Saturday 10.30.2010


Beach Time


The weather hasn’t improved much this morning with continuing rain and gusty winds. We do the 9:30 breakfast session again and meet a nice young couple from Austin, TX on the way in, and chat with another nice young couple from Holland while eating. They are serious travelers aided by many weeks (she 8, he 5) of vacation time that they use creatively. This is her birthday and she loves Port wine so what better way to spend her time. They give us a pitch on Greece and South Africa and the name of a great tapas bar in Barcelona. Mary makes notes.


The rain lets up a bit so we run up the street for the car and bring it back to load up. Like most good hosts John and Carmen have become immediate pals and they walk us out to the car with hugs all around. We program GPS Gal Monique to take us to our next stop without toll roads or motorways, which carries us out of Porto through miles of suburbs. It is supposed to be a 2-3 hour drive by motorway but this way will take us at least five.


Most of the trip today seems to us to look like Portugal should. Steep hills dotted with citrus groves, olive trees, and stucco and stone houses painted white or in shades of pink, yellow, orange or blue, many trimmed with blue-on-white patterned tiles. We pass through Coimbra, another of the major cities of northern Portugal with a prestigious university that we see perched on top of a hill above town and a major cathedral. This isn’t on our agenda, however, so we’ll save it for next time. We see more pilgrims along this route hiking not to Santiago, but to Fatima, Portugal’s holiest shrine. There is no “trail” here so they have to wear their bright yellow safety vests and march along the road. We’ll march by Peugeot to Fatima sometime in the next couple days.

About a half hour before our arrival in Nazare’, our destination for the next couple days, we stop for a McToilet/McDonalds break once again where John tries to get the Parmesan Especiale, a burger topped with shaved parmesan cheese and diced tomatoes. After much consternation, an English-speaking customer tells him that they are out of tomatoes and cheese and would he still want it? He gets the Big Tasty (with sliced tomatoes – guess they didn’t know how to dice them). We move around the corner to the supermarket where Mary gets cheese and crackers for her lunch. Everybody is happy.

It’s about 5:00 when we check into our hotel the Albergaria Mar Bravo, right on the beach in Nazare’. There are a couple parking places in front where we can unload our luggage and then move the car a few blocks away to an underground garage. We take a hike along the beachfront street, completely lined with souvenir shops, condos, hotels, bars and restaurants. It is a Portuguese Myrtle Beach. There isn’t much else to see here, but that’s why it is on our agenda, so we can take a break for a couple days and soak up some sun. There have been showers off and on all day and thankfully, they are off right now. There is a touch of blue sky on the horizon that gives us hope for a sunset over the Atlantic. We see tourists with their kids hoping for one last warm fall weekend at the beach and the old folks that we have seen everywhere for the last few days. The old men in their hats and heavy sweaters or jackets sitting in the sidewalk cafes smoking and sipping beer or coffee, or just hanging out with their buddies on the street corners, always talking and waving hands. The old ladies in shawls and dark skirts selling fish that is drying on sidewalk screen frames, seeds and nuts that they have in large bags on folding tables, or selling rooms to last minute visitors. We have disrespectfully named them the Portu-geezers.


We check out a couple recommended restaurants reading menus and testing ocean views. Eventually we decide to eat at our hotel which also is supposed to have a good restaurant and a 10% discount to we guests. We book a table for 8:00 and then go back out to see a bit of sunset with a few more clouds than necessary. For the second stay in a row we have English TV channels which means we have “Strictly Come Dancing,” the BBC version of “Dancing with the Stars.” We haven’t seen the show since Arles so all the losers have gone and the five remaining contestants are pretty good. They finally wrap up at 8:05 just making us slightly late for our reservation.


Mary has a fish soup that is peppery and good and John has the seafood soup which is hearty with a strong shellfish base. Mary then gets a scrambled egg and cod dish that is quite bland but inoffensive. John gets the fish stew that consists of a piece of flaky white fish, a few potatoes and some tomatoes and peppers on the plate. It isn’t a large portion, but certainly enough to eat. Then they bring the pot with the rest of the stew, about four times as much as is already on his plate. Both of us plug away at that with Mary adding the flavor of the stew broth to her egg dish and John refilling his plate like it’s Thanksgiving. There is still enough for a small family in the pot when we finish. We also have our first taste of vinho verde, an icy cold fruity light white wine with a feel in the mouth like club soda that really works well with the seafood.


The wind is starting to kick up outside so we retire to our room to watch the waves, the Notre Dame vs. Tulsa football game and an old sappy movie.


Today’s Picture: A view of Nazare' from Sitio above. Our hotel is on the beach side across the wide square on the left-center of the picture.