Alex found the breakfast place we were searching for yesterday. It was Casa da Bifana - house of fried pork sandwiches. Sadly, their vegetarian options were lacking - sorry Alex!
We grabbed some bananas from a stand on the pedestrian walkway outside our hostel, then took our bags to the metro for the 40-minute trip to the airport, where we were meeting the rental agency to pick up the car.
Given that it was some discount rental company, we had to find the "Meeting Point" by the Vodaphone stand. There was a bit of stress to get there on time, but we made it by 11.
However, 20 minutes later it was discovered the reservation was for 10am. A pay phone call later, and they were "10 minutes away." As one of the other company's reps was saying though, "it's always 10 minutes." So, half an hour later, we get the car, decide to rent a GPS, hop in, and are finally on our way.
Granted, it was only 1pm, and Óbidos was less than an hour away. The day was already greyer than any of the two before, and it had started to sprinkle.
We got to the "wedding town", and, while cloudy, the rain held off on us all day.
Which was amazing, because there is no way we would've climbed all the castle wall stone steps if they were slippery.
Óbidos is called the wedding town because King Dinis took it over, then gave it to his fiancée for their wedding. ("Whatta guy", says Rick. "Beats a toaster.") Apparently this started a tradition among royals to give towns away to their wives.
Just putting it out there: any occasion is the right occasion for a cute, fortressed town with a castle in it. Birthday, Christmas... Number one on my wishlist. That's also the number one issue with living in America: a distinct lack of castles. Poverty? Education? Subtle racism and sexism? Nope! Castles.
We wandered along the main pedestrian drag, detouring to a pair of churches that Rick Steves recommended. The doors were shut on each - I assumed post-Holy Week vaca?
We solved that problem with pastries. The shop had a giant wine press running through it, though we drank no wine there.
We strolled to the end of town, through a gate by the old castle. It has been converted into a hotel, so not the scrambling over the ruins like in Lisbon.
The city walls, however, were accessible as long as you used your "full attention", as the signs warned.
We climbed up, posing the entire way.
It was Alex that suggested we poke our head into a door just down the stairs from the wall. It was an attic-y type room, filled with medieval costumes. And, with rentals just 3€ an hour, it didn't take much prompting for us to find three princess dresses to parade around in.
So now we were climbing the castle wall with ten extra pounds of cloth.
And headdresses.
We have taken so many ridiculous pictures. And probably at least double that of beautiful ones - the scenery has been fabulous and Alisa's nice camera makes us all look great!
You'll just have to be satisfied with the pictures from our iPhones until we get back though.
After a while, the dresses started getting itchy and we started getting hungry.
Turns out that the churches that we passed were just closed for lunch/siesta! We popped in those quickly before settling down for a little sun with our late lunch.
Alisa and I split the calamari and these sausages made of "game" (I think chicken and beef in this case). They were originally made for Jews when they wanted a kosher sausage to blend in. It was all super good.
We got back to the car a minute before our parking expired. It was time for a pastry and Alcobaça.
We missed all of the tour buses that had just pulled into Óbidos, and we saw maybe half a dozen others during the hour and a half we were at the monastery at Alcobaça.
This was highly recommended by Rick Steves, and for good reason. It was a cavernous, gorgeous church - the hugest, emptiest, plainest room I've ever seen.
It was the resting place of Dom Pedro and Inês - Portugal's Romeo and Juliet. He met her at his wedding to her cousin. Her cousin passed away, and he courted her (not necessarily in that order...). His father was against the union - she was Spanish, and that could've been too much Spanish influence on a Portuguese king. They went on to have four children. I guess the fourth was the breaking point for Pedro's father, King Alfonso IV, and he had two men murder Inês.
Dom Pedro, none too happy with that, staged an uprising and overthrew his father. He then murdered the murderers and ate their hearts. Not crazy enough for you yet? He exhumed Inês' body, made his court kiss her decomposing hand, and made her the proper queen.
We continued into the monks dining hall (refectory). The acoustics were magnificent - we tried out some Ave Maria and the echoes lasted forever.
The kitchen had a giant stove (seven oxen for dinner? Sure!)
Stairs led up to the monks' quarters - the dimmest room we'd been in yet. There was a window overlooking Pedro and Inês, and a great touchscreen that zoomed into his coffin to give all the details of the scenes.
We walked out to the balcony over a second cloister, with some broken carving bits arranged on the floor around the perimeter. Alex considered it her personal shopping mall, but didn't find one to her fancy. Next time!
We walked around the first cloister (which is actually an indoor garden if I haven't explained that before - I thought that a cloister was just a nun's version of a monastery). It was nearly 6:45 and the bells were chiming on every quarter, so I spent a few minutes waiting for them to take a video.
It was so quiet and peaceful. A light rain had begun, so that was dripping through the courtyard.
The rain continued to wet us as we headed across the no-longer-dusty square to a recommended pasteleria. They won awards for their pastel de natas, but they were also sold out of them. We "settled" for a collection of pastries that won awards this year at some bakery and confectionary convention.
We drove the quick 50km (at most) to Nazaré, our beach town! The resort was situated at the top of the foothills, with Nazaré spilling beneath it. We were worried about parking on the unlabeled streets, but it was just a free for all. No parking lot at this resort hotel!
We spent half an hour taking sunset (and jumping) pictures before heading back inside to our room.
The hotel was beautiful - intricate art in the lobby, multiple levels built into the hillside, a window overlooking the sea. However, when we got into our room, there was an overwhelming smell of sewage. We attempted to air out the room by opening the sea view windows and covering the smell by opening all seven of the little toiletries and placing them all over the room.
Sadly, when we came back from sunset pictures, it was still unpleasant. We spent a little bit figuring out dinner before taking the easy route and going to the hotel restaurant.
We got a great little platter of cheeses and compotes, with pine nuts sprinkled all over it. That has been typical for our experience - these more Mediterranean climate foods that are so pricy in the US are taken for granted here.
Which was fine by us! Fresh squeezed orange juice in the mornings is more than acceptable.
We ate our pasta entrees and had a bottle of wine's worth of conversation about subtle and unconscious sexism. Feminism while traveling as a trio of young, independent women - check that one off too.
We'd had much debate earlier about whether we should do Tomar, Fátima, and/or the beach and in what order; the comfort of our beds resolved that one easily - let's just figure it out at breakfast tomorrow!
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