We made it to the beach! But first....
... we went to see another monastery.
Woke up around 9am, left house around 10, took a toll-free drive to Alcobaca, a small town whose main attraction is a large monastery, originally built in the 12th century. Enjoyed yet another drive along Portugal's rural roads - any time one has a few minutes to kill, these drives are more fun than those along the major highways. The only downside is these roads being two-lane streets (one lane each way) are excellent when there are no cars tailgating you. When there is one though, like it was the last 5 km before Alcobaca, it's a bit stressful.
Alcobaca monastery is located in the heart of town, surrounded by small streets that clearly were there in medieval times. The parking lot is small for the attraction (a similarly sized Batalha monastery had a signficantly bigger parking lot), it took us a bit of waiting to see someone leave and free up a space for us. We first went to get coffee in one of about seven or eight bakeries lining up the street in front of the monastery, then made our way to the monastery church to catch a bit of a wedding going on. We left the church and went to buy the tickets to the monastery proper, and proceeded with the tour.
The Alcobaca monastery is quite different from Batalha. The latter is an example of an exquisite gothic style - lots of ornamentation and details on every single accessory: walls, ceilings, columns, etc... At Alcobaca, the style is much more somber - straight lines, simple arches, and very little ornamentations - the most ornamented things we saw were stylized gutter drains.
The monastery is structured around two cloisters: one, the main one is well-maintained, and is beautiful. We got to walk around it, walk in it, and also walk around it on the second floor of the monastery. There is even a third-story/roof terrace above this cloister that we climbed.
The second cloister is significantly more run-down. It serves as a home to a gang of about five cats - mostly black but with some Siamese present as well, the maze is overgrown with vegetation, and the cloister walkways are used as storage. We only can access the second cloister, called the Cardinal's Cloister from a balcony above, it is not part of the tour.
On the other hand, pretty much everything else (except for a more modern wing of the monastery on the other side of the church) was part of the tour. There is a large refectory. Next to it is a very impressive kitchen with a huge fireplace and impressive chimneys covered in azulejos. Next to the kitchen is room that served many purposes, ending up as a wine cellar. We also could access the living quarters (a very large empty room with a lot of columns) on the second floor, from which the Cardinal's Cloister was visible. There is a nice passage from that room to the second-floor walkway around the main cloister, and there is a cute "observation point" one can climb to tower above the kitchen and observe it from above.
As mentioned above, we could also climb even higher and see the cloister and the outside of the church from a third-story perspective.
The monk's quarters on the second floor used to have direct access to the church's transept. This feature is now disabled, but replaced with a big window allowing those in the living quarters room see the church. We caught up with the aftermath of the wedding ceremony (everyone was congratulating the groom and hugging the bride) while there, and then again - when we went to the 3d floor terrace, we caught the photographers taking pictures of the newlyweds in the main cloister.
We then went down again, took additional pictures, and finished the tour by walking through several more rooms.
Outside, we got an extra hour and a half of parking and went for a walk around the narrow streets surrounding the monastery. The streets have character, although they also are full of old dilapidated buildings.
We returned back to the main plaza, and decided (it was around 1pm at the time) to catch lunch. Picked a restaurant almost at random, ordered two bifanas and calimari, plus coffee for Olga and two glasses of sangria. The service was a bit on the slow side, but we enjoyed our seating - right in front of the monastery. Bifanas were ok - I think the one I had in Peniche is better, this one was still tasty, just not as much sauce on it. The calimari were meh, sangria was red and fizzy and refreshing.
After lunch, we walked a bit more around town, found a vegetable store, bought some apples, returned back to the monastery plaza and had some pastries - trying to expand our understanding of Portuguese baking beyond pasteis de nata - in what appears to have been the most expensive bakery in the entire country, where individual items cost (OMG) 2.40 and 2.90 euros. We got three pastries, one of which, called Pudim de Sao Bernardo was local version of flan pudding and pretty good, while the other two small pastries Olga selected were different versions of mixing egg yolk and sugar, and were kind of on the sweeter side.
For the record, we spent 13 euro on lunch, and another 11 (OMG!) on coffee/tea and pastries.
From there, we went back to the car and headed for Nazarre, which was an easy 20 minute drive away. At Nazarre, I decided to take us to the Sitio - the uptown, so to say - primarily because it seemed more accessible by car than the neighborhood adjacent to Nazarre's famous beach. When looking for places to rent on Airbnb, we spent a lot of time examining locations of various Sitio of Nazarre properties before settling for our place in Obidos. From this examination I had a decent idea of where I'd be able to find some parking. It took us a bit of a drive around the Sitio, and some creative double-backing before we got to the place I wanted us to get to - a small parking lot a little bit out of the way, "protected" by two polite, but frazzled gentlemen, running the world's famous "I will NOT damage your car if you part with some cash" racket. Since 1 euro is a small price to pay for keeping a rental car unscratched, and since it is also a reasonable price for five hour of parking, we did not feel too bad falling for this racket - it certainly beats another 30 minutes or driving the narrow and often incomprehensible streets of the Sitio looking for an empty space.
We spent some time walking around the Sitio - getting to the cliff-side overlooking Nazarre and the beach first, then moving to the main square, walking slowly through all the souvenir stalls (not really being compelled to buy anything despite the presence of some Nazarre-specific merchandise), visiting the church, and a small exhibit of miniatures a local man was making of Jesus carrying the Cross to the Calvary Mount. We then returned to the cliffside, found the stairs leading down, and descended to the Nazarre proper. There, we navigated the narrow streets to head towards the beach.
One thing that was very not apparent is just how much of a tourist place this is. All the videos of Nazarre we have seen, show it in March or some other winter/spring month, when apparently, there are no crowds. In August, it is apparently high season. Sitio is crowded. The beach is crowded. The boardwalk - stretching at least a couple kilometers is also crowded. Lots of people, 90% of them are Portuguese - this is definitely a local vacation spot much more so than it is an international tourist destination. We heard Russian spoken exactly once - a family walking out of the same parking lot in Sitio we parked in (they somehow "made" Olga, who was asking "how much" the parking fee was of the friendly frazzled would-be-racketeer - and told her in Russian that the parking was technically free, before giving the man his euro). We heard some Polish from a group of people who also spoke Portuguese - which confused the heck out of me (we were in one of the boardwalk stores) - I heard both Slavic words and Portuguese words spoken with the same inflection - figured out what was going on, when the woman called the man "Yatzek". We heard some English - mostly from Americans. Some French too, but unlike many other places, this was definitely a Portuguese vacation spot.
We walked along the boardwalk in front of a pretty crowded beach for what I think is about a kilometer. After that, we took our shoes off and went towards the water. The were pretty strong waves there and I got a bit wet trying to only step into the water at ankle level, but catching a sudden wave. We then walked a bit more - with the sand actually hurting my soles for some reason (usually i can walk on sand with little trouble). At some point, we stopped, dropped our stuff on the sand, pulled out a blanket, and lied down for a good part of an hour, just doing what Olga called "Checkmark Nazarre!"
After that, we packed up, headed back to the boardwalk and started looking for a place to have a glass of sangria. Among the various bakeries and restaurants lining up the boardwalk, I spotted a couple of places that seemed to have been populated by locals who were sitting down with glasses of beer and eating heaps of various seafood. Eventually we found one such place with empty tables. I confirmed with one of the men behind the counter (there were about five busy looking men in their 50s behind the counter) that they had sangria, after which we got a glass for Olga, a glass of beer for me (this is a beer place, do as the locals do). To top it we ordered a plate of caracois, small snails cooked in an aromatic broth, that every person in the establishment seemed to have been enjoying, and - finally! - octopus salad, which turned out to be sliced octopus served with olive oil, vinegar, onion and olives - pretty much the same style (sans olives) in which we serve herring.
The caracois came with a toothpick to be used to pluck the edible part of each snail from the shell. They are tiny, there are easily a couple hundred of them in our plate, so it took us a good part of an hour to go through all of them. Olga kept pointing out how un-economical this is - we were occupying a table for much longer than we really needed to. Olga's sangria was red, fizzy, and refreshing - similar to the one I had in Berlengas. The beer, Super Bock, went down much better with the snails than it did when I tried it at home. Still, a pretty light easy-drinking beer, but good for the specific occasion. The entire meal cost us a total of 22 euro - the most we spent at a restaurant in Portugal to date on this trip.
After the meal, we walked the boardwalk all the way to the Sitio cliff, and took the local funicular ("ascendo") up to Sitio. Had to wear masks for it (fortunately, I had mine on me), but otherwise, a nice experience. I took a video of the entire ascent.
In Sitio, we went to the car, stopping by a bakery for a quick coffee. The car was fine, the men "guarding" the parking lot having gone elsewhere - this being well past 7pm. We hopped into the car, drove down the hill, stopped by Aldi to get a few food items, drove straight home, set up a small sangria + tapas evening meal, and called it a day.
Alcohol.
Continente brand white sangria. This essentially is the lowest common denominator of all sangrias - a cheap (1.75 euros) store brand mass-produced sangria. We drank it flat, out of the fridge, without any accoutrements. Still good and refreshing, went well with our improvised meal of bread, cheese, sausage and octopus. B.
Steps. Watch says 19030. Google fit says 17,202. Either way, a pretty decent day. Some of those steps was the descent on from the Sitio to Nazarre - a nice pleasant walk, but still tasking on feet.
Tomorrow. The original thought was to go to Tomar. But we decided to mix it up a bit. There is an antiques market at Marinha Grande - which is close to Leiria. So the plan is to hit it in the morning. Then, if we feel like doing a big circuit - another market in Ourem, and Knights Templar in Tomar. On the other hand - if we are feeling like taking a bit of a break - it will be Leiria and its castle, and then, just enjoying the rest of the day and taking it easier. It will be our last full day. On Sunday, we are heading to Porto.
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