We left Lisbon this morning to start working our way up to Porto.

On the way we stopped in the town of Tomar to visit the Convent of Christ and Castle of Tomar. This is a group of buildings that were built between the 12th and 18th centuries, so it includes diverse architecture styles. It had close ties to the early days of Portugal, its royal family and the Templar Knights.

Ceiling in the entrance

The complex has a bunch of cloisters that were built over time and served various purposes. 

Tomb in a cloister

Pretty hallway off of another cloister

Ceiling in a chapel off of a cloister

One of the 2 big things to see the convent/castle is the charola. The charola is a 12th-13th century 16-sided rotunda with walls covered in paintings and gold leaf surrounding an octagonal painted and gold leaf covered structure. This was intended to replicate the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. There is no way I can do this justice. It was breathtaking. They are in the midst of doing restorations of some of the paintings so they were not all present. 

The charola

The charola

The other big thing to see here is the Chapter House Window on the Manueline church. The Chapter House Window is considered to be one of the premier examples of Manueline architecture. This is a huge sculpture.

Chapter House Window

We had lunch in the town of Tomar and spent some time wandering around.

Lunch view

This statue is of Gualdim Pais who was a templar knight. He founded the Castle of Tomar in 1160 and the town of Tomar in 1162.

Seen on the way: a bunch of huge stork nests in an electric tower. There were many of these.

We ended up in Porto, which is on the Douro River and got settled on our ship. They took us on a night sail of the river there.

Porto at night

Porto at night

Night before the super blue moon.