Weather cloudy for morning and early afternoon, sunny periods in afternoon, high of about 17C.
Today we visited two places, later in the afternoon we went to the town of Foz do Arelho, a stunning seaside town, but in the morning and early afternoon we went to the (Bacalhoa) Budda Eden Garden, near the town of Bombarrel, about 30min south of where we are staying. The Budda Eden Garden is the largest oriental garden in Europe. The site covers 85 acres of land. It was created by a Portuguese wine (Quinta dos Loridos estate) barron (Joe Berardo) in reaction to the destruction by the Taliban of the Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan, a historic site. This site came to our attention as something interesting to visit by stumbling across a Youtube video about it.
The site is full of amazing statues, gardens, ponds with Japanese koi and gold fish. Many statues are oriental in nature but there are also sections with other themes, animals, sculptures by Portugese artists, etc. The size of the park is staggering and the size of some of the statues, such as the Budda statues is enormous. After the visit we went into the visitor center and gift shop. Now the gift shop is basically a wine shop. Remember, this site was built by a wine barron, who owns one of the largest winery conglomerate in Portugal, part of which is adjacent to the Budda Eden site. So, while in the gift shop they are clearly selling wine, your entry ticket, which cost all of 5 Euro, includes a wine tasting of four different wines, no extra cost.
Again, as we keep saying, pictures do not do justice. Many of the statues, because there is no context, such as a person standing next to them, look rather small, but most are 20-30 or more feet tall and look very dramatic on the landscape. Anyway lets see if we can try and illustrate with some pictures……
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| Entry to Budda Eden Gardens |
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| Cork trees, with cork removed from bottom sections |
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| Art statue made of wine bottles. |
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| Fish in ponds. |
All you observant readers will notice that as the day progresses the layers of clothing come off. Then as it gets closer to sunset, the layers sometimes go back on!
Now onto Foz……a beach town, where the beach straddles either side of a river outlet into the Atlantic ocean……
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| Between the beach in the foreground and the far cliffs (which have beach at their feet) there is a river outlet. |
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| Very nice promenade, with beach on one side of road and restaurants and cafes on other |
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| You can see the river outlet in the ocean on the right side of this picture |
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| There were some kite surfers at Foz |
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| Older local gentleman (maybe late 70s or more) had plunked down a seat to watch the beach and waves |
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| View from upper roadway, above lower road and promenade |
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| Cafe with nice view across street from promenade |
Step count 13,323.
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