St. Dennis Adventures

Lisbon is the stunning capital city of Portugal, and voted the World's Leading City Destination and the World's Leading City Break Destination for the World Travel Awards 2018. It certainly has a lot to see and do and we certainly saw and did! We drove in from Evora and dropped the rental car off in the morning leaving us nearly the entire day to spend exploring this ancient capital. As is our habit, we signed up for a walking tour for the afternoon and evening and set off on the 20-minute walk to where the tour started. The tour met and started at the Praça Dom Pedro IV, which Lisboans feel is the main central square of Lisbon and the true heart of the city.  Praça Dom Pedro is often referred simply to its much older name of Rossio which is also where we had caught the train to Sintra on our first day in Portugal. Rossio was founded during the 13th century as the large central square of Lisbon. Here public shows, bull fights, and royal proclamations occurred. During...

I love walled towns. The romanticism of being in a city entirely surrounded by walls invokes the sense of actually living the history of that place -- of being part of something older than you can imagine.  Evore is one of those places. We managed to book a nice AirBnB just inside the walls, We had to park in a lot outside the walls and bring our luggage in through the city gates along narrow cobblestone streets to our apartment where we were met by our host Natalie. She gave us the keys and showed us to our suite which was pretty much the entire second floor -- large bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen / sitting area. Evora is a whitewashed town of narrow streets, cobblestone lanes, and a working city mixed with historical sites. It has been a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1986. Évora has a history dating back more than five thousand years. It was known as Ebora by the Celtici, who made the town their regional capital. Ebora was the plural form of the celtic word for Yew,...

When we were leaving our hotel in Coimbra, the front desk gentleman inquired where we were going next.  We mentioned we were planning on spending the day in Obidos, then heading to Evora.  He insisted that we visit a small community called Monsaraz outside of Evora -- he swore it would be unforgettable! Evora sits close to the center of where the drainage basins of the three largest rivers in Portugal touch.  This made Evora an essential meeting point to the early megalithic tribes who travelled the rivers for transportation, food, and trade.  To mark this important tribal meeting point, many megaliths were built in this area.  Today you can visit more than 10 megalithic enclosures, more than 100 isolated menhirs, about 800 dolmens and close to 450 megalithic settlements. In addition to these, there are about 100 rocks with dimples (their functionality is still a mystery). The Almendres Megalithic settlement (or cromlech) is the biggest megalithic monumen...

The town of Óbidos is located on a hilltop, encircled by a fortified wall. Óbidos remains a well-preserved example of medieval architecture; its streets, squares, walls and its castle are a popular tourist destination. The castle now houses a hotel.  Legend holds that Obidos was founded in 308 BC by the Celts. As the streets of Obidos are very narrow, cars are parked outside the walls -- we were able to park right next to the very cool preserved aqueduct. Originating in Usseira, the aqueduct it is 3 km long. Queen Catarina commissioned its construction In the 16th century, . The water was carried through a great number of high arches which crossed extensive vineyards and orchards and came to provide water to the town's main fountains. The Castle of Obidos has walls that date back to at least the 8th century AD with parts of the walls actually include some of the fortifications of the original settlement that may date back to the 4th century BC.  A interestin...