Day 2 – Thursday

We took an English-language tour in the morning, which I highly recommend. It was about 24C out, and I stupidly didn’t bring a hat or water because it’s the first really warm day in Braga this year. By 11:30am I was worried about keeling over. Memo to self: hat is mandatory. As is hydration.

Not only did we get an overview of all the different locations (and it covers a LOT of the historical city center, it’s huge!), but we learned quite a bit of history as well. For example, the Sé, the oldest cathedral in Braga, is built on top of an old Roman temple.

This next one was fascinating, and the kind of thing you only learn on a tour. You see the jagged line in the stone squares in the next picture? Apparently Braga has SO many possible excavation sites, that sometimes the only thing they can do is cover them up to preserve them, due to lack of resources to explore them at the time. Covering and filling is a better way to preserve a site than to leave it open. This line in the street is the border of a future excavation site, marked so that they can easily find it again when they are ready to explore it. I am now studying my feet even more than I did when first walking on the cobbles here, looking for these markings.

Our guests M&S arrived and we took them to a traditional Portuguese restaurant for lunch. Then it was home for naps (them) and hiding out from the sun (me). We spent the afternoon catching up, then wandered out after dinner for more Roman spectacle. I had two goals: the Hospitality Pact ritual reenactment, and the fire show. Both had production values far exceeding what I had expected! And yes, it was crowded, but not horribly so, you can see in some of the pictures below that I had no crowd in front of me. I think the best time to do popular things at Braga Romana is Wednesday and Thursday before the weekend crowds, but I’ll update you on that in a couple of days.

S had this great idea to activate the Google Translate mic, and it did a decent job of working with Portuguese over the loudspeaker, enough to get a sense of the ritual. The Bracari were welcoming the Romans to this area and offering them hospitality and ally-ship. I wonder how long that lasted.

On to the fire show. This is actually called the Four Elements ritual, yet it’s always with fire. It runs every day of the festival, so I might try to catch another viewing and see if it’s different. If I don’t, there’s always next year. It was a mix of acrobatics and innovative fire spinning the likes of which I’ve never seen. Pictures don’t do it justice, so I’ve included just a couple of highlights. You’ll have to take my word for it, or better yet, come and judge for yourself.

Night was a much better time. Yes it was way more crowded than the morning, but the temperature was very comfortable.