Instead of taking the Google Maps route on blind faith, we asked locals how to get out of the Parque Natural da Serra da Estrela. This took us through Belmonte, which we discovered was home to a Jewish museum and also a church on a traditional route to Santiago de Compostela.
Belmonte has an otter sculpture and a variety of memorials to Pedro Álvares Cabral (1467-1520) who was born in the town and went on to become “the first human in history to ever be on four continents”. He is credited as the European discoverer of Brazil.
The museum is small, but provides a good overview of Judaism and how it was vaguely continued after the Inquisition:
There’s the inevitable castle in this hilltop town and also a church that has been turned into a museum regarding the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela:
I’m surprised that Sixt was so passionate about charging us for a minor scratch. They should celebrate any time that a foreigner returns a diesel-powered car that hasn’t been destroyed via filling it with gasoline. Here’s what the clueless English speaker might see at a pump:
“gasóleo” is diesel and “gasolina” is gasoline. The letter codes are also important. “B7” is diesel, though we were advised not to use the cheaper “simple” version because it can clog injectors over the long run (I paid up for the premium gas to keep Sixt’s cars in top condition and they certainly didn’t act grateful!).
Somehow we got onto the highway without misfueling the already-shaky Mercedes and made it to our next stop: Parque Arqueológico do Vale do Côa, a UNESCO World Heritage site discovered only in the 1990s. Book in advance if you want to do the English-language Jeep tour and see the Stone Age rock carvings in situ. The museum has a good restaurant and a great location, with the opportunity to take stairs all the way down into the deep valley cut by the Douro.
We probably should have figured out some wineries to visit near this museum, some of which looked spectacular from the road, and stayed overnight, but we’d already reserved a hotel in the small town of Amarante, about two hours west.
Amarante has some nice churches and a museum devoted to local hero Amadeo de Souza Cardoso, a painter who might have become the Portuguese Picasso if he hadn’t died at age 30 from the 1918 flu. It was mostly a nice place to relax and enjoy the small town Portugal lifestyle.
The town has a clean hot springs pool facility (call to reserve; they speak English), but is mostly famous for cookies that Bruno would love (these are traditional fertility-related, not modern 2SLGBTQQIA+ symbols):
Here’s the view from our AirBnb (two nights):
Did your children giggle at the fertility cookies?