Probably our only paid tour this trip...

As a (fairly) general rule, Lucy and I are pretty DIY. We usually enjoy making our own food more often than we enjoy meals out, and we tend to relish in the way we plan our trips for this same reason.

Ok, ok... so maybe I don't bring quite as much to the table as Lucy does, and she might shoulder a bit more of the planning than I, but our combined and accumulated travel experiences together has made us confident enough to plan our excursions without relying on tour guides, tour companies, or travel agents.

While in Lisbon we had planned to take a couple day trips: one to Fatima and another to a small medieval city called Óbidos. When we realized that our Eurail pass wouldn´t take us directly to either, save for a five hour five-train possibility to Óbidos (and public buses leaving us there for six hours before a possible return, too much time for us in any small town), Lucy's hightened travel Spidey-sense quicky realized we'd save time, money, and headaches if we caved in, poneyed up the euros, and booked a one-day tour to Fatima, Obidos, Nazaré, Alcobaça, and the monastery in Batalha.

The brochure promised a picturesque day-long journey through these towns, all on our own air conditioned bus with a tourguide fluent in all the romance languages, as well as German.

We were picked up promptly at 8:15 AM on an admitidly nice Cityline tour bus (though any bus is almost always guaranteed to give my knees bruises by the end) and taken to the central hub where we met our fellow tourmates for the day. There was a Portuguese couple, a French couple who was alright with an English language tour, too many English speakers to count, and a hold-out German couple who insisted on a German translation for themselves. So, every roadside attraction between cities was thus pointed out to us first in Portuguese, then English, and finally German, though the Germans had most likely missed, by then, the attraction being referred to.
But our tourguide was a trooper who rarely, if at all, showed any sort of exasperation at repeating herself three times whenever she uttered a sentence.

In the end, we both decided this was one of the first paid tours where we really got our money´s worth. We were given precisely an hour to wander each town before the bus picked us up at our drop off point and we were whisked off along Porgual´s unbelievable hilly, windy roads to the next stop. This amount of time, as well, was precisely the amount required to get some great pictures and see the major sites before one had time to succumb to the standard tourist traps common in every day-trip city.

Obidos was an amazing, cobbled, picturesque medieval town, famous for it´s production of a cherry liquer called ginjinha, often served in chocolate shot glasses for about 50 cents. Nazare was the perfect place to stop for lunch, right along the coast with a stunning beach surrounded 110 meter cliffs where we enjoyed a delicious restaurant recommendation from Lonely Planet (tuna with onion sauce, salad, and fries for me, while the chef made up a pork with port wine-sauce for Lucy, with freshly caught prawns with olives and bread, and vegetable soup to start). The stops in Alcobaça and Batalha both centered on the monasteries, of which I got some great photos that I will post as soon as I can.

The main point of the trip, I´m sure for all embarking on it, was Fatima. For those who don´t know, Fatima is Portugal´s main pilgrimage site. In 1917, Our Lady of Fatima appeared to three shepherd children on the thirteenth day of each month, for six months in a row. Conferred to the children by the Virgin Mary were three secrets, the last of which was only released by the Vatican in 2000. Definitely check out the Wikipedia page for some interesting information on this, though bear in mind that it is also, well, Wikipedia you´re looking at.

So, this is not some centuries old spot, where generations of pilgrims have visited. It is fairly modern, the main basilica only dating back to 1938. It was extremely interesting to see what a ¨modern¨pilgrimage site looked like, with its considerations to the increased populations, the handicapped, and the other languages of the world. The 9000-seat megachurch opposite the great basilica was a spectacle, something that contrasted greatly with the ancient cathedrals and monasteries we had just been touring.

What is my point in even mentioning that I deigned to take a tour? That even experienced travelers can benefit from sucking it up and just taking one! Public transit in a foriegn country is not universally cheap when you have many day trips planned, and the timining can especially be a pain (especially when it is hot and you want to lounge around). There is no shame if it actually benefits you, and you might (for once) thank yourself.