Monchique and Silves

Wednesday, March 9, 2016

I rose early again this morning. I had a little trouble with my alarm clock, so my sleep was disrupted. I wasn’t feeling the most refreshed and it looked overcast and the usual windy weather. I pulled myself together and got ready. I knew that by the time we were on the road it would be well worth it.

I was right of course. Our first stop was Silves. The castle is the feature of this lovely town. It is visible from the road coming in. They were smart enough to create a pull out, so that people like me could take a panoramic view of the castle.

  

We were able to find a parking spot easily and it wasn’t too far on the cobblestones to get to the castle. All in all it is a small place, but very interesting that this has so much history attached to it. They are doing a lot of archaeological digging. Whatever they find they put it on for display. There was an instillation of sculptures using the stone from the area. It was an interesting dichotomy from old and new. Most of the pieces were modernistic.  After we looked around a little, the ramparts were not accessible from what we could see, so we moved on.to our next stop.

Just a cool fig tree starting to bud...

The trip to Monchique was lovely and the roads were twisty and narrow. It was more interesting than some of the tourist areas. We climbed up and up. Unfortunately, the clouds were rolling in. Miguel said we may not be able to see the view clearly. I would take what we could get. After all, Mother Nature does what she wants. It was of course very windy on top and the view was a bit hazy. I couldn’t believe we could see practically the whole southern region of Portugal from the Spanish border to Sagres (the end of the world). Absolutely amazing. Miguel pointed out the towns we had already been through and where Albufeira was. It gave great perspective. The photo does not do it justice. In the foreground, many people created little rock statues much like Inukshuks, as an offering.