Portugal: Biking Day 1, Fatima to Batalha

Portugal: Biking Day 1
Fatima to Batalha, 18 miles

Our first bike day! We started in Fatima and made it to our first stop at the Moeda Grottoes. These caves were beautiful, with such cool lighting and pretty features. We made it out of there right before a school field trip, too. 

Then we rode through Porto de Mos, which was a cute town with a little green-roofed castle with purple banners hanging out the windows. It looked perfect, and we loved riding along the streets of houses and farms surrounding the town. We had some significant rainfall just as we were coming into town, but we found a hot chocolate stop and some more Pastel de Nata. It's kind of like Creme Brulee in a flaky crust? Kind of not though.

Then we rode the rest of the way to Batalha and walked through the beautiful Monastery there. This was built as a thank you to the Virgin Mary after the Portuguese victory over Spain in 1385. We kind of thought Portugal and Spain would seem brotherly, but they very much like to bring up that they are NOT Spain and that they BEAT Spain :) The Gothic architecture was beautiful, especially The Unfinished Chapel that has no roof. 

The town was really cute as well. We found a bridge and some cork trees and a tourist center to ask a few questions. We ended up just finding some pizza that night because I was SO HUNGRY and bacalhau wasn't calling to me. But this ended up actually being our worst meal of the whole trip, so, there's the lesson. We felt good getting our first bike day down though, and figuring out our GPS and bikes and just getting a feel for the flow.

Ready to roll!

Moeda Grottoes

This is the most unnatural natural thing!
That is also how I sometimes described breastfeeding.

Passed a few sheep today and they're just so cute.
Feasting on so many lettuce scraps.

Made it to the top of our first big hill and this greeted us there.

Kind of an effort to describe hot chocolate.
They thought we just wanted chocolate milk.
I'm sure they were confused why we didn't just want an espresso.
Chocolate croissants are one of my life's biggest joys.

This castle was so cute. And this house down the hill from it!
So many plants and tiles.

A cemetery by the castle. Mosaic sidewalks everywhere.

Breathtaking.
Incredible that things like this could be built so long ago.

Tomb of the Unknown Solider

I really liked this depiction of the Creation.

Monastery cat.

The Unfinished Chapel

Such a little tomb.
I'm so grateful lifespans are so much longer now.

Cork trees are so cool.
They harvest the bark, just from the bottom part of the tree.
You can see the dark parts here that show this tree has been harvested recently.
You can't do the first harvest until the tree is 20 years old, and then the harvests are only done every 9 years.
Portugal produces about 60% of the entire world's cork supply.

Michael capturing the cork. 
I like his plant-loving self.