Buddha Eden then Mafra - 25 October 2018

25 October

Decidedly average sleep! However, woke up to see unexpected sun, so bonus!

Tintin driving - stopped off at Intermarche filled and emptied Dave’s fluids!

On today’s agenda, having done a bit of research, was Buddha Eden, the largest oriental garden in Europe, covering over 35 hectares.

In 2001, the Taliban blew up Buddhas of Bamiyan (Banyan) in Afghanistan. As a reaction to the destruction, millionaire art collector, José Berardo created the large sculpture park in the grounds of his winery. It is estimated to have 6,000 tons of marble and granite. The 700 terracotta soldiers were originally hand painted but are now all blue, and are unique copies of those buried some 2,200 years ago.

Luckily for us it wasn’t busy, and was cloudy sunshine - so not too hot. Spent about 4 very pleasant hours walking around. So much to see in every direction - it is the best value €10 (for both of us) spent on our trip so far!

I hope our pictures will give you some idea, but probably hard to see the scale. Between us we took over 400 pictures, so just a sample here!

It looks like there will be more and more added, all the ‘tin’ animals look like they are work in progress, we could them preparing a whole field - and very impressive too!

Lots of Koi carp, geese and ducks. I didn’t believe that the small turtle 🐢 (?) was real, Tintin threw some biscuits crumbs near it - slight movement of head - actually real!

Very tranquil, and no money spared on the landscaping and sculptures! There was a bamboo maze, and again sculptures everywhere. Also thousands of birds of paradise plants. All in all, a very memorable place for all the right reasons!

Through the exit, no tat in sight - the only thing to buy was booze! Sampled some of their blue fizz, and sangria - and bought a bottle of the latter! Why is it we only buy alcohol from places?!

Emma, having seen some of the Buddha’s in your garden when feeding the beautiful Bazza, think that BeInspired need to visit!

After a cuppa in Dave, Tintin drove for about 90 minutes on more windy roads to Mafra. Drove past a brick making place, never seen so many bricks - lots of dust everywhere.

Co-pilot also threw a hissy fit, and sent us down a road - which petered out to no available road. Poor Dave lost lots of rubber wheel spinning on the steep corner to get out again. Co-pilot then acted like nothing had happened and was happy for us to continue on the road he’d just told us to turn off! Some rude words may have been said!

We went to Intermarche, did another load of washing - yay - clean bedding again tonight. There were parks for mohos, but really busy, so moved to a car park we saw on the way in.

Do we visit Mafra Palace tomorrow or not? Has 1,200 rooms, a magnificent library, but mixed reviews online...