Elvas, Portalegre District, PortugalELVAS
A long drive interrupted by an accident
Did I mention that we bought fried egg flavoured chips? We saw them in the store and were curious – I mean they literally taste like fried eggs!!! As it is lunchtime and we are in the car we have some fried egg chips and sweet potato chips with water as we first drive for a while on the Autobahn: which is by the way super empty – like there is no one around. Once in a while we pass a sign indicating how many cents we have to pay for the highway – we have that built in “meter” so it will be interesting on how much we will get charged later. I also found it interesting that on the signs some of the towns were in brackets – why????
Our dessert snack was a “Regina” a mini chocolate bar with pineapple taste (it was not cheap – but then it is named after me).
Continuing on, we went along a smaller road and still every little town we drive through is like dead – no people no cars…. Guess we are not in a main tourist area.
Then there was a stop by the Police and he said: the road is closed because of an accident we should turn left and in 3 km is another turn off. Thanks to Google map Gine found the road (or thought she did), as we drive through the dead town, there is the turn off and we are the only ones on the road – as we wonder if we are wrong the turn off to the highway came: ok we discovered, why we were the only ones: because the accident was ahead off us and all the trucks were lined up, but we saw them running to there trucks as the road got open as we arrived. Looks like 2 cars collied head-to head. We came by an old bridge, a nuclear power plant
And then we finally can see the white houses of Elvas – our final goal for today. And the best: we drove underneath the famous Aqueduct.
Our 4-star hotel: San Joao Deus
Not everything is at it should be: google said right and you arrived: we are on a parking lot outside the wall – we turn around and through the wall and next turn and see there a parking lot right in front of the hotel – we are right at the old town. They have their own parking outside of the wall – but you can enter via a gate and the garden – perfect. Our room is huge but then we are in a thousand year old building – at some time it was a monastery (I think our bathroom was a whole monk cell at a time). We decided it’s time for coffee!!
A walk around the old town of Elvas
Up the little street and see there is a small square: it actually looks like most is closed and not a lot of people around here either. We have a cup of coffee which perks us up, so we are ready to walk again for a while. From one square to the next and we end up at the main town square: easy to see with the love Elvas sign – Gine goes in the Tourist info and gets some info and then we start walking – ok in the end we didn’t walk what we planned – but then everything is very confusing – but we walked by a few churches, through an old archway which was part of the first Islamic wall, we had some cool viewpoints to see the fort da Graca, the gigantic wall and the country side, we walked up and down cobble stone streets, walked a lot of narrow alleys, had dogs barking at us: I guess they didn’t want us to take their picture and complained. One church which was originally a church had Islamic style doors. We also saw the pillory of the town. We walked through the old gate of the 8th century (Arch of Miradeiro) – it was made by the moors of stones from the romans. We kind of walked on the wall and had to go down and came to a dead end as it was part of the military museum and closed, so we followed the road and saw the tanks in the wall mould then along the wall until we came to the “tunnel” to our hotel. And we did walk a whole lot.
Did I mention here also all the houses are in white mostly with a yellow trim!
The town with the walls in Alentejo
- the area we are in is called Alentejo which means alem = beyond the Tejo (Taurus river)
- the Alans were a nomadic Iranian speaking Sarmatian tribe that settled here during the roman Empire
- the city is like a fortress with 3 walls: the oldest from the Muslims, then a 2nd one and the gigantic outer wall
Eating with & like the locals
After nearly 2 hours of walking (more than Paul bargained for) we were tired… and we decided for a nice dinner out, but then one restaurant only opens at 7.30 (What!!!! – we normally eat at 6, who eats that late!!!) –Paul found a cute local one only up the road perfect!!
Before eating, Gine did a quick checking of our hotel, when you go out on the veranda you walk on the old wall and there is so much to see and discover – the views from the little gate houses on the town, the fort and the wall – the murals…. This is one cool place – it is really more than a hotel it is history and wall exploration.
In the restaurant it was not that simple, as Gine’s Portuguese is not that fluent and he only spoke Spanish and Portuguese. Ok we did understand he only has Menu’s and you can’t share – but you get bread, olives, a drink, the meal and desert as well as coffee – it was funny because first he came with a small menu and pointed 4 meals out then he brought in the big one from outside and we got it. Once the main meal got served we each got a plate with French fries and rice with beans – where is the chicken??? and another plate came with a lot of chicken more than we can eat. Later we got 3 different deserts whatever they were, this was for sure something local!!!! And we were full.
Back in our cute room – Gine checked out the big jacuzzi tub and Paul relaxed with a movie. and yes we did had to check out the hotel veranda at night because everything is so beautiful when it’s lit up.
We had another busy day behind us – that is what we call Vacation – correct!!
Ants with early coffee
Once we got up Gine got some coffee from the breakfast area – so we had a relaxing start to the day, this is when we discovered that we had ants crawling around – I guess that happens when you are in a thousand year old building…. And leave some bread crumbs out for them to come out.
After having a nice breakfast buffet with sneaking out some desert for tonight, Gine had to have a quick walk again on the beautiful Veranda. Today it did not rain, but we had that orange-red haze everywhere, also once we came to our car we discovered that the car was also covered in that red dust.
Aqueduct do Amoreira
Yesterday we drove through it, today we wanted to stop for having a closer lock, it is really huge – and it goes on forever, there is even a kind of cool corner in it – Pauls biggest question was: when they discovered they are low on water and it takes them 93 years to built, what did they do in between????? Here we saw also the first Almond trees coming out into bloom: which is super beautiful =
- There was a well from the Moorish era which was drying up and they were low on water, that is when they decided to built the 8 km long Aqueducto from Amoreira: and it took them from 1529-1622: literally 93 years
Forte da Graca
Elvas has 2 star-shaped forts so the question is which one to go: and Gine said let’s go to this one – as no-one really can tell us which one is the nicer one and we saw this one from our hotel. So why do they have the Forts here:
- originally was here the Chapel of Santa Maria da Graca, the Spanish had here 2 cannons and in 1760 it was decided to built this fort which got built from 1761-67
- we did learn that the main ditch is 1.7 km long – but we didn’t walk around the whole one – but walked inside several ditches
we drove up and looked up at this incredible fort: through the first gate and we are on a kind of a wall surrounding a huge moat – which we crossed over via a drawbridge – then you are on a 2nd gigantic wall – which you cross again over a moat and from there comes the Rotunda. Ok I may should mention that today there is a kind of haze/fog in the air it is yellowy red and looks really weird. Our Portuguese was not good enough to figure it out – all we learned is that it is not normal.
2nd Wall: we walked on the outside of the 2nd wall which in each corner has little houses and when you climb up you have great views (as far as you can see on a “foggy” day) and look down onto the moat or over the castle, as well all the way to the walled town of Elvas (which by the way is also star-shaped), then we entered the:
Central redoubt: ok so this is really cool: we walked in the one area and then started to walk from room to room in a circle, kind of got lost, found some steps up and circled again through some rooms and found another set of stairs up… you get the point there are everywhere rooms and you can circle everywhere (or get lost): once we were up in the
Government house you have spectacular views out of the windows and finally on the top you really look down on the star shaped fort. We also figured out the walls are so thick that there are bunkers and walkways inside the whole walls so you an shoot out in case someone already is in the moat – and if they by accident come inside the wall there are corners you can shoot them then too…. I think this is what they consider making it impermeable. I think we got several times lost and didn’t know where we at and only walked until we hopefully found a way out. (by the way you can also lost inside the walls)
Let’s not forget the amazing floors– inside they redecorated and painted the walls in the 1960 with military decorations in the monumental Cross of the Central Redoubt. We also saw a little model of the Fort made of matches: exactly of 98660 matches – it was super cool.
It was super cool and very foggy when we finally left. This is one super cool place!!!
2025-05-22