Évora is the largest city in the Alentejo and probably the most prosperous. With 14th century walls and houses still intact,there is much to see--and photograph. We wandered ourselves and also took a guided, walking tour. Our guide, Maria, grew up in Évora, across from a large house with an entry through a gate and then up a stairway lined with tiles. As a child she thought that the stairway was for Cinderella. Another guide, who was waiting for her German group, emigrated from Holland more than 30 years ago so that she and her husband could buy property to begin a farm. Today they grow wheat and grapes; the grapes go to a collective to make wine.

    Évora has a long settlement history and was a major Roman outpost and, later, a trading center for the Moors. At one time, Évora had one of the largest Jewish populations in Portugal in a neighborhood just off Giraldo Square.

    A man with a white beard and long hair, like someone without access to a barber, paced back and forth in Giraldo Square in the morning. He looked like he might be homeless but later he was joined by a couple of younger men who seemed to know him.  Perhaps the older man simply wanted to walk about in the early morning.

    We ate a hearty lunch the first day at Café Alentejo (where Dan had a regional specialty, black pig--free-ranging pigs kept within large field enclosures), and the next day had a very good meal of gazpacho and grilled halibut under shade in Giraldo Square. A man walked his dog around the square. The man walked with a gait reminiscent of someone who'd had syphilis and the dog followed at precisely the same pace as the man.

    This was graduation week for students at the University of Évora; they celebrated with a parade, beer cans in hand, through the center of the city, much as Princeton graduates do at the P-rade.

    We bought cheese, sourdough bread, red wine, and chocolate from Pingo Doce, the Portuguese supermarket chain, for dinner both days in Évora, sitting on the patio outside our room at Caso do Vale Hotel, a modern hotel a short drive outside the city walls. We cooled off before dinner with a short swim in the pool. Breakfast was the typical and sumptuous buffet of breads, pastries, yogurt, granola, fruit, cheeses, meats, and coffee.

    While we saw several Japanese tour groups in Évora, only a few Americans toured on their own. A family from Arizona was at the Roman temple; the father took our photo.