Down Day in Nazare

I was looking forward to the down day today and definitely did not set an alarm, however Tom woke up early and told me that he was going for a walk. I rolled over and went back to sleep. I think I got moving around 9:00 and Tom came back shortly there after. He said he walked for 5 miles back and forth on the main road next to the ocean. We got ourselves ready for the day and went on the hunt for brunch. We first went to a beach side restaurant and was seated at a table. We found things we would like to order, but the waiter never came around and we took that as sign that maybe we should go somewhere else. We walked down to another beach restaurant but after looking at the menu board we decided that wasn’t the place for us either. Back down the street we walked until we got to the main restaurant area where we found a cute little French restaurant. We ordered a breakfast toast and strawberry, banana, kiwi smoothies. The breakfast toast was soooo good. It had ham, avocado, fried egg, some sort of seeds and I don’t know what else other than it was delicious! We made the right choice.

After breakfast we walked back to the BnB where I dropped my stuff off and traded phones with Tom so that I could go do a geocache. His plan was to take a mid-day nap. The cache was only .3 miles away but I knew it was all uphill. I had to walk by our car to get to the cache, so I was happy to put eyes on it to make sure it was still there and to check for tickets. All was good! I continued up the hill and across the street where I walked up a lot of steps to get to the street on the other side. Here there was a park entrance where I continued to walk up several more steps before I reached a great lookout of the town. I was thankful that the geocache was an easy find with a great view. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I love geocaching for taking me to places I typically would not go. This cache was totally worth it.

I got back and Tom was still napping. I started a load of laundry and then traded my tennis shoes for flip flops to walk the beach (and look for any sea treasures). I walked down the sidewalk towards the cliff side of the beach and made my way down so I would start at the very end and then began my walk. Sadly there was not a lot of treasure where the waves were coming in. I did see a Portuguese man-of-war washed up on shore and made a note that I would not be getting the water here as to not repeat my jellyfish sting experience. To be honest though, I was never planning on getting in the water here. It’s just not hot enough for me. As I made my way down the beach I noticed bigger pebble and rock piles higher up on the shore from the high tide that I began to walk through. Here I found several pieces of small green sea glass with one slightly “bigger” piece near the end of the beach. I walked out to the lighthouse and then made my way back to our apartment via the sidewalk.

There is no dryer for our laundry so I set out hanging our clothes all over the kitchen, bedroom and balcony to dry. Tom began to research tours to Sintra (we plan to do a day trip from Lisbon on Saturday) and I walked up to the grocery store to get another bottle of wine. When I got back we sat on the balcony and enjoyed the sun and the people watching. After a couple of glasses of wine and the sun, I felt quite sleepy and took a nice little nap first on the balcony and then when I got too hot, I moved to the couch just inside. Up from my nap, we finalized booking the Sintra tour and then set out to walk the beach for sunset.

For dinner we found a Mexican restaurant where we shared a trio of three different fish tacos and guacamole and chips. The owner of the restaurant is originally from Mexico City and her husband is Portuguese. They met while both working on Princess cruises. I thought the food was pretty good, Tom not so much although he agreed the tacos were way better than the ones he had at O’Hare when we left. We stopped for a gelato ice cream cone on the way back to the apartment and settled in to write the blog. It was a perfectly relaxing down day!! Tomorrow we are back on the road.

Stats of the Day

Steps: 19,800
Geocaches: 1
Pieces of Sea Glass: 15