Travelling back in Time to Portugal

Travel Day 810 – Seville to Evora, PORTUGAL

Once again we would have liked to spend more time in Seville, but meanwhile we had to move on, only how best to get to Portugal was the big question of the day..

Templo Romano, the Roman Temple Ruin in Evora, Portugal

For some reason it had been impossible to find reliable information about bus connections between Spain and Portugal and so we started our Active Travel Day with a bus ride towards Merida. Since Merida was located close to the border, our hopes were to catch a connection over to Portugal and eventually even reach Evora. As the idea was good and the connections possible, it still took us three different local buses and pretty much the whole day to finally reach Portugal and Evora…

Evora simply had to be part of our itinerary since it was supposed to be a white washed historic town with Roman ruins and an almost complete medieval defense wall surrounding the city. The entire historic center of the Evora was not only a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but as soon as we were arriving through the big aqueduct and seeing the walled town trough the city gates, it was already clear that this place was well worth the long day in the bus…

Tall Tower and City Gate of UNESCO enlisted Evora in Portugal

In general, arriving in Portugal had something special about it and I couldn’t help but simply feel excited about everything we saw passing by the bus window. As the villages close to the border in Spain had been nothing but a boring fast food and chain store suburbia, in Portugal the picture was painted quite differently. The landscape was essentially the same, but the villages were real villages, consisting of only a few white stone houses and it almost seemed as if we had travelled back in time as we crossed the border…

This impression grew even stronger as we walked through the ancient city gate of Evora and got literally lost in the little winding cobblestone alleys while we were trying to find out hostel. Luckily the entire town was quite compact and eventually we learned to find our way around. But here again our imagination just went wild as the history of this town was seemingly written all over the place. This was especially true as we went for a little exploration walk and found the Templo Romano, some Roman temple ruins, in the middle of the city…

White Houses of Evora in the Evening Sun, Portugal

Even if it had been quite a long day on the road, we couldn’t help but think what a great and exciting place this was, Portugal as well as the white washed historic town of Evora…