Evora: Family Travels in Spain and Portugal

From Seville, it was across the border to the little town of Evora in the Alentejo region of Portugal. Evora is magical, the kind of town in which you just wander through the labyrinth of streets within it’s fortified walls; you can walk forever never repeating a street and yet, you’re never too far away from where you started.

This is the main plaza. As I sat there sketching, two Australian urban sketcherscame up and chatted and told me the urban sketchers of Evora were meeting to sketch at the square the next morning. USk makes the world a very small place indeed!

The plaza is the heart of the city and always so full of life.

Here’s a spread from my Alpha sketchbook. I drank a lot of wine. The kids drank a lot of a drink called B! 

In my wanderings through the streets, I chanced upon a gem of an exhibit, Aledeia da Terra, created by artists Tiago Cabeca and Teresa Raquel. They take clay and create a whole city of buildings and streets populated with great characters. The pigs were my favorite.

Evora isn’t a town of big landmarks, but you can sketch at just about any corner in town.

And if you can add a pastel de nata into your wanderings, that’s even better. The baker that I bought my pastry from told me that that the best sweets in Portugal are always made by nuns. And the best alcohol comes from monasteries. I haven’t fact-checked that, but I thought I’d pass it along… 

Here is one last sketch from Evora, made as the sun set. And yes, a Brazil-Uruguay football match was under way…

To see previous posts from this trip, here are the links: Granada, Cordoba and Seville.