Day Thirtyeight - Jun 28, 2012
Lisbon, Portugal
Daily Didactic
We decided last night that today should be a beach day. We got up a little late, had some breakfast pastry, and began to follow the instructions we'd found online. Sounded simple. A 30 minute train ride to Sintra, a 25 minute bus ride to the village of Almocageme, and a twenty minute walk to Praia da Adraga (Adraga Beach) for what was supposed to be one of the best beaches in Europe. On the way there it worked almost exactly like that, with an extra twenty minute wait in Sintra for a bus. It looked like a bad choice for a beach day with very black clouds threatening all the way. By the time we found the beach, we were hungry and tired and headed for the only business on the beach, a restaurant. We enjoyed the most amazing swordfish and codfish we've ever eaten and eventually headed out onto the beach, just as the sun came out. Adraga beach was almost deserted and just as beautiful as everything we had read about it. Being pretty pale, we found a shady spot and laid in the sand for a while. We had imagined going swimming, but the Atlantic was really chilly. A few hours later, we began to reverse our course. On the way back, we managed to just miss the bus in Almocageme and ended up with an hour to kill. In what seems really unlikely, there was an entire film crew in the teeny town square filming a Portugese soap opera (telenovela), Doce Tentacao. It was great entertainment. Eventually our bus came and an hour later we were back in Lisbon. It was a fun little adventure into the outskirts of Lisbon. In the evening we joined the mostly young folk at the Oasis Backpackers Mansion for the 9:00 dinner and the night's Euro2012 game, Italy versus Germany. They all understood it much better than we did, but it was fun thing to watch. After a great dinner we called it a long and very productive day.
Today's Photos
