Even though we weren't to bed until 2:30, we got off by 9:30 and headed north beginning one of the most fascinating days of the trip. We had planned some serious sightseeing and, this evening, we were to be paying guests in the private home of one of Portugal's best known families

A friend of ours in London has a company which specializes in arranging, with the help of the Portuguese government, visits, as a houseguest, to a handful of Portugal's most important manor houses. Having pioneered the concept in the United States at The Point, I knew it could be great fun and I asked her to pick the best; we could modify our itinerary accordingly. She called back to say that we were to be welcomed at the home of the family that founded and still owns Portugal's historic porcelain works, Vista Alegre. I received the brochure the next day which raved about the house, Quinto do Paça da Ermida, and its charming staff (including one of the country's best cooks)! Quite frankly, this arrangement was critical to the whole trip — I wanted to have something really special about which to write you.

We kept the coast in sight for about two hours, driving past wide beaches on one side and rolling green hills spotted with whitewashed hamlets on the other. Richard knew what we ought to see and I was just enjoying the view when up ahead we spied a medieval village surrounded by castellated walls. It almost looked like a contrived tourist attraction but, quickly consulting our maps, we figured it had to be Obidos. Richard flipped back a few pages and read: "Dom Dinis, passing through with his young bride, made her a present of the town because she had admired the ramparts twining like a ribbon around a bouquet of shining white houses. From then on, Obidos was the wedding present given to Portugal's queens."

We parked outside the walls and walked along the narrow streets. I peeked into a cute hotel, Albergaria Rainha Santa Isabel, and several small galleries and craft shops along what is really the only commercial street in the village. Climbing the stone steps at the end of the street we came upon the Pousada do Castelo. If we hadn't been heading for the highlight of the trip later that day, I would have loved to have stayed here. It was the ancient castle of the governor of Obidos and has been carefully and casually restored. The village itself was charming and a perfect place to pause for a day of tranquil strolls and pauses in a spot time has yet to touch.

But the Green Guide called and, far beyond, our hostess was waiting. We drove through Caldas da Rainha which at one time was the most popular hot springs resort in Portugal. The waters had been given royal promotion by Queen Leonor in 1485 when she built a hospital there and personally administered its healing waters.

A few miles further on we came to the first objective of the day, Alcobaça, the site of the royal abbey of Santa Maria. Founded in 1153, the Cistercian monks moved in 25 years later and started to build what became Portugal's largest church. The abbey became one of the most powerful in the country and at one time as many as 4000 monks lived here. While the church is festooned and filigreed, its façade contains a beautifully simple Gothic portal above which a magnificent rose window rainbows the honey-colored columns within. In stark contrast, the dormitory's vastness — twenty pillars support the great Gothic vaulted arches — hushes conversation; in an instant you are transported back through 800 years of history and start imagining how it all really must have been. The perfectly-restored abbey tells it all. In the kitchen, whose ceiling must soar at least 30 feet to accommodate the chimney of the central stove, a stream slips through a marble gutter to the dishwashing area. Through a doorway is the larder. It must be 100 yards by 50 and its tiers were arranged to store meat, vegetables, fruit (the orchards planted by the original monks continue to supply the country's finest today) and firewood — the forests of 13 surrounding towns were ravaged to keep up the supply of hundreds of cords per month. While we were there for only about two hours, one could easily spend twice as long without taking it all in. Go, it's breathtaking.

Three miles beyond we found a roadside restaurant and had a nice lunch of pasta and grilled pork which was good and cost nothing. It seems to me that in Portugal one can find the most dependable food at such roadside stops — the uglier, the better.

A half an hour later, we entered Batalha and the site of another monastery, equally spectacular and almost identical in layout to the abbey of Santa Maria but very different in style — Santa Maria da Vitoria. In 1385, João I, twenty years old, defeated the invasion by the King of Castile and to celebrate this miracle, vowed to build the most beautiful church imaginable.

The plans were modeled after Alcobaça but as the king had just married Phillipe of Lancaster who wanted her husband to use the English architect Huguette, the style was changed to Gothic Perpendicular. What resulted is a serenity of design in which the soaring church melds perfectly with the two adjacent cloisters. The only bizarrity is now its most famous attraction — the Unfinished Chapels. Never, anywhere have I seen such truly extraordinary stone carving. An enormous doorway, an amazing example of ornate Manueline architecture of lace-like intricacy, leads into the chapels which stand open to the elements; while one king after another dreamed of finishing them, the money ran out before the roofs went on. Inside the church there are several equally heavily-reliefed sarcophagi of interest. One holds the remains of Henry the Navigator. Although he was responsible for the era of exploration, it's remarkable that he never navigated one himself.

Exploring these two magnificent edifices on the same day is rewarding but exhausting and it was at this point that I realized that our itinerary was over-stretched. Hot, tired and out of film, we headed northeast to pick up the motorway realizing that our goal was still hours away. What we should have done, (oh boy, should we have!) was to have gone straight to Buçaco and stayed at The Palace Hotel. This 17th-century monastery, surrounded by a botanical forest, was turned into a royal residence by King-consort Ferdinand who built the Palácio da Pena at Sintra and later, after much extraordinary architectural tweaking, became what is considered by some to be one of Europe's great, idiosyncratic hotels. But you can't do everything and I was looking forward anyway to a wonderful dinner party and scintillating conversation at Quinta do Paça da Ermida.

"Oh, you can't get there from here!" he mumbled — the third person we had asked in the last five miles. Our friend in London had instructed us to go to Ilhavo and ask. I guess it wasn't her fault that the road was being torn up and the traffic sent 'round Robin Hood's barn in directions we couldn't judge to towns that weren't on the map. We kept driving and asking. Every time we saw a grand house in the distance or a large stand of trees, Richard said, "That must be it." It never was. Finally we came upon some women washing their laundry by the side of the road in concrete basins obviously designed for the job. Once again, Portuguese being an impossibility, I got out with my maps and most forlorn look to ask the way. (I mean this had to be the largest and most important estate within miles, why was this getting so difficult?) Nodding their heads and pointing first at their feet, then across the way, they told us we had arrived. At last!

We drove the 50 yards around the bend.....that couldn't be it. A rusted gate was open to a small dirt yard surrounded by a U-shaped house of plain proportions. Weeds edged everything and there wasn't a soul in sight. We climbed the steps to the front door and rang the bell.....nothing. Richard was half-way back to the car muttering under his breath and shaking his head, I rang again. I heard a door open and close, footsteps approached and the door was opened.....a crack. A maid-like person meekly peered out and asked what we wanted. At least I guess that's what she said. Richard bounded the stairs and empirically demanded to be let in; we were expected, invited in fact, and this performance was nonsense. The maid slammed the door in our faces.

Richard rang the bell again. This time the maid returned with a piece of paper in her hand — the confirmation from London that Mr. Edward Carter and Mr. Richard Shepherd M.P. were indeed expected and arriving today. I gave the door a shove, grabbed our bags and we were in. The front hall was dim and dingy. There was a guestbook on the table; the last entry had been a year ago. All the doors from the hall were shut; I put down my bags and sat on them. I wanted to know the form: where were our rooms, when was dinner, were we to wear black tie and when was breakfast?

How Richard learned Portuguese in the next three minutes, I'll never know but somehow he gleaned that the lady of the house would be home in 30 minutes and that our rooms were just through that door and down the hall. Things were looking up; the rooms were quite nice. Mine had two four-poster singles and his had the same but the posters were nicely framed on the walls. As he headed for a look around the garden, I loaded my camera to join him. Seconds later he rushed in saying, "Shut the windows and don't dare go out, I've already been bitten three times." What we had failed to realize was that this area of Portugal is one huge marshland; ever heard of "Mosquito Coast"? He also said that he had seen a woman through the basement windows talking with the maid, we wondered if the lady of the house had been there all along? (It turned out she had.)

Just then Madame appeared and appeared...rather put out. Speaking better French than English, she explained that she did not "do" dinner; didn't care what we wore; perhaps we could find something to eat in a nearby village (if we could find it) — she didn't have any recommendations; that she locked the front door at midnight and no, we couldn't have a key in case we got lost returning (let alone going). Not even offering us a welcoming drink, this hard-as-porcelain, dynastic dame told us breakfast would be served in the dining room at 8:30 am, turned on her heel, went through into the pantry and shut the door in our faces.

I turned to Richard, "Are you sure that gal in London is our friend? Don't you think she would have checked before printing that expensive color brochure? And I gave her the choice of which place to send us. In any case, how could anyone willing to let P.G.'s into her house have manners like our hostess — which is hardly the word I'd pick to describe her?"

Things only got worse. We drove off in search of dinner. We must have crossed the same bridge ten times as we looked for the main road. We weren't much better off when we did. Finally, in what looked like a backwater of Blackpool or Jones Beach, we staggered into a masqueteria (seafood restaurant) only to find at the next table a cowboy-booted, turquoise-encrusted couple from Texas! No wonder our two portions of grilled langoustine came to nearly $60 and we didn't dare drink — we felt we needed all our wits about us to find our way back!

I won't bore you with the details of that wild goose chase. Suffice it to say that after to-ing and fro-ing up and down what was probably the same lane all the time, we found that we had stopped in frustration right in front of the gate.

Breakfast came all too soon and we were too angry to even notice what we'd been left. Madame came out to collect her money — it would have cost us exactly the same at The Palace Hotel in Buçaco!

My mother has a funny saying, "She was OK as cooks go, and as cooks go, she went." So did we.

By, Ted Carter