Towards the end of last year I travelled out to Évora to shoot the Albergaria do Calvario, a boutique hotel inside the walls of the old town, in the historic heart of the city. These are some of my favourite images and you can see more on their website HERE. SaveSave SaveSave
Last summer we spent some time in Monforte in the Alentejo, where we discovered the beautiful Torre de Palma Wine Hotel a short drive from the town. This is a stunning part of the Alentejo and an area that I hadn´t yet explored… it´s a bit off the beaten track but well worth a visit.
Most of my husband´s family is from the Alentejo and half of them still live out there, in various towns scattered across the countryside. This works out perfectly as we are always visiting one house or the other and the Alentejo just so happens to be my favourite part of Portugal. This is Alcaçovas, where we spend our Easters.
We visited the Costa Vicentina several times this year and anyone who has been following this blog for more than 5 minutes will have realised that it´s pretty much our favourite part of Portugal… you can see more here and here. These images are from several different trip throughout this summer…
Last autumn, right before we jumped on a plane to Brazil, we hired a camper van and did a little road trip down the Costa Vicentina, the south west coast of Portugal… half in the Alentejo and half in the Algarve, this coastline is without a doubt one of my favourite parts of Portugal. The campervan is all part of a bigger plan that we have, to take some time off work and travel around Europe… it´s all still a work in progress and I´ll tell you more about it once we have a more definite idea of when and…
And last but not least, in this series of Alentejo towns, is Avis… a quiet little place in the northern Alentejo that (I have been told) has the rather dubious claim to fame of having been, once upon a time, the capital of Portugal. This was because the king at that time was from here and he didn´t want to be bothered by moving home and family all the way to Lisbon, so he just simply declared Avis to be the capital and that was that. The joys of a monarchy 😉 However, while trying to find out if this…
Mértola was one of the first places I visited in Portugal, back in 2007 while here on holiday for the first time. I remember being fascinated by the tiny white houses and mismatched roof tiles, so very different to what I was used to back home… but the thing that made the biggest impression, that took my breath away quite literally, was the heat. So much heat. No wind, no shade, just hot white light reflecting everywhere and a cloudless blue sky burning down from above. So keeping that in mind, try not to visit in the peak of summer… not…
Continuing with the Alentejo theme, this is Évora, the biggest city in the northern part of the region and a place that I have blogged about before, you can see more HERE. Things have been pretty crazy over at Piteira Photography the last few months and if you´ve been following me on Instagram you may have noticed that we´re on the road almost constantly, which is fun and exhilarating, but doen´t leave much time for beautifully descriptive blog posts… or for vacuuming the house, but that´s another story. So apologies for these short posts, I know it´s pretty much been “Here´s…
Another place we visited on our tour of the Alentejo was the Coudelaria de Alter (the Alter Stud Farm). This was an important stop on the “Portugal Itinerary” as my sister and my mom are both very horsey people and therefore my dad didn´t have any choice in the matter. I would never have thought to visit if my sister hadn´t insisted but it was definitely worth it, it´s a beautiful place and the horses are magnificent.
Over the next 5 weeks I´m going to be blogging a series of Alentejo towns… an Alentejo special! My family came to visit us in May, it was their first time in Portugal so we spent 3 weeks driving the country flat and because this is my favourite part, we spent quite a lot of time exploring the region. Monsaraz is a small hill-top town on the Alqueva lake, right on the border with Spain. Because of it´s strategic location on a hill near the Spanish border it is one of the oldest towns in the southern part of Portugal…
Kerry Murray 