Europe 2024 - Year of the pilgrim: Próxima paragem

Our preferred mode of travel in Europe is train. Trains are generally quite easy to use, they go almost anywhere, and once you are on them and sat down, they are pretty comfortable. And there is just an atmosphere around European trains and stations that make your holiday seem a little more of an adventure. The trains are always a bit different, the stations and their platforms are often labyrinthine and making sense of announcements is always challenging. But that is all part of the fun. I generally make it my business, just for a bit of fun, to understand some of the key term used. Destinação is pretty straightforward (although we did miss its meaning on the Belém bus), nova hora is not too hard to work out- new hour, so new time ie the train departure has been delayed until…., estaçion is station, but Próxima paragem?? Next stop of course. It was obvious to me, only because it kept flashing up on the train with the name of the next station next to it.

So why am I rabbiting on about train vernacular? Well…

Our departure from Lisbon was going brilliantly. We were up nice and early to perform the magic trick of fitting all our belongings back in our suitcases and have plenty of time before our train trip, for a leisurely breakfast at our favourite cafe where the food and coffee were both great (more on coffee later). Then one last use of our beloved Lisbon card to navigate the metro back to Lisbon Oriente station for our train to Tomar. Again, all performed with great aplomb. We were on the platform waiting for our Tomar train with 20 minutes to spare. How good were we? Well not quite as good as we thought we were. Our train rolled into the platform 15 minutes early, so we thought we would jump on and make ourselves comfortable. No sooner had we got comfortable, the train started moving. Hmmm. A train leaving early just does not sound right. A quick bit of investigation revealed that we had not read the notices properly and we were now on a train going somewhere other than where we wanted to go. Luckily the travel gods were with us and there was just enough time from realisation of our faux pas to the Próxima paragem for me to figure out that our intended train would be following and would stop at that next station, the only shared stop between the train that we wanted and the train we were on. So a hasty exit at Vila Franca de Xira, then a scramble to find the right platform and we were back on track again.

It just so happens that 14th of April this year marks 40 years of marriage for Beth and I, and only to each other I might add. It doesn’t seem that long, which I think is a good thing. So to celebrate our anniversary we booked a nice hotel, and decided to be a bit lazy in Tomar. So we drop our cases off at the hotel and go for a bit of a wander. At first glance there is nothing too remarkable about Tomar. It is a small city, obviously old, but nothing too ostentatious other than the big castle which looms from atop a hill outside of town. The fact that our key point of interest for today is the museum of matchboxes probably gives a hint as to its excitement factor. But as with many things, scratch the surface and you may uncover gold. Turns out that Tomar is an incredibly important city in Portuguese history. Most significantly it was head office for the Templar Knights back in the 12th century, and then to the Order of Christ which replaced the Templar knights when they were banned in the 14th century. So what you say. Why is that such a big deal in Portuguese history? Because a Portuguese prince, Henry the Navigator, was the inaugural Grand Master of the Order of Christ, and from Tomar, he was the driving force behind Portugal’s golden age of maritime discovering and conquering. Anyway - enough of history. Tomar is a nice, unassuming place with a big history and not so many people. I like it.

We head to visit the matchbox museum which is housed in a really old tumbledown building in a hidden courtyard behind a really old tumbledown church. But it is closed from midday until 2:00 for lunch (a quaint siesta tradition - the only thing not closed for lunch are those places that serve lunch), so off to lunch we went as well. The matchbox museum was much more interesting than it sounds. Thousands of matchboxes, mostly quite old, from all corners of the globe. Australia was well represented. I didn’t realise we had quite so many varieties of Redhead matchboxes. Despite it being more interesting than you might expect, it didn’t hold our interest for too long, so we just did a bit more aimless wandering, where we happened upon a Jewish museum and synagogue (circa 1450), which had also reopened following lunch. This held our attention a little longer. It is amazing how high esteem for Jewish commercial and artisanal skills seems always to have been foiled by religious intolerance, and inevitably persecution follows.

Although the day was still young, by this stage we didn’t quite feel the same and decided to just rest up until dinner, for which we had reserved a table at a nice restaurant attached to our hotel. Dinner was very nice, although I am not entirely sure that codfish deserves the reverence afforded it in Portugal. It may be cooked and presented as well as can be, but it is still codfish, the Good Friday staple of my childhood, remembered, but not fondly.

We rounded out our trip to Tomar with a visit to the Convento de Cristo and Templar Castle on top of the hill. It was quite an amazing place. Much of the castle was tumbledown and the gardens a bit overgrown, but this gave it a wonderful atmosphere only enhanced by the glorious aroma of a hundred orange trees heavy with fruit, but dangerously just out of reach. I was willing to risk life and limb for a tasty orange, but Beth said no. If I wanted an orange we would buy one at the fruit shop (I bet it won’t be as sweet thought I). The Manueline monastery which grew up around the castle was in much better condition considering it was 500 to 700 years old. It was a pretty amazing place which kept us occupied for quite a few hours.

From Tomar we moved on to Coimbra. Another small(ish) city with a big history. For a time some 800 years ago Coimbra was the capital of Portugal. It is also home to the oldest university in Portugal, which was originally opened in Lisbon in 1290, but then relocated to Coimbra in 1308. It must have liked its new home, because 700 years later it is still there. We did the mandatory street walk around Coimbra (which is always enjoyable) and visited a few points of interest, but the jewel in the crown here is the university precinct, and once we climbed the hill to get there, we really enjoyed the experience. It even had real live university students, who don’t look that much different to the ones infesting our universities.

Our final stopover before heading off to the Douro valley and Porto is Aveiro. Another small city, this time with no special significance in shaping Portugal. Aveiro is known as the Venice of Portugal because of its systems of canals and the little Barca Moliceiros boats which were used to ferry seaweed (for fertiliser) back in the day, but are now used to ferry paying tourists up and down the canals.

I mentioned before how first impressions count a lot, and this couldn’t be more true of Aviero thanks to Joāo, the owner of the apartment we were to stay in. Before we arrived he sent me a message asking what time we were arriving. As soon as he realised we were going to walk the 600m or so from the station to the apartment he insisted that he would pick us up at the station. Sadly my first thought was that this was going to be an attempt to squeeze extra money from us, but it turns out that he was just a very lovely man. He showed us every inch of the immaculate and exceptionally well equipped apartment and gave us a heap of advice and a box of lovely local sweet Ovos Molos treats (another “what to do with the leftover egg yolks” concoction). When I offered to pay him for the lift, he steadfastly refused, and said all he would like as payment was a hug. We both obliged. It set the scene for a lovely stay. I really enjoyed Aveiro. We rode the moliceiro boats, ate the Ovos Molos, checked out the art nouveau houses of which Aveiro has many, wandered around town and visited a few churches and museums, including the Aveiro museum, which had an extensive collection of stuff relating to the patron saint of Aveiro, St. Joana. St Joana was a Portuguese royal princess (daughter of one of the king Alfonso’s) who took holy orders and entered the convent of Jesus in Aveiro. It appears that the basis for her beatification was that she was able thanks to her princessly ties, to influence the siphoning of royal funds to the church at Aveiro. Oh well, better than some other saints whose godly deeds were far more questionable.

One of the most joyous aspects of our stay in Aveiro was that João’s apartment had a washing machine (in good working order of course) and a clothes drying rack. Which means that we start the next leg of our journey with a suitcase full of clean clothes. Bliss…