inside portugal

THIS MONTH'S TRAVEL SECRET: A generous queen becomes a saint

The university city of Coimbra, in Portugal's Centro Region, is the site of one of the greatest love stories of this country's long history and where the remains of a woman now revered as Queen Saint Isabel are buried. The town celebrates this saint each year.
 
King Dom Dinis, who ruled from 1261-1325, saw a portrait of Isabel of Aragon and knew he loved her even before they met, just prior to their arranged marriage.  They met in walled town of Trancoso, where they did indeed fall in love with each other. The king loved Isabel's generosity and concern for the poor and she became his queen.
 
From their palace perched high above the Mondego River in the elegant city of Coimbra, Isabel could see the Poor Clair's convent, precariously perched on the riverbank below. Each winter, the convent would flood and each winter Queen Isabel came to its rescue, paying for repairs to the building.  She spent so much of the royal treasury on the convent's troubles that the king's treasurer had to protest-there would not be enough to fund the king's ambitious plans to fortify the country's frontiers if Queen Isabel kept it up. So, the king admonished her and asked that she not spend any more of the royal treasury on the convent that should not have been built on the river bank in the first place. Months later, the winter floods came again to flood the convent. Isabel, not wanting to break her promise to the king, took her own gold and jewels down to the convent, in a box hidden under her cloak.  The king sat at his window, saw his Queen walking toward the river and suspected immediately she was going against his word.  On horseback, he caught up with her and demanded to see what she carried. She prayed for help, knowing the King was by now beyond reason.
 
"They are roses, my Lord," she answered.
 
The king, of course, would not believe roses would bloom in the cold month of January.
 
"But, they are roses!" Isabel exclaimed. She opened her cloak and revealed roses to him.
 
The king recognized this as a miracle, dropped to his knees and begged Isabel's forgiveness.
 

The king then granted the queen the revenues from several towns so that she would have her own funds for helping the poor.  She was granted the towns of Trancoso and Obidos, near Lisbon.
 
Isabel was canonized and soon became the patron saint of Coimbra.  Every even year in July the city celebrates its saint with a huge parade, and a statue of her is carried down from the new St. Clara Convent-now built safely high on a hill. Queen Isabel was buried at the convent she helped so often.  She is celebrated in story and song to this day. In fact, when a popular comedy show in Portugal poked fun at her a few years back, the public outcry was such that the network took it off the air. And, if you are in the charming city of Coimbra, checkout the Quinta das Lagrimas (now an inn)- home of another legend, that of  Pedro and Ines  - read the tragic tale at www.insideportugaltravel.com/?p=276
 
More information at : http://www.visitcentro.com/en/203-218-219-3786/centro-destinations/coimbra/news.html
 
NEWS AND EVENTS:
Take "low" tea at the Tivoli Lisbon Hotel
Today, in Lisbon, the 5-star Tivoli Lisboa Hotel serves afternoon tea 4 to 6 p.m. daily. "Low  Tea Voli" is served in the Beatriz Costa Tea Room in the hotel lobby, with a choice of 23 kinds of tea along with scones, sandwiches and cakes.
More information:
http://www.tivolihotels.com

Europe's only tea plantation
Porto Formoso, on the island of São Miguel in Portugal's Azores Islands, is home to two tea factories and a plantation, the only one in all of Europe. It succeeds because of the island's balmy climate and the rich, volcanic soil here. At one time, there were many plantations and 14 factories on the islands, when tea replaced oranges as a crucial item for trade. At Cha Porto Formoso, the tea is processed on vintage 19th century machinery from England.  Visitors can walk the fields of tea plants, tour the tea factory and sit and sip in the tearoom.
More information:
http://www.chaportoformoso.com
 
 
Tea has been grown at Gorreana since 1883. Visitors can drop in between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. and, depending upon the time of year, see the tea production at various stages-picking is between April and September; packing done on site by local women; wilting, rolling, fermentation, drying. Both black and green teas are produced here, the only difference being the fermentation process.
More information:
http://www.gorreana.com/
 
 
B&Bs are now easier to find, book in the Azores with website
The Casas Açorianas, Associação Açoriana de Turismo em Espaço Rural is an organization of B&Bs offering 42 properties visitors can choose.
More information:
http://www.casasacorianas.com
 
Business class travelers can fly between Newark New Jersey and Lisbon on TAP Portugal for $2,970 In Its newly renovated Executive Class.  Regular fares to Lisbon and Porto from Newark are just $590 or $606 for the winter.
More Information:
http://www.flytap.com
 
 
 
VERSE: A Poet King
Dom Dinis was not only a great king; he was a Renaissance man before anyone knew that term. He was one of the early poets of the Portuguese language, using the poetic tradition known as the Portuguese-Galician style inspired by poems in Arabic and Hebrew. He wrote:
Oh flowers, Oh flowers of the green pine
If you have news of my friend,
Oh God, where is he?
Oh flowers, Oh flowers of the green branch
If you have news of my beloved,
Oh God, where is he?
If you have news of my friend,
The one who lied about what he told me,
Oh God, where is he?
If you have news of my beloved,
The one who lied about what he swore to me,
Oh God, where is he?
 
EATS: A royal alliance popularizes tea and creates the tea trade
 
In 1662, Catherine of Bragança of Portugal, daughter of King João IV of Portugal and his wife, Louise of Guzman, married Charles II. This alliance not only encouraged the trading of tea between the East and England, but also introduced tea drinking as a costume in English society. Tea was mostly unknown to Europeans until the 16th century. In the 1560s, Father Gasper da Cruz mentioned tea in a letter home from China to Portugal. Small quantities made its way to Portugal, as gifts and such, but when Catherine married Charles, she replaced wine, ale and spirits with tea in the royal courts. The English East Indian Company would bring tea to King Charles for his bride Catherine. Tea did not become an important commodity from China until 1668. After nine more years, it was considered a major commodity.
 
See more at www.insideportugaltravel.com