What a great day!
We toured a rug museum and saw a demonstration of how to embroider a rug followed by coffee at an outside cafe.
Then we toured a cemetery. It was beautiful, not a word I would normally use to describe a cemetery. From the cemetery we could see the ruins of a castle on top of the hill and we all tried to get a good picture of it.
Then we went to a winery. Saw a fantastic collection of carriages (as one lady put it, women collect shoes – men
collect cars). I never imagined that carriages had places for hunting dogs, hunting ferrets, beds and toilets. Then we walked a long way (not really) through the vineyards to the winery. I never knew grape plants could be so beautiful. Part of the road had olive trees along the sides. After learning about how to make wine and how important it is to have a great wine master (we can’t remember what he is really called), we rode the bus back to the carriage area and tasted 3 wines. They were served with some bread and jellies and sausage and cheese and honey. All of it was good but the rose wine was the overall favorite.
After the tasting we had lunch! I had forgotten we were having lunch after the tasting and was not really hungry but it would have been rude not to eat, right? What a great lunch along with more wine of course. In the store we were sad to find out that we couldn’t ship any wine home and that the only place in the states to get this wine is Boston.
Then we went to a cork factory. It is really amazing how much time it takes to grow cork (it is a bark) and what they have to do to get it ready for use 
(drying and boiling it twice). The shop had some really great cork items for great prices (according to the ladies that had been pricing cork items). They only take cash so it was easier to keep spending under control, LOL.
Our hotel used to be a monastery and the rooms are called cells and they are small but they are nice and have everything you need.
After a short walk around Evora, my phone told me I was awesome because I walked over 4 miles today. We got a good laugh from that.
Dinner was very good – the service was outstanding. If I keep eating this wonderful food and drinking all this wine I will have to walk 5 miles a day when I get home to lose all the extra weight.
The weather has been beautiful every day so far and the weather channel says tomorrow is going to be beautiful again.
Note to self: when traveling overseas bring a wash cloth.
#VickieTravelz
My mother and I are taking a trip called the Back Roads of Iberia: Spanish Paradores & Portuguese Pousadas. These are our daily adventures – written for our family while we were traveling – April / May 2016.