the best ones, including Caravaggio’s. And yes, I even bought the magnet.

The exhibiton happily consumed, I spent the rest of the day wandering my neighborhood which, as we were adjacent to the old Borghese estate, was not a bad place to kill an afternoon. I even made it over to the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, which is fairly modest as far as state-owned art galleries go, as they forsook a dialog between the artists of Europe to instead focus on Italian artists. Totally fine, obviously, and I was in Italy, but if you scratch your memory you’ll probably come up short on a lot of notable Italian artists who participated in, for example, the Impressionist movement. This is not an error of omission. (Ahem.) Not that everything in there was bland or anything, far from it.

Heat, art, and Italian food, not actually that bad a combination really. You will not be surprised to hear, however, that I was quite ready to return home to my bride after all of this, and so I did.

A man alone in the city of Rome… summertime, when men and women dress for comfort rather than modesty. Yes, a fella could get up to a lot of hijinks if we were disposed to doing so. On the other hand, a fella might just be disposed to hiding in his air conditioned lodging and watch movies for a couple of days when he’s all by himself, in his 50s, and it’s hot as hell outside. So, with an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other… actually that sounds like two devils; typical… anyway, with two whispering critters on my shoulders, what exactly did I get up to in The Eternal City? What wonders of the ancient world did I partake of? What fabulous adventure could possibly roust me from the coolth of steady air conditioning?? You guessed it!

Hop-on, Hop-off.

I know I/we are a broken record at this point, but we are total converts to the hopping way of life. If you’re on a mission or tourism they serendipitously go exactly where you want to go. There are several different lines of these buses in Rome; I went with Green Line Tours but I’m no expert as to which are better or worse. Green Line did just fine for me, but honestly it looked like most of the stops I saw had signs indicating that several different companies stop in identical locations. Thanks to our perfectly located accommodation (good job, sweetie!) I had about a 4-minute walk to the piazza, then on to the bus and into the center of the city.

However, before you roll your eyes at John and another one of his all-bus-all-the-time posts, stay your fury! This time, I was using the HOHO as actual public transportation. After riding for a half hour or so I scooted back on to the pavements for my key destination of the day – the Capitoline Museums. I’ve been to them before but it’s been quite awhile and the place is just stuffed. Even on a second visit I’d likely see things I missed the first time (or, to be perfectly honest, forgot I saw it) and some things are worth a second look anyway, right? Especially baby Hercules. This unforgettable piece of work (on display to the left) seems to be an artist’s attempt to reconcile two different inspirations – one, that Hercules is reputed to have displayed feats of great strength when he was just a baby. And two, shouldn’t a strong person look like a big strong man? Thus the compromise: a full grown, somewhat muscular man who has been mushed together with, you know, a baby. It is unsettling, but in a way that I can’t look away when I’m anywhere near it. And to paraphrase my sister, if I have to look at it, you have to look at it.

Behold!

The strange thing is that it is a total outlier. Baby Hercules is the only “oddity” like this in the place. It is otherwise a trove of art collected by the leading lights of Rome for nearly six hundred years, starting out with a gift from Pope Sixtus IV. He wasn’t the last. The ways of the rich and powerful are inscrutable, but on an irregular schedule over the centuries a pope or other richie rich type would drop off some portion of their accumulated wealth; I’m not Catholic but I have my suspicions. In any case, that much wealth sluicing through over that much time is going to yield a heck of a museum.

After a lovely few hours tromping through the Museums I pondered getting a meal, but there are bizarrely few dining options a quick hop from the museum, and I didn’t feel like longish walk in the heat, so instead I took my trusty HOHO back to my neighborhood for a nice spot I’d spotted right around the corner from home. Ristorante Rossini doesn’t seem to have much of a web presence, although it does seem to be attached to Albergo Ottocento hotel. The restaurant had a whole submenu featuring truffles – in the risotto, in the salad, on your steak… many styles. I went for a salad (a promise to wife to not eat *only* meat and pasta on the trip) and then the truffle-sauced beef tenderloin, because who doesn’t try that once? It was one of the best pieces of beef I have ever had.

One day down, I’m feeling righteous about not just being a lump, and the next day brings the whole reason for the trip – Senor Caravaggio.

If you want to hear God laugh, tell him your plans. That’s what they say, right? (Don’t look it up, it’s a simultaneously deep and boring rabbit hole.) My darling bride once again hit my birthday out of the park, setting up not one but two quick getaways to places she knew I was really interested in. The first bit had been our trip to Évora, which you may already have read about. The second part was a real doozy. She’d heard me exclaim excitedly over an exhibition taking place in Rome this year; a gathering of Caravaggio masterworks from all over, congregating in the Palazzo Barberini for four months this spring and summer. Well, my bride isn’t one for idle dreams – goals and plans are more her speed. And so, along with a card announcing our Évora trip was another card explaining that we had three-ish days in Rome plotted out, with flights and lodging already sorted along with tickets to the exhibition. All that being said, do you remember how this paragraph started?

A couple of days before we were scheduled to depart, Lisa threw her back out. Nothing life-altering, but for the immediate future she would be in serious pain. Worse, the activities facing us would be exactly the sorts of things that would exacerbate the ouch – a Ryanair flight, public transit, an unfamiliar bed, and (if we were actually going to make it worth going) a fair amount of walking. It just didn’t sound feasible. It was a disappointment, sure, but life is pretty good here so if I just don’t get to Rome this time it isn’t that big of a –

“Why wouldn’t you go?” She asked. I have to admit I was surprised by the question. I wouldn’t go so far as to say we’re co-dependent, we do plenty of stuff on our own, but anything like this? This is a two-person venture if I’ve ever seen one, and Lisa and I are the two persons! She wasn’t kidding, though. The Caravggio adventure was my birthday present and she’d be darned if I didn’t get to see it just because she was incapacitated. It took me a pretty long time to get my head around it, but fundamentally there wasn’t any reason I couldn’t go. Sooooooo ok, I guess I’m going to Rome!

The trip itself was, if nothing else, confirmation that we’d made the right decision on Lisa staying home. Our Ryanair experiences haven’t been all bad whatever their reputation is, but this one was a humdinger, complete with standing-room-only holding pens where we stewed for an extra 45 minutes and a plane the image of which is printed next to “dilapidated” in Webster’s. It would have been an ordeal for somebody with severe back pain; I was fundamentally sound and I still came out of it with a limp. (I kid. Kind of.) So, what does a guy on his own do in Rome? Well for starters he goes the wrong direction on the metro and show up to his lodging at the crack of sleepy. I do like to keep myself on my toes. Still, the place was nice and comfortable and the bed served its purpose well.

Rome on my own awaited.

We love living in Portugal; we really, really do. One thing we’re still getting used to is just how blasted hot it can get. (Yes, yes, people from Texas, it’s not as bad as the worst place on Earth…) We chose the north of Portugal for a reason. And yet, the alure of Évora and similar attractions draws us south every now and again for the cultural enrichment and, apparently, for the lovely crisp that we achieve under the broiler. Anyway. On our last full day we have a plan to catch whatever we missed on the first two days. We actually caught everything we wanted to see in the city environs, so we had another jaunt into the countryside on tap.

Our early morning plan had been a rousing (a ha ha ha… ahem) success so the alarm was once again set for 6:30 in the morning. Ah, vacation. Still, we were fed and showered and out the door while temps were barely in the 70s; sold! Our first location was to recover an aborted attempt to see the Almendres Cromlech. I kinda breezed past the difficulties on day 1. The drive to the Almendres Cromlech ended with 2km or so of a truly terrible dirt road. Clearly subject to wash outs and with no municipality much interested in keeping it up (it leads to exactly one place with no commercial purpose), we ended driving slower and slower to survive the potholes and crevices, eventually moving slow enough that bicycles might have been faster. To top it off, we reached a point where a barrier had been erected indicating that the road ahead was worse. We were once sent into gales of hysterical laughter (emphasis on hysteria) on a winding road in Ireland that had been turning my hair gray at a record pace when we suddenly encountered a sign warning “curves ahead”; how much worse was it about to be??? This sign was the same thing. We had no idea how close we were to the cromlech, and the heat had reached the 90s at that point, so we punted.

Well, the road wasn’t any better this time, but when we reached that barrier it was still only like 7:30 and the weather was warm-ing but still comfy. We pulled off to the side and started walking a gradually ascending path with intermittent shade. It was probably another km+, which definitely would have stunk to pull off two days earlier in sweltering heat. This day, it actually was a pleasant, almost romantic stroll. Cork trees on either side of the path and occasional clusters of grazing livestock, birdsong, wildflowers… it was nice. It also put us in a more contemplative state of mind, perfect for what we arrived to.

The Almendres Cromlech is hard to capture in a single photo, at least without a drone. It’s 90+ stones set into two circles (plus odd clusters), arranged on a hillside slope. Archaeologists have been able (don’t ask me how) to determine that the two circles were very precisely arranged, although over the thousands of years they’ve drifted into a more scattered appearance, although still incredibly impressive. And, like most of these sites we’ve ever visited, it aligned to the sun’s path at the solstice. Given that we were there in early June it was a pretty good time to see this “in action.”

The ringed path you see marked out around the perimeter is part of an interesting conservation project. Apparently the frequent visitors through the years who tromped all throughout the rings actually killed off the grass and flowers and such within the area, plant life that was apparently keeping the soil in place. Losing the vegetation increased the washed away soil, meaning the stones were increasing danger of falling over. So, appropriate plants were seeded all throughout the space and signs and light barriers put in place encouraging visitors to keep to the outside path. Fair enough; you can still get a good look at everything.

Another site we visited that absolutely got up my nose was the Dolmen-Chapel of São Brissos, so called because Christians in the area however long ago took an ancient dolmen site (most likely a tomb), and encased it in plaster and made it a chapel. Take a look and you’ll start to see where the completely intact dolmen has been… appropriated.

With a morning of driving and exploration behind us we retreated back to our home base for another arduous day of… let me check my notes… splashing in a pool and laying in the shade reading. I mean, it was a vacation, right? That was it for our trip and quite a success it was. The next morning we just hit the road for home. We like these short trips to new places when we can manage them – if it doesn’t really enchant us, well, we can catch the highlights and be done with it. If we love it, we can always come back. Évora definitely made the cut for a return visit, albeit (hopefully) in the early Spring or late Fall, when we’re less likely to melt.

On our first day in the environs of Évora we were hitting up ancient stone arrangements that were by and large out in the middle of nowhere. We still had more sites that we wanted to see, but to make sure that we didn’t run out of gas before checking off some key items we decided to focus our second day of tourism on the city itself. We’d save anything that we missed from either day as a good third day for the trip and this way minimize the chance that we’d miss out on “can’t miss” attractions. “Hey guys, you were in Évora, how did you like the chapel of bones?” “Oh, um, we didn’t make it?” That’s never a fun conversation. The heat was going to stay in the high-90s for our entire visit so there was never any serious thought to skipping the day and staying in the shade – might as well have stayed home at that point. Instead, we were up early, again (ugh), and into town.

John, did you just say “chapel of bones?” Why yes, yes I did! One of the most-remarked sights to see in all of Évora is the “Capela dos Ossos” – literally “Chapel of Bones”. Said chapel is lined with human bones, the remains of people who by and large had hoped for just this honor. Seriously, it was mostly the Franciscan monks who had dibs and anyone else in town had to play their cards just right in order to spend eternity stacked up like cordwood. I may kid, but they were (ahem) deadly serious about this stuff abck in the day; it was a tremendous honor to be so interred.

Well, it was an honor except for two people, whose mummified remains are still on display to this day. As the story goes, a man and his son treated their wife/mother quite badly for years. The mother cursed them both on her death bed, saying more-or-less that y’all will neither touch sky nor earth, reaching neither heaven nor hell. Now, why this lady’s curse carried any weight with the monks we do not know, but carry weight it did, and for hundreds of years the increasingly mummified bodies of father and son were kept suspended in the chapel. They only took them down in 2021!! And even still, to this day, they are displayed in glass cases, still not being interred. We can only hope to achieve such aggrieved cursing someday.

Another key location is the “Temple of Diana”, although as Roman ruins go it’s only exciting if you’re grading on a bit of a curve. (Yes, we are incredibly aware of what a privileged life we’re leading that we can stack rank ancient Roman ruins. Nevertheless, once you’ve been to Paestum it’s not going to stun you into insensibility merely to encounter a few upright columns.) Plus, it turns out that nobody really called it “that “the Temple of Diana” until a 17^th century monk made up a legend whole cloth and it took hold. The site was actually dedicated to the cult of Augustus around the 1^st century CE. Still, it’s neat to see something like that standing in the middle of the town square in southern Portugal.

There were numerous smaller pleasures, including the aqueduct that runs into the city which we also encountered miles away the day before. Speaking only for myself, it’s one thing to understand what aqueducts are in an academic sense and entirely another to realize just what a massive undertaking they were. Thousands of years ago they were building miles and miles of arching stone paths, straight as an arrow, to bring water to where they wanted it. (The featured map at the top of this post is a section of the aqueduct running through the surrounding fields.) And to top it off the center of town, the “old city” as it were, is surrounded by thirty-foot-high stone walls that are in magnificent shape, whether through rugged longevity or careful maintenance I cannot say. It was a great, hot, day, with more still to come.