{"id":1245,"date":"2018-05-03T11:35:41","date_gmt":"2018-05-03T18:35:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/?p=1245"},"modified":"2019-03-01T17:11:45","modified_gmt":"2019-03-02T01:11:45","slug":"capuchos-and-the-national-forest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/capuchos-and-the-national-forest\/","title":{"rendered":"Almocageme – Capuchos and the National Forest"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first couple of days in Almocageme we were getting our bearings.\u00a0 There are not a lot of guidelines in the out of the way places and dealing with groceries, buses, and the general day to day is very local.\u00a0 They are not geared to the tourist here.\u00a0 Having said that though, the people have been exceptionally friendly and helpful and a lot of them speak English which wasn\u2019t the case in Spain.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

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Claudia’s place<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Our host, Claudia, went above and beyond to be helpful, from picking us up at the train station in Sintra, to providing endless amounts of information about what to see and where to go.\u00a0 She even took us up the old forest trails for a short hike through park land and private property to get some amazing views of the area.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Then she gave us a hiking trail map. . . So, we looked at the confusing map and . . . we hiked up the mountainside along bike trails, logging roads, old railway beds, and what looked like deer tracks one afternoon. \u00a0We were aiming for a convent called Capuchos which, it turns out, is fairly close to the Pena Palace as the crow flies.\u00a0 The old forest trails I\u2019m sure, were fine for the Robin Hood and Friar Tuck types, (and crows) way back then but these days you really need to go back down to the valley and take the highway to the Palace.\u00a0 Or have a trail map that you may or may not know how to interpret.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But, being good little British Columbian outdoorsie-hiker types we stumbled onto our destination.\u00a0 The hour plus walk was peaceful with birds, bees, bears, and wolves.\u00a0 Ok, so no bears and wolves.\u00a0 Mostly a whole lot of trees.\u00a0 And speaking of Friar Tuck, the Capuchins were a Franciscan order of friars, noted for strict observance and austere living and you really get a sense of that at the convent.\u00a0 Capuchos, built in 1560, became known as the Cork Convent because the bark of the cork oak was used as insulation, window frames, doors, and seating.\u00a0 A very spiritual place with amazing views, an abundance of nature trails, and a botanical garden.<\/span><\/p>\n

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After touring around the convent, we decided that, being experienced trail hikers now, we would make our way through the forest to get to the Monserrate Palace, which wasn’t far (as the crow flies).\u00a0 Well, that was interesting.\u00a0 Note, old trail maps may NOT be accurate.\u00a0 By the time we found the Palace, it was late. And we\u2019d done our 10,000 steps for the day (and the next).\u00a0 So, we opted to get home via the bus that does the four-palace circuit with Monserrate being at the end.\u00a0 It took us in the other direction of course, all the way back to Sintra.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t care.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The first couple of days in Almocageme we were getting our bearings.\u00a0 There are not a lot of guidelines in the out of the way places and dealing with groceries, buses, and the general day to day is very local.\u00a0 They are not geared to the tourist here.\u00a0 Having said that though, the people have been exceptionally friendly and helpful and a lot of them speak English which wasn\u2019t the case in Spain.\u00a0 Our host, Claudia, went above and beyond to be helpful, from picking us up at the train station in Sintra, to providing endless amounts of information about what to see and where to go.\u00a0 She even took…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1158,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1245"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1245"}],"version-history":[{"count":31,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4248,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1245\/revisions\/4248"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}