Nazaré

Nazaré, about 10km north of SMP, has been a fishing town for hundreds of years. About 10 years or so years ago, big wave surfers discovered Nazaré and started changing the character of the town from fishing village to surf and tourism destination. If you’re interested, HBO has made a documentary series called “100 Foot Wave” that chronicles the discovery of the big wave and the emergence of Nazaré as a Mecca for big wave surfers.

With that knowledge in hand, Jill and I were very interested to see Nazaré for ourselves. Arguably, showing up to see Nazaré in late September should have yielded a low key off-season glimpse of Nazaré. That was not to be our experience.

Jill booked us into the Hotel Praia for two nights in Nazaré. The Hotel Praia has an underground parking garage, which turned out to be a real plus as there is very little street parking available in Nazaré. As is our custom, we arrived at the hotel before checkin and Jill hopped out of the car like a seasoned professional to get the lady at reception to let us into the parking garage.

Knowing that we had a couple of hours to kill before we could check in, we set off on foot toward the famous funicular that goes from city center at sea level to Sítio, one of the three neighborhoods that makes up Nazaré, about 320 meters above sea level. The reason I mention the altitude of Sítio is that upon arriving at the funicular station we learned that the funicular was out of service. There is, however, a switchback path that goes from city center to Sítio. Having nothing but time on our hands we set off intrepidly up that path. The climb was totally worth it. The views from Sítio are amazing.

One of the other things that you can get to from Sítio is the lighthouse, which is actually an old fort – Forte de São Miguel Arganjo, that figures so prominently into “100 Foot Wave”. We figured we were most of the way there already so, after a Coke at a cafe, we trudged onward toward the lighthouse.

This was about the time that it became clear to us how much of an impact “100 Foot Wave” has had on Nazaré. As we got closer to the lighthouse there was a never-ending stream of tourists, like us, who wanted to go to the lighthouse and see where the big wave breaks. And to support that stream of tourists there were food trucks and vendor stalls as far as the eye could see. Plus there were golf carts ferrying people down the hill to the lighthouse and back up that we had to dodge. And this was late September – supposedly the quiet time for Nazaré. I can only imagine what it’s like when the big waves are breaking and people are trying to get a glimpse of the surfers.

Having made the requisite pilgrimage to the lighthouse, we about-faced and headed back toward our hotel to check in. By the time we got back down to sea level we were mighty thirsty, the kind of thirst that calls for a gin and tonic.

Thirst slaked, we made it back to the Hotel Praia to check in whereupon we propped our feet up and rested until dinner time.

There’s a street that fronts the beach in Nazaré and we found a touristy restaurant where we could eat dinner and watch the sunset.

There’s a low wall separating the street from the beachfront. Locals and tourists apparently perch on that wall at sunset every day. Not a bad view.

There’s a chain of gelaterias in Portugal called Gelatomania (If you recall Pop’s from our time in Costa Rica, Gelatomania seems to be the Pop’s of Portugal). Apparently sunsets are good for gelato sales, because after sunset we followed our fellow wall-sitters to Gelatomania.

After dinner, in the hotel room, we crossed Nazaré off the list. Nazaré has plenty of beauty to ogle, but we think the tourist crush would drive us crazy.

We decided that the next morning we would get in the car and go back toward SMP. Plus we still hadn’t swung by our friends Mike and Ron’s construction project to get them some pictures. And that was on the way to SMP.

After a good night’s sleep and a go at the hotel’s buffet breakfast we hopped in the Clio and headed south to the little town of Famalicão, where Ron and Mike are building. We found Ron and Mike’s place with no trouble and snapped some pictures for them. Then we decided to take the coast road from Famalicão to SMP. That was a good decision.

The coast road runs along the top of a ridge and we could see an amazing-looking beach below. We saw a turn with a sign that said Praia Salgado (praia is Portuguese for “beach”) and we took that turn and followed the road down to a small parking area on the beach.

Praia Salgado starts just north of SMP and runs all the way to Nazaré beach. It’s unspoiled and amazing. After a nice little walk on the Praia Salgado we headed back to the car and took the coast road into SMP.

We stashed our car in roughly the same place as the day before and headed back to what we were already thinking of as “our” cafe for a cappuccino and a toastie. SMP had not lost any of the luster that we’d ascribed to it the day before. We consulted Google maps and found the SMP farmer’s market several blocks inland and set out in that direction. Along the way we passed the local train station which is exceptionally cute. The farmer’s market was great. We kept walking in a big circle and ended up on the waterfront again.

When we’d seen everything we could think of that we needed to see, we made our way back to the car and headed back for Nazaré.

Over a pre-sunset glass of wine at one of the beachside restaurants in Nazaré, Jill put pen to paper to compare Carvoeiro, our favorite place in the Algarve, with SMP, our favorite place on the Silver Coast. Below is what we came up with:

As you can see, we are data driven!

The conclusion we came to is that there really isn’t a “wrong” answer, but in the end we decided that the more Portuguese flavor of SMP is what we are looking for vs. the expat-forward flavor of the Algarve, with the big unknowns being how cold and wet are the winters in SMP (we’ve heard it’s like southern France – whatever that means) vs how hot are the summers in Carvoiero (coming from Texas, we certainly know what hot means).

That settled, we headed off for a celebratory last dinner in Nazaré, which was pizza!

Decision made and weight lifted we went to bed happy!