A multi-pronged Aug-Sep 2018 trip to Boston to visit Allie, then to Lisbon via Dublin to spend time in Portugal with Laurie, culminating in a return to Boston to meet Barb for a long weekend.
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Wednesday, Aug. 29: Lisbon – Cascais
We get ourselves up and ready in time to vacate the Lisbon apartment by checkout time at 11am. Wheel our luggage down the hill to catch the train to Cascais from the Santos station. The station, such as it is, is an empty platform with a ticket machine that doesn’t work. We discover it doesn’t work by standing in front of it and pushing the screen to no avail. This attracted the attention of a man who we thought may be a bedraggled station attendant who asked in reasonably good English if he could help. He stood in front of the screen and did pretty much what we did, with the same non-results. He then produced a ticket of his own and said he’d sell it to us for Eu5. I gave him Eu10 expecting change. He looked somewhat sheepishly and said he didn’t have change, smiled and asked if he could keep the Eu10 as he walked away at which point I figured out that I’d been ripped off. I definitely knew it when we tried to use the ticket at the machine by the tracks and it didn’t work. Fortunately, the way the trains work, I could get on anyway, so once the train arrived we headed on to Cascais.
The ride out was easy, along the waterside all the way. Roughly thirty minutes later we pulled into the Cascais station. There were exit gates that required the ticket; I fumbled with it for a while then found a young attendant and asked for help. He tried my faulty ticket a couple of times, looked at me and decided to let me and my suitcase through. It’s good to be a helpless tourist sometimes.
Our Cascais AirBnb wouldn’t be ready for another 4 hours, so we had some time to kill and explore the town, though we had to roll our luggage along with us. We got some basic info at a tourist kiosk near the station then headed in search of a chicken restaurant Laurie had picked out. We got our map bearings wrong and overshot at first by a couple of blocks and saw more of the pretty little city than we needed to before getting set straight.
The restaurant, Jardim Dos Frangos, had some outdoor seating by a small park in what turned out to be the center of town. We shared a grilled tiger prawn appetizer which was almost lobster size and quite good. The chicken was only available in ½ chicken portions which was more than Laurie wanted, but then she only likes white meat and I was happy to help with the dark meat. I ordered grilled sardines which Laurie had wanted to try but didn’t want a whole order of. This is another indicator of why we are compatible travelers. When the food came we happily traded pieces and both dishes were delicious, especially supplemented by the on-table oil, vinegar and a piri-piri sauce with a kick.
After a languorous lunch, we made our way to the park across the street to sit in the shade and watch kids on the carousel. We also got ice cream for the highly reputed Santini store nearby. I had melon and strawberry, the in-season recommendation while Laurie had raspberry and vanilla. Both very tasty, though not staggeringly wonderful, despite its reputation a some of “the best in the world.”
Time finally came to catch a taxi up to our apartment. It was about two kilometers up a long hill to a block of flats set on a hilltop, one of nearly a dozen high-rise buildings. We met our hosts and got a tour of the very spacious and modern apartment. It proved a good home, though it was about a 15 minute walk (downhill, thankfully) to the center of town. There was one nice bedroom and another with bunk beds. I gladly took the bunk bed room, especially since I’d grabbed the better room in Lisbon. The apartment featured a very nice deck/balcony that looked out over Cascais. All the apartment lacked was a washer/dryer for clothes and fans for the bedrooms, but we ended up not really needing the fans. We discovered there’s a breeze most every afternoon and evening as the temperature cooled to very comfortable sleeping weather.
After settling into the room we went to the nearby GB Superstore which turned out to specialize in British goods, indicative, I suppose, of the number of British expats with flats in the area (though we never actually ran across any in the immediate vicinity). Stocked up on supplies, we headed into town for a little walk around.
Though it’s an easy commute away from Lisbon, Cascais is very much a beach resort at the end of what’s called the Portuguese Riviera. We walked by the harborside castle and westward in the direction of Boca do Inferno, though we knew we didn’t want to go all the way there and would see it tomorrow. We turned up a road thinking we could get into a park indicated on all the maps. We found a pleasant looking biergarten that was adjacent but fenced off from the park. It was inviting enough to sit down for a beer and nice chat. After a while there, we headed onward to try to get into the park but never found an entrance. It was a long, rambling walk through some very nice, quiet neighborhoods before we found our way back into the middle of town. We were tired but impressed with Cascais for the first evening.
We decided to dine at the well-rated Pica Pica Tapas near the same square we’d been in that afternoon. It was full inside but we took a table outside in the cooling evening. Our waiter was very pleasant and helped us through a good but not outstanding meal of shrimp with garlic for Laurie, gazpacho and grilled bream (they didn’t have sole) for me. Laurie’s shrimp had shells on which is not her favorite, and she was feeling a little under the weather so I ended up helping with most of those. To me, they were tasty enough to eat heads and all, and we (well, mostly I) sopped up the garlic with bread. The restaurant as a whole was not terribly impressive and we left wondering why it was so well-rated (#8 in all of Cascais).
We taxied back to the apartment. Laurie tried to convince me to watch a movie on her PC but I wasn’t too keen on any of the choices and opted to watch the US Open tennis instead. Laurie watched a bit of the Handmaids Tale, instead. I was in my bunk bed by midnight and slept soundly for nearly 9 hours.
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