Batalha
Portugal 2020
In the morning it was sunny and so pleasant. We had breakfast overlooking the garden on the little patio near our house. In daylight, the property turned out to be much larger. There is even a small pool here.
Wolf often likes to say when I’m undecided, “Let’s not deviate from the planned itinerary.” I don’t always agree with him, but in retrospect I understand that it was a mistake for us to deviate from the planned plans and stay here for one more night.
At 12 we checked out of the house and were moved into a standard double room (our spacious royal house did turn out to be booked, just as Booking had promised). The room was quite nice, but small and unremarkable; of course, there was no point in staying here for it. But it is what it is.
By then, clouds had quickly rolled in, and it turned gray. Wolf was getting work calls all morning. We drove to the town of Batalha, where there is a large monastery.
The monastery is very beautiful. But apparently we were not in the right mood, or maybe it was just one of those days — somehow it didn’t click. I thought we would go for a walk inside the monastery. But Volchy had another call with Vanya soon. So we only wandered around a little and went directly into the church itself, which you can enter for free.
I spent the rest of the day sitting by the pool on a sun lounger and walking in the garden, while Volchiy was working. I found a persimmon tree in the garden. There were lots of fruits on the tree, but none of them were fully ripe. There were also lots of fruits under the tree, but they were all bruised and half-rotten. But I still managed to find one perfect persimmon on the ground — whole and ripe :)
Toward evening the sun came out again and, right on cue, swarms of the same tiny but very annoying flies appeared, the ones that attacked us in the forest. Strange — either it’s that kind of season now, or this is some kind of fly region....
Still, thanks to the sunshine, my mood improved. The flies drove me off the sun lounger, and while it was still light we decided to go to Batalha once more. But apart from the monastery there was definitely nothing to do in the town — it turned out to be somehow too ordinary and unfriendly. We wandered around the streets a bit, just wanting to walk in the last rays of the sun. And then we drove home.
On the way home we stopped at a supermarket. We bought a nice little rug for the hallway and a piece of fabric (which they sold here by the kilo) — Volchiy wants to cover our sofa with it so it won’t get dirty.
