Kathleen
6/4/2013 – To the Alentejo with a stop-over in Belmonte
From Guimares, we headed toward the Alentejo region (about 6 hours away) breaking up the drive with a stop-over in the little hill town of Belmonte, where we experienced our first Portuguese Pousada. Pousada’s are government sponsored hotels built in old castles, forts and conventos (which we learned can mean convent or monestary). We drove through the wine producing area of the country with vines on every hill and in every valley….beautiful! And again we experienced Portugals lovely, modern highways. In Belmonte we drove up to the Pousada de Belmonte (the Pousadas are always at the top of the town, which are always on a hill) and whiled away the afternoon enjoying the hotel itself, which had ruins you could poke around in, a beautiful pool, and a private balcony in our room with sweeping views. I have to admit, we didn’t really see the town of Belmonte, but we enjoyed the pousada to the fullest and it was a sign of more good stays to come (we stayed in pousadas 6 out of 7 nights in the Alentejo. When we left Belmonte and headed to Elvas, from whence we would begin our bike tour of the Alentejo, we noticed the landscape becoming dryer and vinyards were replaced by olive trees and cork trees (although we didn’t know that was what they were yet).
Our bicycles were waiting for us at the country guest house in which we stayed outside of Elvas. We returned our rental car at the top of the hill in Elvas (good planning by Europcar) and then wandered around the walled city and castle for awhile before grabbing a taxi back to the hotel. After scrupulously reviewing our route and options for the next day (the Altentejo is a fairly sparsely populated region, with alot of open spaces between little towns, there were rarely too many options), we turned in early excited to begin our adventure.