To our American readers (and maybe those from other places, but I can’t make informed analogies for y’all): you know how there will be two small towns that perceive themselves to be blood rivals, when from any reasonable zoomed-out observation they seem absolutely identical? Their football games are the rowdiest of the year, heck even the debate teams get pretty heated if they meet up. (Many of you have already had a pair of town names pop in to your minds. I go with “Valdosta” and “Tifton” personally.) These towns have similar populations, chief industries, distribution of churches, demographics etc.. but significant numbers of their citizens will spit and make the sign of the evil eye (or whatever) if you mention this blood rival in their presence. It’s quaint, charming, or exasperating depending on how much you have to deal with it. Almost worse, not everybody is on board with this border war mentality, so you can find yourself perpetually off-balance when the subject comes up with a stranger, not sure what camp they fall into.

I brought that up for no particular reason. Anyway, let’s talk about our visit to Guimarães.

Yes, yes, astute readers can see between the lines and realize that I’m talking about Guimarães and Braga; well done you. We hired a young man to mow our grass (for I am old and feeble now and can’t be arsed to do yard work) and the first thing he said to me was “I’m from Guimarães. You know about the rivalry, yes?” He was not picking a fight; he was a very pleasant fellow but he thought that if I was a long-time Braga native that I might be upset to discover he had hidden(!?) his Guimarães-y background. And I was reminded of this when we checked into our accommodation (holy #*&(@# he got to the point?? We had lost hope.) in the pousada in Guimarães, a converted monastery turned hotel when the nice young lady at the front desk, having heard us say that we were from Braga, brought up the rivalry but then took pains to explain how we all need to get along, it’s modern times etc… So, that was an interesting start to our trip.

It got even more interesting when we walked to our room. And walked. And walked. Seriously, when I say the place is a refurbished monastery I mean it’s a giant old almost-castle with high, high ceilings and a monumental sense of scale. You know, just in case you were harboring doubts about the misuse of parishioners’ donations back in the day. In any case, it was both a fascinating and a comfortable place to rest our heads for a couple of days.

Alas, our time in Guimarães wasn’t quite what we thought it would be, because the weather turned against us. Granted, it’s still winter and the weather was what you might call “normal”, but it’s been such a sunny and warm couple of months by and large, we allowed ourselves to plan around it. So thank goodness the hotel itself was pretty neat, because it was a lot of our next couple days.

We did get to spend a fair amount of time in downtown Guimarães, which only reinforced my “two identical, bitter rivals” theory. It was different from Braga, for sure, but baaaassically it was the same. Beautifully manicured flower beds, pedestrian-only area with typical shops and an over-abundance of cafes and restaurants. (Speaking of which, thoughts on our meals in Guimarães can be found at… that’s right! Our facebook page.) Our time in Guimarães was quiet and restful, and the pousada was practiced in old-school service and hospitality; things like staff knowing our room number automatically after the first day, or offering extra services unprompted and unasked for. We’re kind of typical “oh please, don’t go to trouble on our account” types, but we couldn’t even refuse things like an extra-late turndown service because they just did it without us asking.

This may sound a little dull, but we like our quiet time. We played cribbage in the bar. We strolled. We read. As a celebration of our relationship, it was pretty spot on, actually. Thus recognized, we packed ourselves back up and made for home. And now we have some “normal” time until the end of the month when we have (*cue ominous music*) our SEF appointments. Stay tuned.

Some couples have very simple commemorations, and others are elaborate. I don’t know what the mean number of “special days” is for married people, but we have a few. We can’t put an exact date on when we met, or first corresponded, or a bunch of other firsts, but we’ve got a pretty clear idea of when the relationship per se kicked off. In honor of the 19th of these anniversaries to come around, we decided to rent a car and see something of Portugal other than Braga. Yes, after 3 months (and not counting trips to and from airports) we’re finally starting to expand our horizons within the country we live in. The first week of March has us in Viana do Castelo followed by Guimarães. (oooo fancy accents, they’ve gone native.) Let us begin in … *checks internet* … (really? siiiigh ok…) Viana of the Castle. The translation may be underwhelming but the place wasn’t.

John picked up our rental car on Wednesday morning. He hadn’t even thought about it, but this was in fact the first time either of us had driven a car in Portugal. While this made him momentarily nervous, the truth is that driving in Portugal is pretty simple. Like all of Europe except the UK, they drive on the right and the steering wheel is on the left. The main and secondary roads are in nice shape, with nice wide lanes and comprehensive pavement markings; this puts them close to the top of the list of countries we’ve driven in so far. Now, once you start driving in the towns and villages you’re as likely to end up on lanes that are one car wide regardless of how many directions traffic ostensibly flows, but that’s Europe for you. They are a lot less willing to knock down somebody’s house in the name of progress, so the horse path from the 1800s that the houses were built along is still the only real estate you get for driving a car. (And here’s some of our very infrequent travel advice: rent the smallest car you can comfortably you and your luggage into, you will inevitably encounter some tight spaces. We’ll tell more stories, but that’s for another time.) Anyway, it wasn’t long before the driving stopped being an active concern; we were back in the saddle.

We hit the road for Viana do Castelo. We kept to the most direct route on good roads, which meant the drive was a little more than an hour. Our actual destination was a pousada at the top of a hill, next to a Catholic sanctuary(? more on this later). Hang on, you say, what the heck is a pousada? Excellent question. A pousada is Portugal-specific term for an historical institution, such as a castle or monastery, that has been converted into an accommodation. Reports differ on whether these are government-owned or if there are simply arrangements with the government that allow such historical sites to be commercialized. In any case, this particular example is lovely, although as a restoration of an iconic, older hotel it may be the least radical. The rooms are comfortable and the views are, as promised, fantastic. Viana do Castelo is where the river Lima meets the Atlantic Ocean, so it has a dynamic coastline. We spent a couple of evenings hanging out in the enormous bar area, not our usual habit to say the least, just so we could enjoy the views out of the giant windows there.

We spent a nice morning the next day at the AXIS wellness spa; it was lovely but also a little janky. This is where partial language barriers can cause problems. Our meager Portuguese and the providers’ better-but-not-great English meant that we couldn’t sort out a few things, and we were delivered into the place by somehow bypassing the typical ditch-your-clothes-and-grab-your-robes dance, which the providers didn’t know what to do with. Also, the “hydrotherapy” turned out to be sharing an olympic pool with a couple of aquarobics classes going on, which made it not nearly so appealing. Still, getting rubbed by professionals (you’re welcome) is almost always a treat, and we left there feeling refreshed. We poked around Viana do Castelo a little more, mostly to determine that, yes, we needed to come back so we could devote more time to the place. We did have two meals on this leg of the trip that ranged from really really good to f#(*&@ fantastic; naturally you can read about these over on the ole Facebook page.

On our way out of town we made time to see the Cidade Velha, or “old city”. This is where there are quaint shops and houses from the 1700s or so, right? Well, no. Try a run from ~500 BCE through the end of the Roman era. It was great; it was also unremarked upon by any guide we’d seen or the hotel itself (you can see the site from the hotel’s pool, as in you can jump the fence and be on the grounds(!)). If we didn’t have our passionate-amateur level of understanding of these kinds of places we probably wouldn’t have known it was there, but the stone walls we saw behind a fence on the way to the pousada were suspicious, and the catwalks we saw a moment later were a dead giveaway. We passed through two trailer-sized buildings with a little gate between them; it seemed deserted so we slipped in. One glance told us the place was going to be amazing; sometimes these sites are a couple of stone circles and a lot of signage trying to pump you up about them. This site has a couple dozen home remnants, plus fortifications and a Roman-era garrison.

As we start to walk up the gangway, a woman comes rushing out from one of the buildings while waving at us. Long story short, there is in fact an admission fee of 2 euros. We offer to go back to our car and get our wallets, but when she realizes this hassle level she tells us not to worry and we can take care of it on the way out. Great. So we spend a lovely hour or so just meandering through the site, chatting about our best guesses for a whole bunch of things. (There’s not much point to a blow-by-blow account, one can only describe circles of rocks so many different ways before the interest runs dry.) On our way out we grab some cash and head back in to pay, and that’s when the visit was kicked up a notch. We more than half-suspected that anyone willing to work such a remote outpost on a Friday morning was really into their job. We had a great 15 minute conversation where she explained some things to us, utilizing hasty sketches on the back of receipts when our mutual pidgin talk failed us. She actually smiled shyly when she explained that one of the two sheep that are kept on-site to keep the grass cropped is actually named after her. (Awwwwwww!) We left both educated and elated. With that, we hopped in to our car and drove down the hill. Next stop, Guimarães.