Chapter Four: Obidos and the Christmas Village that Wasn't

On Wednesday, we took a 9-hour bus tour from Lisbon. The first place we went to was Obidos, a small village about an hour outside of Portugal. Since I don't quite know how to describe it without overusing words like "beautiful" and "cool," I'll post the description from the pamphlet I picked up.

Besides its material heritage of the past, Obidos, a melting pot of historical tradition, is, still today, one of the main jewels of the country.

So, there you go.
Obidos has some sort of Christmas celebration going on. All over town, there were signs directing us to the Christmas Village, which we decided to save for last. Heading into the village, however, there were these Christmas trees, decorated by sponsors. There was also a red carpet for all the Christmas celebrities and such.

Portugal is known for its blue tile like this. It is everywhere around Lisbon and Obidos. Very fancy.

We walked through the streets of Obidos which were also pretty decked out for Christmas. And still the signs for Christmas Village continued and our excitement built.

We stopped in a cafe and sampled Obidos's signature alcohol: cherry liquer called Ginja. It came in a chocolate shot glass and it only cost 1 euro! Delicious.


We continued along through the path, seeing more wonderful things as we went along. The town was very small, I think we covered most of it in the hour and a half we spent there.


We came to one end of the town and saw castle. It used to be the Royal Palace and the flags still fly there. Now, it functions as a Pousada which is a hotel run by the state.


We explored around the castle some more, trying to dodge the rain. There was a group of school children on a field trip, seemingly there to see the Christmas Village. They were very little, maybe first grade, and they were adorable!

We finally made our way to Vila Natal: Christmas Village. I couldn't wait to see what Obidos had in store for us. We climbed a hill and found...nothing. Not one solitary Christmas light. It was very strange for them to have built up such an attraction only to have nada. We walked along the path where the Christmas Village supposedly was and continued to see absolutely nothing of the Christmas persuasion. It was a little bit of a letdown but we got over it. We returned to our van for the next part of the tour.