Coastal Fun in Portugal

We spent the day driving along the coastline from Lisbon up to just south of Coimbra. The first stop was at Obidos, a small ancient walled city of about 3,000 people. As luck would have it, this was one of the weekends for the Chocolate Festival and cars surrounded the outskirts of the city with thousands descending into the old town. We parked along with many others on the side of the road and some old guy started yelling at us and everyone else and pointing out into the fields. He seemed quite angry that all these crowds had come to his city.

Heading north we found the nearly treeless city of Nazare, site of some of the world’s largest waves – about a month ago Garrett McNamara surfed what was thought to have been a wave above 100 feet (30.5 meters). Garrett holds the current world record for tallest wave, a 78 monster – also off the rocky shores near Nazare. Not sure if that storm produced the winds that sporadically left pine and eucalyptus trees snapped off half way or toppled. We saw a number of these damaged trees in the general vicinity of Nazare.

We kept driving north and finally we found a bar next within a small park and children’s playground in the middle of San Pedro de Moel – a small town along the shores of the Atlantic Ocean – a town that becomes extremely popular in the summer. With no limes to make our beloved Capirinaha’s (one of my favorite drinks), we settled for a White Russian. The bartender had never heard of this drink so we confirmed the ingredients online and voila – we enjoyed his first ever White Russian!

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