Last month’s post explained how Portugal became the destination of my first solo trip abroad. This post reveals how my appreciation for that nation grew during the group tour led by Romina through SmarTours. A disclaimer of sorts: I’m writing what I believe I remember.

Vasco de Gama sailed into the fog hanging in my middle school mind and was rarely heard of again until I stood outside the cathedral where he had brought his ship’s flag to be blessed. The year was 1497, Romina told my tour group.

De Gama and his crew became the first Europeans to reach India by sailing around the Cape of Good Hope, she further explained. The coveted spices, salt, and tea with which they returned and the trade route which they established brought enormous wealth to Portugal and its king Manuel I. Suddenly de Gama stepped onto solid ground in my memory; random facts floating in the fog with him landed in a clear picture of Portugal’s prestige and power for more than a century.

In Lisbon a few days later, I entered the cathedral built at the direction of King Manuel to celebrate the expanse of the Portuguese empire during his reign. Most memorable to me were its towering pillars styled like palm trees and a pair of elephants facing each other in a roomy alcove. Not all the art was about empire, however; especially notable was a large-as-life pregnant Mary, the only such statue I’ve ever seen.

I marveled at the difference between that magnificent cathedral and the humble church in Guimaraes where Portugal’s first king had been baptized nearly 400 years before de Gama’s voyage. Unadorned and nearly windowless, the church brought new meaning to the term the Dark Ages.

A short walk away stands the castle from which soldiers protected the future king’s family and other residents of Guimaraes. Like the church, the small, roofless castle surprised me. It was just the second day of the tour, and I had yet to learn that castles in Portugal, built strictly for defense, sit atop hills like modest crowns.

Even more surprising: A boy born on the Iberian Peninsula in the Middle Ages – albeit the son of a nobleman – would grow up to have the vision to unite the Peninsula’s western districts into one nation and have himself proclaimed its first king, Afonso I of Portugal. His was an accomplishment not yet seen in Spain, France, or Italy.

I found much to admire and enjoy in Portugal: the captivating art and architecture of cathedrals that appeared with limited human resources and lasted for centuries; the alabaster walls of Coimbra aglow at sunset and mounting a hillside like stairsteps above the river flowing by; the Johannine Library at the University of Coimbra, the most beautiful room I believe I’ve ever seen and a refuge for old, rare books; the throng of pilgrims and seekers of healing on a gorgeous Sunday morning outside the towering cathedral at Fatima, where the Virgin Mary purportedly spoke to three children 100 years ago; the Roman ruins and artifacts, remarkable in their resemblance to things we use and design today; and the charming doors and windows along cobblestone streets, where I imagined residents in the Middle Ages assessing the weather and the passersby.

Nothing moved me more, however, than two chestnut trees in Guimaraes. They stood on either side of the street where I stepped off the tour bus. It wasn’t the legendary spread of their branches that I loved so much – it was what I felt standing beneath them. If two saints had greeted me with a welcoming embrace, I suspect the experience would have been much the same.

Many of the corks that will pop across the United States during the upcoming holiday season have probably come from Portugal. That’s a story worth telling all by itself in Part III of Lone Traveler Abroad.