Today was Kaylea’s birthday, and thanks to our hot air balloon ride getting canceled, we got to start it the luxurious way: by sleeping in. All in all, not the worst consolation prize. We had a slow breakfast at the hotel, then headed into Évora to see the cathedral. On the way there, we wandered through a little market street full of shops selling things made out of cork. Purses, hats, wallets, shoes, postcards, bowties, probably a full cork suit if you looked hard enough. Portugal takes cork seriously. When we got to the cathedral, we found out the entrance was cash only, so we had to go find an ATM. But we came back. We are nothing if not determined tourists when there is a cathedral roof on the line. The cathedral ended up being one of the highlights of the day. They let you climb up onto the roof, which sounds more exclusive than it is because they let everyone do it, but still. They let us onto the roof. To get there, we climbed one of those tight, winding spiral staircases that ...
We woke up on time. Finally. After several days of travel chaos, jet lag, accidental naps, and general time-zone confusion, this felt like a major personal victory. We made it to breakfast relatively on time and were feeling pretty good about ourselves. At breakfast, we got a little bad news for future us. Our hot air balloon ride for the next day had been canceled because of the wind. That was supposed to be our big Évora birthday plan. Kaylea loves heights and has never been in an untethered balloon and the idea of travel across the inner Portuguese country side had us humble bragging for weeks ahead of time. We must've forgotten to knock on wood each time. Instead, tomorrow was now going to become spontaneous exploration day. The hot air balloon company also let us know over email that one of Aaron’s phone numbers was not working. Unfortunately, that was the same phone number we had given to all of our hotels. So that's awesome. It'll probably work out. But that was tomo...