By Richelle
Friday 7th of September 2018
The next part of our adventure involved a rental car and the western coast. It’s surprisingly simple to hire a car in Portugal. Better still if you can drive manual. Better still if you have 2 drivers! And better again if you have a navigator. We, obviously, had all these bases covered. Not sure what Josie was doing in the back there, but moral support counts too ;)
Our first stop was the ancient town of Sintra. Hans Christian Anderson found a lot of inspiration here. And Lord Byron, who went off the track from the standard grand tour and ended up spending a good part of his early years in the city, "Lo! Cintra's glorious Eden intervenes in variegated maze of mount and glen."
The layers of history are quite amazing - The moorish castle from the 10th century, the National Palace from the 14th-16th century and the fantasyland Pena Palace from the 19th century. We chose the National Palace to spend the morning exploring - a central medieval palace that houses a magpie room, a domed ship barrel room and walls covered in hand painted tiles.
We bought a couple of hats and a tourist tile before heading back to the car where we wound our way up the hill to get a glimpse of the Pena Palace through some dense greenery.
Around midday we drove the car west until we hit what should have been ocean views. On arriving at the western most tip of Europe, all we saw was a impenetrable white fog. I have since done some research on this sea fog, and apparently it only happens to this extent a few time a year in the summer, and can be a bit of a hassle for sailers.
Trying to out drive the fog, we headed north on the highway, meandering along the coast towns and stopping for lunch in a roadside restaurant.
The first time we actually saw ocean was when we arrived in the late afternoon at our apartment for the night, just outside Obidos. Josie, being the legend that she is, shouted us all to a night in the best accomodation we could find. The resort opened up onto the Atlantic and had its own restaurants and a pool. We spent the afternoon beach walking, swimming, drinking wine and eating pizza. It was one of my favourite nights of the trip.
Next morning, Sara drove us out of the resort and into the medieval centre of Obidos, an ancient hill top town surrounded by a classic crenellated wall. It was such an interesting place, full of whitewashed houses covered in strips of yellow and blue, cobblestone alleyways and bakeries full of custard tarts. This town was the wedding gift of Portugese Kings to their Queens, a tradition started way back in 1282. Not bad at all.
We headed further north on the A8, until we arrived for a late lunch in the university town of Coimbra. I really want to visit this place again one day - apparently the library is amazing. We did find a Sardine shop that was designed to mimic the library interior, but that’s as close as we got. Another hour or so on, we finally arrived at our northern most destination - Porto.