We drove from Santiago de Compostella to Vigo to drop off our car. As I have mentioned before, taking a car across country borders is a huge cost…..like 3 times the cost of dropping it off in the same country, so we dropped it in the nearest city in Spain and had a driver take us from Vigo to Porto. Along the way, we had a prearranged stop in Braga to see the Bom Jesus de Monte. The Bom Jesus de Monte? Is that a Chinese dessert with a baby Jesus inside? No. It’s a church with a very cool set of steps.
Here is the church itself.
Here is the view from the top….specifically from the restaurant where we had lunch. The smog is due to all of the local farmers burning their “organic” material from their farms. This has been fairly common in Spain, but not so much in Portugal.
Here is a shot of the church from further down the steps.
This is from the bottom of the steps that look straight up towards the church. There are more steps but they curve off away from the church view. You know it’s Portugal from the inlaid white and black pattern in the rocks. This type of pattern is everywhere in Portugal.
Off to the side of the path down the steps are these little church scenes. I don’t know for sure, but I think the Roman dude and the guy with the weird crowbar on his right went straight to hell when they died. Not sure who they are messing with, but the lady with the Admiral Stars in her halo is not happy!
After Braga we were off to Porto, where our son Fletcher will be joining us for the last two weeks of our trip.