It's Friday morning and I'm writing from
Guarda in the northern interior of Portugal where the landscape is much more rugged than the rolling planes that we drove through from Lisbon to Evora in the South. Here is a picture from our hotel window in Guarda, which, despite the pastoral scene in front of us, is built in the middle of a relatively large city on the side of a mountain. There's a horse grazing by one of the roads at the bottom of the picture who seems to be perfectly happy to coexist with the traffic going by.
On Tuesday morning we left Lisbon for
Arraiolos (the final s is pronounced like the s in pleasure,)
What a delightful town, with a stunning museum to the local and revived craft of rug stitching. It is essentially a variation of cross stitch on burlap of traditional oriental patterns. This is mine although it can hardly be considered a rug by virtue of it's 8x11" size.
On our way to Evora, we stopped for a "health break" beside a park of cork trees, one of the symbols of Portugal. This is a picture of a branch that has not been harvested. Up to 75% of the bark is harvested every 9 years from the main part of the tree.
Evora is stunning city, a UNESCO Heritage site for it's walled fortifications and the Roman ruins of the Temple to Diana. We also visited the church of St Francis which took 103 years to build in the 13th Century and featured a richly painted wooden statue of Mary when she was pregnant with Jesus. (I do hope I have my facts right - after a couple of days of nonstop touring, details do become a bit fuzzy).
On Wednesday, we made our way north to
Castelo de Vide. What a treat to walk through the centuries of living history. A large Jewish community with the first Synagogue in Portugal was an important feature of the tour, leaving very distinctive remnants of their passing through although most were forced to convert to Christianity, taking on family names from Nature which are still present to this day..
Castelo de Vide is the town where we were most able to meet and observe people as they have lived for many generations. These folks are passing the time in front of the house at the foot of the ramparts of the castle.
How fun! As we got off the bus in Castelo de Vide we found this tree which had been yarn bombed by meters of fashion scarf knitted of what is often called "ladder" yarn for it's construction of squares held together by 2 threads on either side.
Thursday brought us to
Covilha, in the mountainous wool region.
Here is our guide from the University's museum of wool production. What a stunning blend of ancient tradition and new ideas.
THEN came the roller coaster part of our journey as we crossed over the mountains via switchback roads that led us through the national park area, well above the tree line to a landscape that featured boulders the size of a small house strewn across the territory by glaciers. For those who have read
Yann Martel's latest book,
The High Mountains of Portugal, THIS is the geography where part 3 takes place.
Our final visit was to the world class Burel factory where traditional wool spinning, weaving, dyeing and fulling meet new, fashion forward designers for creations that can be found everywhere from the walls of the new Microsoft offices to classic throw blankets on the
lounge chairs of discerning customers. Here we have wooden footstools covered to look like a mama sheep and her baby lamb.
That's all for now, I'll be back next week to finish up.
Anne
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