The first site on driving to Elvas is the aqueduct from the 1600s. We parked nearby and then walked through the walls to the city. This was a less prosperous town than those seen before. Elvas has many empty stores, and the streets are not so impeccably clean as those in the villages we had visited. The modern art museum had a mix of artistic formats set in large rooms. A guard following us thorough the museum; we were the only visitors. As well, we were the only ones to visit the photography museum, which houses a very large collection of cameras and just a small room of photographs, this exhibit changing a few times per year. Again, a guard followed us through the rooms.

    Driving out of Elvas, we passed a gypsy caravan with wagons, horses, and families. In Borba, we saw another gypsy wagon near the park. The substitute innkeeper in Monsaraz told us that the area gypsies trade horses and gold and are generally not a problem, keeping to themselves.

    Borba is a tiny town, with a little shady park where we ate our picnic lunch of rolls, cheese, figs, and chocolate from the Marvão pousada. The town has marble all around and as we left we passed large mounds of quarried marble, with a few large cutting factories. These were closed, perhaps because the day was a holy day.  When we arrived in Vila Viçosa, we learned about the saint’s day, as all of the museums there, including the palace, were closed.