Entries about castles

We started our day by taking a taxi to the airport. We saw the somewhat less fashionable side of Lisbon on our drive, but also got nice views of the river. When we arrived at the Europcar office, they appeared to be closed. There was a sign saying that we should go to the office in the main terminal, so we did. Once we were there, they were very helpful. They didn’t have a car with WiFi like we had ordered, but they did find us one with a built-in navigation system that was a little larger than we had originally booked. We set out from Lisbon towards the east, heading first for the former Templar castle of Almourol.

Before we arrived in Almourol we stopped in the little town of Tancos, where there is a restaurant called Restaurante Almourol. We strolled around the grassy area by the River Tagus, then went to the restaurant. This was an adventure all its own.the restaurant was very nice, but no one seemed to speak English. I told the waitress “Não falo Português” to which she replied “Mas percebes bem” and continued in Portuguese. The menu also was entirely in Portuguese. We ended up using Google Translate, which yielded that one of the menu items was “bunny” and that another was “potato punch.” So that was unhelpful. We ended up just ordering. We got fried river fish with rice and beans. Neither of us usually eat a lot of fish,but it was a good meal.

Some views across the river to the towns on the other side. There was a beautiful view from our restaurant.


The castle was a fortress used by the Knights Templar during the crusades. It formed part of a defensive line along the Tagus during the Portuguese Reconquista. It is a beautiful castle, and it’s fascinating to see how it would have been when the Tagus was the dividing line between the Christians and the Muslims.

Some amazing views around the castle. We were able to climb the staircases and look out from the walls. The river is much narrower on the northern side of the island. It seems like a very defensible position since it is surrounded by water, but it is obviously better protected from the south, which of course is where the Moors were.

The castle as we left in the boat. We missed the boat we were supposed to take, but thankfully it came back a few minutes later.

After that, we went further East to the walled hilltop city of Marvão. It is near the border with Spain and had been used to defend against invasion. It is beautiful, and reminded us quite a bit of San Gimignano in Italy. There are narrow streets, hills, ancient fortresses and churches, and a cafe that sells gelato.

The curious kittens of Marvão.

There is a beautiful garden near the castle made up mostly of hydrangeas, Catherine’s favorite flowers. The garden has a beautiful view of the surrounding area, and you can see the surrounding valleys in Spain and Portugal.

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More of Marvão.

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A tactile model of the city.

Gelato from the cafe.

Given how close we were to Spain, we decided to go in. There was a former border checkpoint that was entirely unmanned, and the only signal that we had left Portugal and entered Spain was this sign. We went in to a gas station and got some snacks, and it was intriguing that all of the packaging was in Spanish. The linguistic nature of the border is fascinating: the cashier at the gas station spoke something that sounded like Portuguese to locals at she knew, but perfect Spanish to strangers.

We then followed the GPS to Coimbra. Our AirBnB host, João, was waiting at a cafe. We met him and found a parking spot, then got everything set up in the room. We then met João at the tapas restaurant across the street from our flat. He gave us advice about what to do in Coimbra: he was a wealth of information about the city and the various things we could see. He left us to have a late dinner and listen to the singing of the Hungarian university officials in the next room (there is a sports competition between European universities going on in Coimbra).

Our dinner, including a bottle of wine from our waiter’s hometown in the Douro valley.

Our dessert: lime pie and a 1985 port.
We spent a long time visiting with our waiter, the Hungarians (who bought us a round of a Portuguese liqueur), and a few others who stayed in the restaurant late. We learned some Hungarian drinking songs and chatted with the waiter about the town, life in Portugal, and numerous other topics. It was a wonderful night. We went back across the street to our room at around 4 in the morning. We feel so lucky to be able to have these adventures and talk to such interesting people!

First, we went to a shop in Liscannor to buy some gifts for people. Catherine found a couple pieces of jewelry to buy. A shamrock necklace and a St. Brigid's cross. Here, she's wearing the St. Brigid's cross.

Classic-looking haystacks. Usually we see perfectly square or round ones, not ones that appear this "natural."

We stopped to visit the old cathedral of Kilfenora. This tiny diocese is run by the Bishop of Galway now, but is supposedly technically without a bishop, supposedly making the pope the bishop here. Whether this is canonically accurate is debatable. There are several High Crosses here, and the ruins of an old cathedral, part of which is now a Church of Ireland church. It was a very interested place to see. Daniel had seen it when he was here last, and wanted to show it to Catherine.

The village of Corofin. We were thinking of having lunch here, but there was a horse festival that day and the village was very crowded with nowhere to park.

We visited Dysert O'Dea Castle. Daniel had visited some of the sites here, but not the castle which was closed when he came here last. These show the views from the top, as well as the workshop in the castle. This castle is intereting as it actually belongs to a member of the O'Dea family who lives in Michigan.

There's a small exhibit in the castle of objects related to various risings, especially 1916. There are some weapons which were used in 1916, and letters and other documents of people involved. It was very interesting, especially as Catherine had been reading a book on the Easter Rising.

This is a murder hole, where defenders could drop objects on invaders from above. Strangely enough, it is located in the chapel.
A person risking her life by standing under the murder hole.

More views of the castle.

We had lunch at a pub in Ennis called Dan O'Connell's. Co. Clare was playing Co. Roscommon in Gaelic Football that day, and the game was on. The pub was crowded with people watching the game. It was fun, but we didn't stay and watch the whole game as we had places to be. We wanted to visit Adare Castle, which was on our heritage card. When we arrived, however, they were closed for a wedding (which is impressive...we wondered whose wedding it was to close down a public heritage site.). We moved on from Adare and, since we had some extra time, headed to Killlarney to see Ross Castle before going to the place we were staying.

Ross Castle was closed by the time we got there, but it was still an interesting place to visit. We walked over to the lake and got as close as we could to the castle. It was much larger than most of the castles we have seen.

A cute dog we saw on our walk back from the castle.

Some of the beautiful hills of Co. Kerry. Catherine pointed out that the green is particularly green in Kerry, and started referring to the color as "green green."

We stopped at a small pub/disco bar for dinner.

Some more pictures of the beautiful scenery as we drove from Killarney to Co. Cork.

When we were planning our trip, Catherine noticed that there is a village called Bweeng in Co. Cork. She wanted to go there, and looked forward to "Bweeng Day." Today was Bweeng Day. These two pictures show the metropolis in all its glory: a post office, and a selfie in the church car park. We didn't really stop in Bweeng because it was getting late and we had to move on to Dromohane where we were staying.

The sunset over Dromohane. Our hosts there were wonderful. We had a nice tea and a lengthy conversation about Irish and American politics and current events. They were very nice and helpful hosts, and the room at their house was a perfect place to stay. It is a dairy farm, and the owner also has seven German shepherds. Also, the host had a very strong Cork accent. At first, Catherine thought he was from the Netherlands.