Obidos to Nazare

Monday, 25 April – Obidos to Alcobaca to Nazare

Best shower of the whole trip, hands down. Never have I opened the door/curtain of a shower to look directly out a (albeit small) window on to a luscious, green Portuguese countryside. It was just a magical, naked way to greet the day.

Since we hadn’t had too much daylight to go exploring in Obidos upon our evening arrival, we took this bright, quite warm already, opportunity to romp around the walled, historic city. There wasn’t a ton to see, to be honest, but the views from the ancient castle walls were pretty incredible and it was entertaining to walk amongst the obviously Spanish (‘Venga! Vaminos!’ – numerous feisty abuelitas) tourists who were also enjoying the sunshine and scenery.

After an hour or so, we packed up and hit the road, northish towards the beach city of Nazare, named for Joseph’s Nazareth. (Note: I’ve omitted copious amounts of accent marks, one of which should come on the final ‘e’ of Nazare – I’m sorry, but it just takes too long to do the symbol=>insert.) On the way, we made a brief stop in the city of Alcobaca (‘all-co-bassa’) to check out their massive monastery. Rick Steves suggested giving the city a day, but, again, that was for a two-week itinerary. We managed it in under two hours. We were going to the beach, after all.

Alcobaca, like so many appropriately named cities, was named, appropriately, after the bodies of water running through it: the Alco and the Baca rivers, which meet right around the city limits. We came upon each as we strolled back to the car from the monetary. Churches, cathedrals and monasteries we visited all contained pretty historic bodies: this one bears the tombs of King Peter I and Ines de Castro, Portugal’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’.

Around lunch time, we roll into the one-time fishing village of Nazare. Our hotel was less than a block from the ocean, as can be seen from pictures I took looking out from our room (some are towards the sea, some are looking up at the cliff-top city of Sitio.

At Mr. Steves’ encouragement, we had our first (of many!) picnic of the trip out on the beach: chorizo, fresh white bread, light white cheese and, of course, cold vinho verde. It was hard, actually, to conceive of the reality of the situation. We were hardly two days removed from our ‘real lives’ in Den Bosch, with daily commutes and apartment cleaning and work. It felt like we’d never been on vacation before, like this was a whole new world of relaxing experience. Maybe that’s just the green wine talking.

After the picnic, we strolled the boardwalk, admiring the young, impossibly ebony-haired women and the outfits of the short local grandmas: we saw pairs and trios of them walking together, each with layers of really loud, plaid skirts over basic black frocks – all doing a little bit of strutting. We changed into swimsuits and went back to the beach, enjoying some late afternoon sunshine and a little more of the VV.

For dinner, we took the ‘funincular’ (hill-climbing trolley) up to Sitio to check out a few of Mr. Steves’ restaurant recommendations. At the top of the hill, we went out to some observation points and bought a few appetizers from some street vendors, including corn nuts (corn nuts, it’s been so long!) and ‘percebes’, sea barnacles that’ve been cooked just right for consumption – the edible parts are basically little strips of muscle you must crack out of a thin shell; Katie and I agreed they just take like the sea, like an oyster: delicious and fresh.

We walked past a bullfighting ring (unfortunately we really couldn’t see into the ring and there wasn’t a fight going on [apparently it’s slightly less violent and embarrassing for the bull than Spanish-style]) and a rather short and stout palm tree before settling in for dinner at a seafood restaurant. Suffice to say, being next to the ocean, we had copious amounts of delicious fresh fish.