Nobody Crosses Pedro

We began today with a visit to Alcobaça to tour the ornate Baroque-Gothic Cistercian Monastery of Santa Maria, where we'll hear the star-crossed story of King Pedro and his doomed mistress, Inês. 

The short version is that Pedro married Constance in a political marriage but didn't love her.  Instead, he had the hots for Inês. When Constance died Pedro and Inês shacked  up and she had several children.  The king (Pedro's dad) and the Portuguese nobles didn't like this situation because Inês' family wanted to get Spain to take over Portugal.  When Pedro and Inês got married the king decided to have her whacked.  He sent his henchmen to Coimbra to kill Inês.  When Pedro found out he went nuts and wanted to start a war with his dad the king.  His mom Queen Beatriz, talked him out of it. Pedro promised to be cool but when his dad died he got his revenge. Now that Pedro was king, he dug up Inês, made her the Queen, put her on the throne and forced the killers to  kiss her hand (yuck).  Then he cut open the killers and personally ripped out  their hearts while they were alive.  That's why they called him, "Pedro the Cruel".  

Nobody crosses Pedro.

Pedro and Inês are buried in the Alcobaca Cathedral in two ornate tombs.

Later we enjoyed some fun in the sun in the old coastal fishing village of Nazaré. The water was too cold to take a dip but the beach is beautiful.

Now it's back to our hotel which is supposed to be medieval style with crazy old keys for the doors and a bellboy that is dressed like a squire.  It took our neighbors 10 minutes to work the giant skeleton key to get in their room. The halls are full of armor, swords and crossbows but they said we can't  use them.