As I drove along the empty motorway, a hill-top town rose on the horizon, its snow-white dazzle standing out against a sky the same shade of blue as a painted Portuguese tile. Tucked into a northerly corner of the sparsely inhabited Alentejo region, Estremoz is just 90 minutes by car from Lisbon airport yet remains stuck in the tourist slow lane, slumped in a doze that recalls the rural Portugal of an earlier, slower time.