Last stop in Porto

Cemeteries are some of the neatest places. Like doors, they can tell you a lot. Before departing Porto, I made a pit stop at Cemetario Oriente, yet another eerie Portuguese destination.

Everytime I turned a corner, it seemed to sprawl in a new direction. Mausoleum's were more common than what my eyes were used to. Some had curtains and a layer of glass behind the gate. A few even had wooden doors, eroded by weather, time, burglary. Yes, you could look inside of most of them and see that some things were just not there, not right...

But the ones that hadn't been touched weren't to my liking either. You could look inside, see the tombs, dust, rotting flowers from the 1930's. Most times, there weren't even names listed in the mausoleums, rarely a year noted.

One that had been broken into had the number "1496" on the front but I'm still not sure if that's the year of the tomb or just a marking system. It was in the older section, though I don't think it could have been that old. the door was just the normal steel gate we see in the States, but it was open. No one, not even the groundskeepers, had taken the liberty to close it. There was no missing this. Is there a superstition surrounding Portuguese tombs?? I saw three wooden tombs in each stone niche. Light was shining in from the small stained-glass window on the back wall. The corner of the middle tomb had been hit the worst: it was splitting, I could see the fabric inside. The body was covered, though, thankfully.

I left a little scarred.