The pope is visiting Portugal this week. He’s in Lisbon right now, but things have been pretty busy throughout the country. Two days ago we went to Batalha and the Leiria mall and both were significantly more crowded than normal. On Saturday the pope goes to Fatima, which is only about 15 minutes from us. We plan on staying home because I think there will be way too many people out in the area.

We wanted to go out today, but not have to deal with the crowds. We went to Pombal a month or two ago but we were too tired to really walk around and we knew we wanted to go back again. Since it’s not a touristy city and there aren’t any major religious monuments (that we know of) we figured it was a safe day to go.

It turns out that we had gone the wrong way last time because the city was a lot bigger than we expected. That’s not to say that it’s big, but big enough to kill a few hours. They have a market, lots of cafes, and green space scattered around. They also have a castle at the top of a hill. We weren’t up for walking up the hill, so we’ll have to drive there one of these days.

Before waking around downtown we had lunch just outside the city at a fondue restaurant. The food was pretty good. We haven’t had fondue since we were in the US so it was a fun experience. It got us thinking about fondue and Kyle tried to find some more places. Looks like there are a few in Porto. One of these days we’ll go try one.

We head up north for our trip in just over a month and we’re excited. I can’t wait to see Viana do Castelo and Ponte de Lima. They both look great. And I can’t wait to go back to Braga and Guimaraes. Until then we’re going to do a bunch of day trips around here. We have been meaning to check out Torres Vedras and Peniche, so maybe one of those will be next.