Hochmuth Adventures 2020 - PAIR - Portugal, Alaska, Ireland and the Rhine: Trip to Portugal - Day 2 - Tuesday, January 14, 2020

Happy birthday Ron. Hard to believe you are 67 - I remember when you turned 18! How lucky I am to have met you so many years ago. I love you babe! 💝

Arrived in Paris at about 6:30 a.m. and while I did sleep a little I still haven't figured out how to get a good night's sleep on a plane. I also am happy that we insisted that we not only have an hour layover in Charles DeGaulle. We arrived early and it still took us about an hour from the time we landed until we got to our gate. With them closing the plane door 15 - 20 minutes before takeoff we would not have made it. That said, we then had another 3 hour wait for our next flight. All went well and we arrived in Lisbon at 11:30. We made our way to the place in the arrival hall to wait for our shuttle to the rental car office. We had to wait for about 20 minutes and then we were met by a nice young man who took us to the office. There we got our Yaris hybrid and were on the road to Evora which was about 1 1/2 hours away. We made our way through the tunnels and over the Ponte de Vasco de Gama. The scenery along the way was beautiful even though we had some hard rain at the beginning of our drive. We saw lots of green fields, grape vines, sheep, cows, and white washed houses with tile roofs.

We found our hotel, the Evora Olive Hotel, without a problem, checked in and decided to park the car and do our sightseeing on foot to wake us up a bit. The town of Evora is a very old, historic town with a UNESCO designation although our hotel is definitely modern. Even though we had a map the town is a maze of narrow streets. I can't even say they are cobblestone streets because cobblestones are smooth on top and it seems that they have just used any kind of stones or rocks for paving - very bumpy and hard on the feet. We wandered the streets stopping at whatever caught our eye. We saw numerous old churches, the wall of the city, modern art work, historic looking houses, the courthouse, the park with peacocks and ducks, and even checked out a few stores. We stopped early to have some wine and tapas but that ended up being our dinner since we were full and tired by then. Wow we really went wild for Ron's birthday - not. We did stop for some ice cream and then headed to the hotel. We planned on watching some TV because it was only 8:00 but when I looked Ron was nodding off so we made it an early night. This way we'll be ready to go to tomorrow. It was a good day in Evora.