It Takes a Villa

The following morning, as I sat at breakfast studying the map, Fernanda Pinto approached me.

"It may be hard for you to find the main road," she said. "My husband has agreed that we should lead you to Evora on our way back to Lisbon."

This is akin to a resident of Philadelphia visiting Washington, and offering to show a stranger the Eastern Shore on their way home to Philly. The couple waved aside our protests that this was too much of an inconvenience.

This is how we managed to find a fabulously beautiful restaurant with incredibly good food the moment we arrived in Evora. The Jardim do Paco is set next to a courtyard surrounded by a 16th-century monastery, the remains of a temple to Diana built by the Romans in the second century, and the largest cathedral in Portugal.

After lunch, the couple accompanied us to the sites just outside the restaurant, then led us through the small city that is completely enclosed by a medieval wall. Students from the Universidade de Evora (founded in 1559) sip coffee at outdoor tables in the main square lined by Moorish-style walkways. We are told that Inquisition trials were held at a building now used by the university, but we never did find it.

Evora was conquered by the Romans in 59 B.C. The Moors ruled until a Christian re-conquest in the 12th century. Everything but the clothes in shop windows seems ancient. The entire city is considered a U.N. World Heritage Site.

We were blown away by the museum, where Roman statues and other artifacts from as far back as the second century are displayed without glass or ropes. In the gallery, people reached to touch Renaissance paintings. I wondered if the works were not as precious as they looked. Then I noticed a Hendrick Avercamp oil from the 17th century. This I know is precious, and I also know I will never again get such a close look at such wonderful, valuable art.

Our new friends left us with instructions not to miss the chapel made of bones in a church called the Igreja de Sao Francisco. We didn't. It is too weird and macabre to miss. Who exactly decided to create walls through the artistic display of the bones and skulls of 5,000 monks? All I am told is that, no, it had nothing to do with the Inquisition.

I still wish we'd had more time in Evora. I wish we'd seen Tavira and Loule. I'm sorry we didn't have time to catch a fado performance in Lisbon. It killed me to hear natives say the north is even older than the south, and better.

But I'm glad we didn't try to shove everything possible into a week. We learned a valuable lesson: A trip does not have to be a frenzy. Sometimes, less really is more.

And I wouldn't have missed Idalia's custard pies, or her goodbye hug, for all the towns in Portugal.