Monday morning, we picked up the car at Renault by the airport and departed for Evora. Went around the traffic circle twice but got on the correct road. It’s an easy drive over the Vasco de Gama Bridge to Evora. The country rises as you go east and then is open fields with olives and cork groves and wheat. We took the toll road as far as we could and then a 2-lane road the rest of the way to Evora. Found the IBIS Hotel – finally. We found it quickly but then didn’t figure out that the road that looked like an alley was actually a street to the IBIS hotel. A few times around the block and we were there.
Then we had to find food for dinner! We walked around the inside of the walls trying to find a variety of restaurants that were in Lonely Planet. They were all closed. We finally found a Chinese restaurant with great Chinese food and they were open! We ate there at least once a week the entire time we were in Evora. The pineapple chicken was great and the beer was only .77euro
Next morning we found the university and eventually found the correct office and the correct people. They had a key for us to our accommodations. Drove out to the convent on the other campus about 12 km. We had a room with 2 single beds and a small bathroom with a shower that I would come to hate! The convent
Of course, the internet connection did not work yet but 7 days later we had it fixed … Sr. Godinho and Luis Paz were wonderful getting that to work and lending us an ISDN modem so Mark would work.
Day 2 we went to the Portuguese Telecom office to try to buy 2 SIM cards for our phones. Get someone to go with you so they can find out the differences in the various plans. My Portuguese and their English was not up to explaining this. It did work but then we had to figure out where to go to put money on the cards. No billing on this system! It’s pay in advance. After that we would add money to the cards whenever we were in Lisbon because there is an automated machine you can use in the Telecom office to add money.
This is what the entire area around Evora looks like - cork and sheep!