Monasteries and more miracles

Alcobaça, Batalha, Fatima and Óbidos

Off we go, zipping along in our rental car, on the 120 km/hr. highways. Quite a contrast to “Babette’s” 6 knots top speed. That’s jogging! So, after a look at the map we opt for more sedate, winding country roads. We're off to Portugal's top gothic monasteries in Alcobaça and Batalha.

Alcobaça's Basilica, from about 1200, is Portugal's largest. And possibly loveliest! The high, narrow, gothic interior is in a light stone, unadorned. The long nave seems plain, but powerful as it soars above you, and pulls you, pillar by pillar, towards the alter and apse. The Cistercian Monastery attached has a wonderful enclosed, arcaded cloister garden. There are orange trees, the ripe fruit fallen on the ground, a beautiful fountain in one corner. Very peaceful.

Next Basilica: Batalha. It seemed more Moorish and ornate, and also absolutely lovely. The first Portuguese king, Jaoa I, had it built to celebrate beating the invading Castilians in 1385. But a few lances and shining armor had rusted on the battlefields before its completion in 1580. No rush, no stress back then.
The organic style with shells and rope carved in marble is called Manueline, from King Manuel I. Its maritime symbols matching Portugal’s age of maritime discovery (Remember Vasco da Gama?) This Basilica, also in a light stone, has intricate high relief stonework and just as intricate rose windows, the colored glass painting the light stone in all the colors of the rainbow. A fairytale castle feeling.

Fatima is different. One of the world's most popular pilgrimage goals, it all started simply enough. The three children are watching their sheep in an oak grove in the evening. When the Virgin Mary visits them. Their intense experience of a light, and the Virgin Mary is now transformed to an enormous stone basilica with an even more enormous plaza in front, a couple of football fields long, I can imagine. All grey stone and empty of the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims, it appears very barren. These believers crowd the town during special holy days. Completed as late as 1953, it's a conglomeration of historical styles, sadly lacking the human touch of the medieval stonemason’s hands. The gigantism of the outdoor arena lacks the mystery of the gothic cathedral's heaven-stretching height. Here there are glassed-in, microphone Masses, not echo-y acoustics in long, narrow, stone naves and hundreds of organ pipes. Fatima is about as far from its childish sincerity as it could possibly come. A softening aspect, though, are the shady picnic groves with stone slab tables and benches surrounding the back sides of the Basilica.

Óbidos: We caught sight of the old aqueducts and walled city on a hill from a long distance. It's a fairytale city and castle, from the 1200's. We walked along the ramparts, high up on the castle walls. Watch your step; it's a long drop on the open inner side! The houses inside are built as late as the 1700's and are still lived in. The castle is a "state hotel, a "Pousada”. Now I know where I'm staying next trip to Portugal!

By now the sun is setting, the castle walls golden, the darkening plains beyond almost purple. We’d better get back to "Babette" before we turn into pumpkins.