I live here, and half the people I end up having a coffee with are in Lisbon for a month with a laptop. Every one of them has done their day trips at the weekend. So has everybody else in the city. That is the whole problem, and I do the same thing in reverse three or four times a year, so I have made this exact mistake in other people's countries. If you are here for four weeks you have five weekdays a week to play with. I did Evora on a Tuesday and the difference was almost funny. Eight people around the Roman temple at half ten in the morning. No queue at all at the chapel of bones, which on a Saturday in June it certainly is not. Door to door time is the thing to work out before you book anything. Evora is an hour and a half each way if you take the A6 straight there, and almost nobody takes the A6 straight there. Ours went out via Monsaraz and we were not back at Cais do Sodre until nearly eight in the evening. If you have a call at six, that day is gone. Money. A private car for the day for two of us came to around 380 euros. The bus from Sete Rios is under 15 each way and puts you at the Evora terminal, ten minutes walk from the walls. Both are fair for what they are. The car only made sense for us because of the Monsaraz detour, and because my partner cannot spend a whole day on her feet at 34 degrees without twenty minutes of air conditioning every couple of hours. Food, because somebody always asks. Inside the walls a lot of places shut after lunch and do not open again until seven. We sat down at half two and were more or less the last table served.
