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First Stop – Cascais

After spending our first night in Lisbon, we picked up our rental car in the morning and headed to Cascais (pronounced Kush-Kaish). Cascais is a wonderful city. It is clean and shiny. There is a boardwalk along the ocean that goes on forever. We walked about 7 miles on our first day, including back and forth to our Airbnb. Would have been 6 except that we got lost coming back. There are many shops off of the boardwalk. Some of them were touristy. One would expect that, of course. But many of them were quality items at reasonable prices. There are also a lot of cork products because Portugal is the land of cork.

Nefarious Encounter with Gypsy Woman

We only had one unpleasant experience in Cascais, if you don’t count getting lost trying to find our way back to our room. We stopped at a café on the boardwalk for a bit of relaxation and refreshment. A brightly colored Gypsy woman came to our table to sell us a lottery pamphlet. I wish I had gotten her picture but it took me too long to recover from the ordeal.

I will try to describe her to the best of my ability. Picture, if you will, Kim Kardashian. Now add 20 years and 75 pounds. And squeeze her into skin tight yoga pants that are brightly colored with swirling patterns. Now if you can envision a tightly fitted mismatched top, you’ve got the picture. Good thing I was wearing my sunglasses.

Okay, back to the scam. I tried to get rid of her but she wouldn’t take NO for an answer. Then she places the pamphlet on top of my cellphone, which was lying on the table. She’s jabbering at me the whole time, which I didn’t understand, while her fingers start spidering toward my phone under the pamphlet. I grab my phone and more forcibly tell her to Go Away! She finally did. You’ve got to be on your toes everywhere, but especially in tourist areas.

Sesimbra

Another area we wanted to check out was Sesimbra. We knew that it was a beach town with a boardwalk and we were expecting something similar to Cascais. But it was nothing like that. Sesimbra’s boardwalk was not as appealing and the shops were much tackier. It did have a lovely beach, though, which I hear is packed with people in the summer. We walked around but only for an hour or so before deciding to head out to Praia do Guincho.

Praia do Guincho

Praia do Guincho is one of the most beautiful beaches I’ve experienced. But it seems like I have felt that way at the last dozen or so beaches I’ve been to in Portugal. And I grew up in South Florida and lived in Hawaii for 28 years so I do have some valid comparisons. There were sunbathers, windsurfers and kitesurfers. Up top was an outdoor restaurant selling amazing seafood dishes and the line was quite long.

Estoril Casino

As I explained earlier, I thought that I was out about $500 due to my poor judgement. Turned out to be only $300 from the cancelled Airbnb. In the end, my wife was right about me leaving my cash at home rather than me having lost it at the airport. But still, how can I make any of my losses back? At the Estoril Casino of course!

The Estoril Casino is old and famous and at least one James Bond movie had been shot there. So, we went in and it was not as exciting as the casinos in Vegas. And it was smokier. There was even a cigarette concession near the entrance. I just wasn’t feeling lucky, so we left. In other words, I left a winner!

Truth be told, I’m not a great gambler anyway. One time, while playing poker in Vegas many years ago, I drew a straight flush. First and last time ever. For those of you who don’t know, a straight flush will beat everything else. It was a low straight flush, not royal (10, J, Q, K A), but still I would have bet the farm and the farmer’s daughter. However, everyone else dropped out and all I collected was everyone’s ante.

I thought that everyone folding was just bad luck until recently, when a friend who is more familiar to the gambling world, told me that I must have been playing with seasoned gamblers who easily recognize a “tell”. A tell is a signal the inexperienced player unintentionally shows when he has a good hand. Like the dog wagging his tail.

Branching out from Ericeira – Peniche

In my last blog, I had mentioned that we had decided that Ericeira was our kind of town and we started the ball rolling on purchasing an apartment there. Ericeira is only about a half hour northeast of Lisbon. Now it’s time to use Ericeira as our base and explore the Silver Coast. We had heard a lot about Peniche, so we decided to check it out an hour north of Ericeira. It was a pleasant enough town, but we didn’t get the same community feeling that we experienced in Ericeira. It seemed a bit more disjointed and it was a very sleepy town.

Nazare – The Biggest Surf in the World

Nazare boasts of having the biggest waves in the world. It is only about an hour and 15 minutes north of Ericeira. If you Google Nazare, you will find YouTube videos of surfers riding 80-foot waves! There is also a great 60 Minutes segment on surfing in Nazare.

The surf was rather flat on the day we were there, but it was very enjoyable none-the-less. The boardwalk was wide and clean and stretched on for a long way alongside a beautiful beach. Across the street were shops and restaurants. Lots and lots of restaurants with so much fresh fish.

We then decided to head out to the lighthouse. Naturally, the closer you get the harder it is to find a place to park. Once we found a parking spot, we walked down to the lighthouse and paid a euro each to get in. Be forewarned, there are no public restrooms at the lighthouse. There was a very cool surfing museum there with pictures and videos of famous surfers. Some of them had left their surfboards there on display with signatures and messages scribbled on them. Most definitely, we will be visiting again, especially when the surf is up.  In the meantime, I will purchase a new zoom lens for my camera to try and catch some action shots.

Ginjinha d’Obidos

Obidos was an unexpected treat and one of our more pleasurable outings! The Queen of Portugal was presented with Obidos as a wedding present in 1214. Beats a toaster! It is only a 50 minute drive north from Ericeira. Upon entering the castled walls there is a convenient parking lot and from there we walked inside the ancient village. A raven man was one of our first encounters so naturally Cathy had to take a picture with him.

Right after that was a stall selling Ginjinha d’Obidos, a sweet alcoholic cherry liqueur served in a chocolate cup. Naturally, I had to try that. It was delicious, by the way. A word of warning, the first Ginjinha stand you see charges 1.5€ per cup. Each Ginjinha stand you see after that (of which there are several) will only charge 1€. One stall was selling it in your choice of white or dark chocolate. I tried both. In my opinion, dark chocolate makes for a much better taste combination.

Caldas da Rainha

Only an hour north of Ericeira, and close to Obidos, is Caldas daRainha. We had read that it is a good central location to hang out when you’re seeking out places where you might want to live in Portugal. It is conveniently located and it is a nice medium-sized city. Lots of places to walk or ride your bike. And if you choose to live here, it’s only about an hour’s drive to the Lisbon Airport. You can conveniently get to anywhere on the Gold Coast from there. We didn’t spend too much time there because we had too much on our plate already.

Porto

Porto is a three hour drive north from Ericeira. We had heard a lot of good things about it and wanted to check it out for ourselves. Even before visiting, we knew that we didn’t want to live there because it was too far north, too big for us and it didn’t have the beach scene that we were looking for. But we certainly did love it! Our hotel was in a great location. We parked our car in the parking garage adjacent to the hotel. The parking was $21 for 48 hours, a bit steep I thought. But we were able to leave the car there the whole time and walk everywhere we wanted to go. City driving is not fun for me. And I did get the hotel room free by using the $200 credit that I had received from Travelocity, which I mentioned in my last blog.

Walking through the streets of Porto is like walking through history. There are beautiful statues and old architecture and you can almost feel the ghosts of the past walking alongside you. There is no shortage of restaurants. I had a very authentic Portuguese dish called Francesinha, which was a layered dish with bread, ham, steak, sausage, cheese and topped off with an egg. I’m not generally a huge meat eater but I couldn’t pass this up seeing as it is a traditional meal that supposedly originated in Porto and I was hungry enough to eat a horse, which ironically was the only thing not in this dish.

One thing to remember is that restaurants serving dinner usually don’t open their doors until 7:00pm. If they also serve lunch, then they will close around 3:30 and reopen at 7:00. This is all over Portugal and probably all over Europe. We are not used to our early bird dinner starting at 7:00 so we’ll need to figure out how we will adjust to this when we finally move here.

Aveiro

It was a beautiful Sunday morning and it was time to leave Porto and head back to our future hometown of Ericeira. Cathy wanted to stop at Aveiro to check it out. It was about a half hour south of Porto. I wasn’t in favor of taking a detour from our three-hour trek back, but I’ll be a good sport about it. Truth be told, I wasn’t really a good sport about it at all. In my defense, the coffee we had that morning was weaker than my defense and I was feeling cheated right out of the gate. Getting my second cup of coffee in Aveiro fixed everything. Once again, Cathy was right. Aveiro was worth the detour. They call it The Venice of Portugal and it lives up to its name.

Back to Ericeira – And Homeward Bound

It felt good to get back to Ericeira. We splurged and spent the last night at the Hotel Vila Gale Ericeira. We even upgraded to a magnificent ocean view and it still came to under $100. And that included a delicious breakfast buffet.

From there it was one more night in our tiny Airbnb near the Lisbon Airport and then our long flight back to Portland, Oregon. Next time we step foot in Ericeira it will be after we have sold our house and moved there! We’re excited for the next step!