rough waters

Saturday. Last day in Sintra. In Portugal for that matter. Castle, or the ocean?

Not hard. The ocean.

Ericeria is up north some, and because I have a childish belief in the wisdom of guide books, I believe it when the book tells me that Ericeria was and continues to be primarily a fishing village. Men, paying the rent by catching fish. (I have never seen a woman taking out a small boat to fish for a living in these fishing towns. Ever.)

Well yes, but Ericeria has grown and expanded significantly. Fishing boats? Plenty. But nothing about Ericeria is remote, small, or quiet. This is the place where, on a sunny Saturday afternoon, many Portuguese come for a good meal (of fish and of Ericeria’s specialty – the Portuguese lobster). Ericeria has in recent years called itself the seafood capital of Portugal.

I did not know that when we found the proper bus to take us there. It’s not a long ride from Sintra (fifty minutes maybe) and I merely wanted to end our stay with a day on the coast. Listening to waves lost in our own thoughts, lost, too in the maze of narrow streets of an old fishing village.

As it happens, the village had long ago expanded into a town. But no matter. It still has the lovely old town center, the fantastic rocky coastline, the thundering waves, the foamy rough waters.














And it certainly has the fishing boats. Out of water today. With men fixing nets and making small repairs.









Ericeria also has a jetty made of boulders and cement and I suppose there are days when the waves are not so large and you can stroll to the end and back. Today, though, there is a warning sign that the waves are dangerous and can knock you down flat.

I stay off. Ed (you are not surprised to read this, I’m sure) walks the breakwater, wistfully almost, as if all that’s beautiful on this planet can be found in the crashing waves.

No wave knocks him down and indeed, he seems pretty dry when he returns. Me, I spend the time thinking about what to have for lunch – the small local lobster or a seafood mixed plate. Like these guys.





I’ve been eating vigorously in Portugal, but not nearly as vigorously in the mornings as Ed, who has loved the abundant breakfasts we’ve had in Sintra (and, too, in Evora). At the Casa Miradouro, if you stay for five nights, one of them is free – hence the decision to base ourselves there (as in Evora, less than $100 for two, morning meal, taxes, services, WiFi included). We’re the sole visitors at the guest house now and our hostess, Ziza, and her assistant, each dressed in starched, embroidered aprons for the morning ritual, prepare an abundant breakfast of eggs, salmon, cheeses, salamis, fruits, cakes and breads. After all this, Ed insists we do not deserve lunch. I don’t disagree, but I cannot say no to enchanting light meals in new places and especially by the sea places, and so at lunchtime he’ll nurse a fizzy water while I eat a second meal. Traveling in harmony requires making room for the whims of your companion.

We join a jovial roomful of diners and after much anguish and deliberation, I choose the small lobster (it actually is more like a very large prawn).





With it – warm, crusty bread, some local wine... my God, is it a good lunch!

We walk some more then, and I shop a little – a bottle of port to take home. Some chocolate -- which doesn’t even make it back to Sintra. More olive oil. Edible things that will recall for me these days by the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea...











Late at night we wander up to Sintra’s palace, the upper square, we poke our noses into a few recommended eating establishments and reject them all. Too formal. Too pricy. Too calm. We choose instead a tavern-like place all the way down by the train station where a lively crowd is eating unfussy food.

Portugal is fantastic in its unfussy spaces. The pastelaria where you can get the simple pastries with custard. The wine shop where the great wines are never a great fortune. The little trains and big buses that zip people from one village to another. The fishing boats and the men who fish from them. The rough waters pounding away as we watch, listen, contemplate.

traveling

We’re leaving Portugal today, very early Sunday morning – too early for me to write much of a post before departure. I’ll catch up later in the day. In the meantime – a photo for you. From Ericeira.

The old windmill, standing at the edge of town, has seen it all.

to Obidos by trains

Days of intense work are just a hare’s breath away. Now is the time to squeeze all last bits of pleasure out of being in a place that is far from home.

I remember when Ed first joined me on some of my travels, I told him how I had always had a lust for a little summer house far away from home. It had not been in the cards earlier and I was half wondering if I should make it a goal to save for some such tiny piece of heaven. One room. Not more than two. Maybe in Brittany? Or the Languedoc?

Ed, perceptively I think, commented that I was exactly the wrong person to have a place to return to time and again. But maybe I would like it? I asked then. I doubt it, he said. Even the smallest place is an encumbrance. You’re better off spending money on a bed and breakfast. Or carrying a tent.


Our last days in Portugal. I’m thinking that I have this complicated train connection figured out. We set out to visit Obidos.

There are wisps of fog in the hills this morning. I see them from the bedroom window.





And I see them from the train window as well. Ah, windmills. Of today, of yesterday.










We’re on the third train now and we’re feeling pretty smug about it too. The tiny two-car train came (and then departed) earlier than the schedule indicated, but we managed to be there waiting (we did a lot of waiting, with long layovers, just in case) and now we’re heading north, with a local populace that travels this way from the smallest of villages to towns where groceries can be purchased, errands taken care of.

Two hours later, we are in Obidos. Or rather at the foot of the hill, at the summit of which you’ll find the medieval town of Obidos.





It is a walled town – quite a bit larger, but not dissimilar from Monsaraz (the hilltop village we loved so much to the southeast of Evora).














The walls are in good shape and we take the time to walk the entire perimeter of the town along their stony ledge.




















We have five hours before the wee train will be making its way back (to Mira Sintra Melecas, where we would connect to Cacem and then to Sintra). There are churches to see – beautiful, with Baroque tile coverings...










Alleys to poke around in...





















...and eventually I suggest a light lunch – at a café-restaurant that appears to draw a young and old crowd...










The fog is being pushed back by a warm sun and Ed takes some time to rest on a stone wall and read while I window shop. And shop, actually. There are a few ceramics stores on Obidos and one of them has these:





And one chocolate shop allows you to purchase an Obidos treat – chocolate cups into which the clerk pours a local cherry liquor.





Our train will be passing through just before six. We watch the light fade in the way that it does in hill towns: at first, warmly, in hues of gold, then casting darker shadows on the white houses.









We find a muddy path leading down the hill and we follow that instead of the road, but really, the station here is so small that it has no paved road running to it. And it has no inside space, no place to actually wait.





So we take a short stroll up the road to look back at Obidos from a distance, there towering over cherry orchards.





And then Ed sits by the old wooden station shed (Is it a shed? A place to offload freight in the past?) and I pace.

 

It can be cool in the evenings – forties maybe? ...and I managed to pick up the Portuguese winter sniffles already so keeping warm is a priority. Back and forth until the train pulls in, throwing a sparkle on the tiled station walls.





Our connections are easier on the return. Shortly after eight we are in Sintra. And since yesterday’s “Regional” restaurant is right by the station, we eat there again. Delicious “traditional” shrimp (the waiter explains: we pan cook them in olive oil until just pink, we remove them and the oil, we add butter, garlic, then a hot sauce and mustard – that’s it!):




...and a grilled sea bream.





In so many ways this was such a quiet, simple day. We rode the trains, we walked, we rode the trains back. On the return trip, we sat in a car with a group of high school kids – boys and girls with long dark hair, flirting, talking, laughing, so hard, in the way that you no longer laugh ever again after your younger years. They had such a confident happiness about them! As if train rides like this one are nothing unusual – and the years would continue in this same way, and there would always be laughter.

In this I find the greatest reassurance: that an ordinary train ride can be so joyful for these kids. To be for a few minutes in their space is perhaps the best way to end a travel journey.

by the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea, you and me, you and me...

When you’re dazed by what the human race has put forth, overwhelmed by evidence of struggles for power, and deflated by visions of ill will and indifference to the plight of others, you can take a bus (the 441 from Sintra) and ask to be dropped off by the sea. The ocean actually. There, the mighty heave of waves and water will remind you that in time, all this will pass.





The beautiful sea. It draws you, it draws most anyone. I watch older men with tired eyes come to look at it for a long while, as if it may offer clarity at times when there is so little of it elsewhere.


True, we weren’t looking for clarity or even necessarily tranquility when we decided to catch the bus to the village of Azenhas do Mar. It happened because our other plans fell through in the most tiresome manner.

We wanted to go to Obidas (which is not by the sea). That’s a two hour train ride from Lisbon. But you needn’t go al the way back to Lisbon; you can, say the books, catch a train from Cacem. We walk the familiar route down to the train station (and to give you a fuller sense of Sintra – it is the kind of town where a homeowner may have this in her back yard...)





... and we board the train in the direction of Lisbon. But when we arrived in Cacem, we find that the train for Obidas wouldn’t be for another four hours. So that we would arrive in Obidas after dark. And it’s not as if you can go to Obidas from Cacem anyway. The schedule says you can, but the agent assures us that you must first go from Cacem to Mira Sintra and only then might you be able to connect with a train to Obidas.

Confusing? Exceptionally so.


And so after a failed attempt at train travel to Obidas, we retreated back to Sintra and considered our options.

The sea!

Not that getting to the sea is without its own maze of complications. Take the 441 bus. From here? No, from Portela de Sintra. You can take a bus or train to that Sintra. Which is really an extension of this Sintra. Or walk. From there, just take the 441.

Eventually, we made it to the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. Just north of the western most point of the European continent.

We half follow the GR hiking trail, and partly our own inclinations, going from one village (Azenhas do Mar)...













...to the next (Praia das Macas), along a rocky coastline that fights constant battles with the sea. The sea always wins.

We watch fishermen cast lines, very long lines to the waters below. In Madison, the fishermen are drilling holes through the ice to cast their lines into the waters of the lake. So much effort there, here too, just to cast a line and wait.









Oh, but what a wait. We pass a few old cars parked by the cliffs. The pole is set against the rocks, the owner of one sits in his small, dented van and listens to the strains of opera. Another takes out his pipe and holds on to his line. No one is rushed, no one is bothered.










Foam. As in Cascais, the ocean spews foam. Ed looks at it and wonders where it comes from.





The sea makes you wonder about things. Quietly. You may as well be quiet. You can’t be heard over the noise of the waves anyway.






We stop at an oceanside place – an eatery called 1888. A seafood dining room. I order a simple salad with shrimp and tomatoes and it is so good – drizzled with an olive oil, so simple, so delicious.





At the bus stop, people help us figure out the time of the next 441. To take us back to Sintra. Or rather Portela de Sintra, So that we could walk back to our Sintra and the small guest house on the hill.





Late at night we walk down the hill, eat a basic and good dinner at a very basic, very traditional, regional place (it’s called Restaurante Regional de Sintra) and when we emerge, the world is hidden and made silent by fog. Dense, wet fog.