Alan’s Birthday in the Alentejo – The Breadbasket of Portugal

We spent 4 days (including my Birthday!) exploring the Central Alentejo from the city of Evora. We saw endless fields of wild flowers, massive castles, ancient monoliths, bone temples, drank fine wine, swam in Europe's largest man made lake and ate so much amazing food. The Alentejo is an unassuming destination that does its best to punch above its weight class and deliver a diverse and memorable experience.

Our first day we made the drive east towards Spain and visited the huge Estremoz Castle. With its hill top perch we had amazing views of the surrounding countryside and villages. Something that stood out in all of the Alentejo was the epic fluffiness of the clouds.

It's pretty awesome to just be wondering around different ancient castle streets and through castle gates on a weekly basis. The rural Portuguese got a kick out of my sweet Ghanaian shirt as I got many curious looks.

The town of Estremoz is known not only for the castle but also for the huge marble quarries that dot the out skirts of the city. It was so cool to be able to just walk up to the quarry and look at all the beautiful marble blocks laying all over the place. It was still an active quarry but no one batted an eye at two tourists driving up and walking around the construction site.

A picture perfect view over the Alentejo vines up at the castle. Again with the super fluffy clouds!

Back in Evora we found more intricate azulejos. Alena was excited to see the style variations compared to Lisbon.

We were thirsty heading to some monoliths when we saw this 70 year old water pump at a little rest area. Alena tried to fetch us a pail, but even with her adamant tries the well proved dry.

We eventually made our way along dirt roads to an ancient monolith site called Almemdres. It was this crazy cool circle of 95 large stones erected in celestial patterns some 6000-5000 B.C. in Neolithic times.

They were huge! They are thought to have been remains of an important ceremony site.

Evidently few people make it out to see these wonderful monoliths, which are older than Stone Hedge, due to its relatively remote location and little pop culture fan fare.

The monoliths were surrounded by beautiful cork tree forests.

The bark of the tree is straight up cork (trust me I poked it to see), and is famous for its use in wine production.

^^^We were driving to the grocery store in Evora to pick up food for my birthday the next day when we came upon this fantastic sight. Even the horses use roundabouts in Portugal.

I woke up on my birthday to a confetti cannon (industrial sized ,not some tiny party popper)!

Alena was amazing and had surprised me by secretly getting all these awesome party supplies and decorating the house before I woke up.

^^^She even got me a really awesome and totally useful gift!!

We feasted on birthday banana pancakes for breakfast, candles and singing and everything. It was a great way to start my birthday.

Then we decided to visit Evora's Bone Temple. A fitting place to celebrate the passing years and my waning youth as Alena put it.

Hundreds of years ago the city was running out of space as the population grew. So they came up with the idea of digging up the cemeteries and putting the bones inside the main church. They didn't just put them in a crypt, they went all out and built a full bone temple.

Forward thinkers they were, turning useless skeletons into a future revenue generating tourist attraction!

We finished off my amazing birthday with a kingly feast of BBQ ribs, mushrooms, mashed potatoes, Alentejo meat pies, tomato salad and of course Champagne. Pro tip: Champagne goes great with BBQ ribs! The bubbles and sweet acidity go great with the sweet and fatty and salty flavors of the ribs. To finish it off we made hot fudge brownie sundaes. It was a great birthday and Alena made it so special with her little surprises!

Finished off the Alentejo with some more azulejos. These ones were proudly UCSB colors.

Sadly some additional Alentejo photos are temporarily lost, but when we get those back I will post a few more of the amazing sites and foods we found in the Alentejo!