day 16 :

sunday, 10 june

After a very late breakfast, we rendez-vous'd with our friends and other wedding guests and went out for a big group lunch in Évora at Adeguita do Farrobo. Bea negotiated with the waiter over how much food to bring. For our table of 15 people, he wanted to bring 16 full-size dishes, but Bea said that'd be way too much food. He suggested 12 dishes; Bea wanted eight. Eight dishes? But we would all be hungry, he couldn't bring just eight. Bea promised that if we were hungry after those eight dishes, we would certainly order more. He accepted that deal, and as it turned out, we couldn't even finish the eight dishes he brought out. Dawn and I noted that Portuguese dishes tend to be much larger portions than Spanish dishes – in Spain, you usually have to order a couple of plates to feed just two people, whereas a single dish in Portugal can often feed two or three people.

We all went for a drive outside of Évora to see the Almendres Cromlech megalithic complex (an arranged collection of standing stones) and the single Almendres Menhir (one standing stone). These megaliths have been here since 4000 B.C., and are believed to have been used as an early astronomical observatory. Cork trees covered the rolling hills all around the megaliths, all of them with trunks shaved as high as eight or ten feet off the ground, with numbers painted on their bare wood.

Back at the hotel, we said our goodbyes to the departing bride and groom, and then rested up for a while. After a late light dinner at the hotel restaurant, we wandered up to the roof of the hotel to get a glimpse of Évora lit up at night. One of the coolest parts about the Convento is that guests are free to wander around and explore the huge building, and there are so many little passageways, stairways, balconies, roofs, nooks and crannies to see that you feel like you can just keep wandering and not see it all. Eric went all the way to the top of the bell tower, which was lit from below with floodlights. Not more than a half-minute later, he noticed a large winged creature flying between the trees and the edge of the Convento roof, perhaps a hundred feet from the bell tower. It disappeared into the trees for a moment, then came swooping out, this time shrieking loudly, circling a little closer. On this pass, Eric could see that it was an enormous owl. On its third pass, it shrieked again, and swooped even nearer. Not wanting to get carried off in the talons of a prehistoric owl to his doom, Eric quickly climbed down from the tower, and instantly the screeching stopped. Have any other hotel guests fallen victim to this creature before?