Excerpts from 800-word article

LIVE LIKE ROYALTY IN PORTUGAL'S POUSADAS

Here in Portugal you don't require to have blue blood, great wealth or friends in high places to live like royalty. In fact, all you need is the rent, to stay in a palace that has lost none of its splendour these past few hundred years.....

They are Pousadas. Sometimes they have no more than a few guest rooms in a palace, convent or fortress. Sometimes they are built from scratch on a particularly scenic or historic site. Always they are designed to give their guests a taste of culture, architecture, food, scenery and history of the region, for the cost of staying at a luxury

While Obidos is often claimed as Portugal's most picturesque town, the Pousada da Rainha Santa Isabel at Estremoz is considered the nation's finest Pousada...

At Sagres, the southernmost tip of Portugal, the Pousada do Infante is typical of an inn built in regional style on a particularly historic site....

Each of the Pousada's rooms has a balcony from which the view is of rugged red cliffs above golden sand, and multi-coloured fishing boats bobbing on the water. In winter the lounge is all the more inviting for a fire burning in its enormous hearth. A wall tapestry here shows just how successful Henry's pupils were, pin-pointing as it does the far-flung countries they discovered......