it smells different

I think out of all the places I've visited in Portugal so far, my favourite is Tomar. Cat, Filipa, Nuno and I drove up there in April this year. It was a looooong drive.. we had a GPS thingy but it mooed like a cow everytime we had to make a turn, so we switched off the sound. We did not pay more attention though (I didn't pay any attention at all as I was sitting in the back) because at some point we missed the exit and added about another hour or so on our trip. Anyways, I got to see a lot of nice countryside so it wasn't a waste.

So let's get started.. Tomar was founded in the 12th century by the Knights Templar of Portugal. For those of you who don't know the Templar Knights were some of the most skilled Knights during the Crusades. The non-combative members of the Order were very smart with their money and devised many innovative financial techniques or forms of early banking across Christendom. When the Crusaders lost the Holy Land support for the Templar Knights dwindeled.. and eventually mistrust grew around them. King Philip the IV of France had large debts owing to them and instead of paying them back he arrested many of them, forced them to make confessions of their guilt and then burned them at the stake (I guess that's one way to deal with your debts!!). He then ordered the Pope at the time to disband the Order.. and that was that! Or was it? The Templars in Portugal managed to escape the fate of their comrades because the ruler of Portugal at the time, King Dinis, made up a new Order, called the Order of Christ, and tranferred all of the members, assets and knowledge of the Templars to this new Order. Later this Order became a great catalyst to the Portuguese age of expansion and exploration. Sorry if I am going off track here but just wanted to give some background to these Templars because they built some really impressive fortresses across Europe and the Holy Land and were generally good at kicking butt (if I'm sounding like an expert it's completely unintentional.. I wikipized most of this info). Ok.. enough history for now.. i'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Here's a picture on the way there.. I foolishly thought that the hilltop in the distance was the fortress of Tomar, but it wasn't..

Finally we arrived.. We had to quickly gobble up some lunch because we arrived a bit late. Of course, nothing in Portugal can be done quickly and we ended up spending over an hour eating lunch.. the portions were huge too.

We had to climb up to the top of the town to check out the Covent of the Order of Christ, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Finally, we got there..

I know, it's pretty scary isnt it?

Most people would just walk through the gate.. but since I'm a crazy Yemeni I decided to climb over the fortress walls. The Moors tried to capture this fortress in 1190.. I can see why they had trouble!

That round building is the Templar church. The Templars liked to build circular churches and model them along the lines of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem because they thought it was a remanant of the Temple of Solomon.