Em caminho a Cascais

  Óbidos, Ericeira and Cascais, Portugal
Thursday, October 12, 2006

Next on this very busy day is the picture-perfect village of Óbidos, almost too good to be true. It's a small hill-top village completely enclosed by the walls of an ancient Moorish castle.

1. Moorish Castle, Óbidos

The castle looms above the narrow sinuous cobbled lanes, which are lined by pastel, flower-bedecked houses. It's so pretty that King Dinis gave it to his bride as a wedding present. We walked along the top of the wall for a bit, but it was too narrow and precipitous for Miryam, and I almost had to carry her off. As a tourist attraction, it is of course packed with souvenir shops, cafes, bars and restaurants, but in spite of that, it exudes a wonderful charm.

2. Street scene, Óbidos

When we arrive back at the car, Miryam notices that someone has snitched our radio antenna. It is just a screw-in type, and fortunately for us, there is another VW in the parking lot with a similar antenna. I'll leave the rest to your imagination.

We now arrive at the Atlantic Coast again, past glorious beaches, which at this time of the year are pretty much the exclusive realm of surfers. We drive through the lovely fishing village of Ericeira.

3. Fishing harbour at Ericeira

More narrow streets where we can barely scrape by in our little car. We stop to admire the distinctive fishing harbour at the base of a steep cliff. In high season the traffic is at a standstill, but at this time of year there are few tourists, in spite of the magnificent weather.

On now past Sintra, which we will visit tomorrow, to Cascais, where our friends Iva and Delmo have offered us their flat for the next few days. I have located the condominium on the map, and we arrive without further ado at around 5:30 pm. We have been told to request the key from the doorman. But in the best of Latin tradition, no body knows anything about us. Fortunately Iva has given us the telephone number of her neighbour, and luckily they are at home.

4. Evening view from the Cascais flat

They apologise that they had omitted to advise the doorman of our impending visit, and that indeed they have the keys, and we can finally cross the threshold of our housing for the next couple of nights.

The flat is on the 8th. floor with a wonderful view over the Tagus estuary. Extremely comfortable and commodious. We are not allowed to park our car in the garage (we could never find out why, perhaps the neighbours are using Iva's parking spot), but there isn't a problem parking in the street. We visit a local supermarket for breakfast and picnic supplies and then venture out to a nearby up-scale shopping centre, Casa da Guia.

The restaurant prices here reflect the fact that the flat is located in a very elegant area.  Nevertheless, we count our pennies and select a wine bar "Vinhos a solta no Dão". We are served appetizers with a selection of appropriate wine from the Dão region, just south of Porto. The smoked mussels and the marinated pork are just out of this world, and we are regaled with a history of the Dão wine region by the effusive wine bar manager. We decide we will pop by tomorrow and purchase some wines to take back with us, as they are superb.

We stroll back to the flat, looking forward to an evening of TV. Regrettably we are quite unable to master the convoluted controls of the entertainment system, and can't even make the radio work. Fortunately there is nothing like a good book.