Tomar

This second stunning site for the day was almost skipped. We were both tired and unsure if we should skip our next two stops and head towards Lisbon instead. It’s still fairly cold at night and as I’ve mentioned before, it’s hard to get motivated. Despite our wavering, we ended up sticking with our original plans for the same reasons we picked the stops in the first place. Tomar itself seemed like a nice town to visit, although it didn’t have too many sights. This is probably because of the Castle of the Knights Templar, it was fully worth the 9 euros entry. However, this wasn’t our first impression. We learnt that we could have parked the van outside the castle after we made it to the tourist office, but we also learnt from the tourist office (in the fastest instructions ever) how to get to the castle. It was only a short walk away up a hill. The walk started off on a cobbled street, but once we turned the corner it was completely falling apart and turned into a dirt road. We actually thought of turning around at this point, that’s how bad of shape this road was in. Since we were so close and tired and it was getting later (around 4) we pressed on to meet the main gates. From the main gates you can’t see how large this castle is, so based on what we saw, it wasn’t all that impressive. It was a small yellow brick wall with a wooden door in the middle stating a few things you can’t do once inside. We made it this far, so we went inside before I snapped a few pictures thinking that I wouldn’t get the chance once inside the walls. Once inside the castle walls we entered the lower courtyard with its large and well manicured gardens. I decided once again to pull out the camera to take some pictures because what we were seeing was pretty impressive. We thought we couldn’t take pictures once inside because of the sign at the front entrance. It was a picture of a camera with a red circle surrounding it with a red line crossing through it. We later guessed, since we saw so many people with cameras taking photos that it must have meant no flash photos. When we learned this, I didn’t put the camera away. Exploring this castle takes a bit of time, we both believe maps should be handed out so you won’t miss anything. This has been the largest castle to date and almost entirely preserved. You can get lost, but only for a moment. I won’t go into too much detail, as it would get pretty boring, so look at the photos instead or visit it yourself. The inside had many rooms and thankfully, it had English explanations for most. We even had the chance to visit a monk’s dorm hall, but not the rooms themselves. We did try peaking through the key holes though. We had only envisioned an hour at this castle but spent nearly 3 and left in a hurry so we could do our best to keep to our schedule of being in the campsite in the Costa Del Sol by December 1st. Clearly, we could have spent more time visiting this castle.