After a simple continental breakfast, we left for a day-trip to Batalha & Fatima in Leiria county. It was an easy road to drive on, unless you were stuck behind a heavy slow-moving vehicle, since the road was narrow most of the time. We were at Batalha in 30 minutes, its great 14th-century monastery rising like a colossus from its middle. It's crowded towers and buttresses pierced the blue sky, its limestone facade aged to a golden yellow, smudged with black.