The Vineyard Retreat.  Bed & Breakfast, Silver Coast, Portugal.

These magnificent oriental gardens are only about 10 minutes from our bed and breakfast accomodation. The whole concept was inspired by the destruction by the Taliban of Bamyan Buddha statues in Afghanistan. The owner plans to keep adding to the six thousand tons of granite Buddhas for years to come and already has large numbers of the Terra Cotta Army from China overlooking the beautiful lake. You will find numbers of golden buddhas too among the arrray of oriental figures.
Jose Berardo also owns the JP wine company and is one of the richest men in Portugal.

One of the most striking things about the Gardens of peace is their location. Given that Portugal is an historic country and full of rich tradition and customs, the thought that in this predominantly Catholic country, there might be something so eccentric that is goes right off the scale, is really quite incredible. These massive statues, this huge collection seems to be growing on an almost daily basis and the interest is pretty huge too. There are over 11,000,000 pages that come up on Google in a search for Buddha Eden, although that figure reduces significantly to 52,000 currently, that have Buddha eden as the exact search phrase.

Go there in the summer and you will be surrounded by Japanese tourists taking photos of everything when all they really needed to do was go on a much shorter holiday to China.

They have just recently started charging an entrance fee to see the spectacle, but it will be worth every centimos, that is guaranteed. Go see it, it is unmissable.

As an added attraction, you can buy cheap Portuguese champagne at the shop on site, but of course they can't call it that. The label features the word 'bacalhoa', which one of my Portuguese friends once told me translated as 'fishface' and was a term of endearment for Snr Berardos wife.

Caldas Da Rainha info 

Obidos info 

Buddha Eden info 

Lisbon info 

Local wine info