Portugal: The Best of the Beaches

Our trip to Portugal was a nice mix of laid back beach towns mixed in with a taste of the cities of Lisbon and Porto. All up we spent a week between Lagos, Ericeira and Peniche, and while the weather wasn't always kind to us, we still got to have some nice holiday weather.

LAGOS:

Our first stop in Portugal was the small beachside town of Lagos, in the Algarve region of the country. All of the beach towns in this area are basically holiday towns, but the town of Lagos is notorious for the fact that most of its holiday-ers are Australian. With a reputation that Lagos is basically 'the Kuta in Europe', we decided to only spend 2 nights there which was a good amount of time to see the town, visit the beaches and sample the nightlife without getting stuck.

As it turns out, the season is ending now so the town was quieter and more tame than we expected, so it still did feel like we were in Europe. Since we only had a quick stop here before Lisbon, I think it can be summed up easily by a couple of pictures of the coastline and the little beaches tucked in along the way:

The water's a bit colder in Portugal

ERICEIRA:

After a taste of city life in Lisbon, we headed north to a small surfing town about an hour away- Ericeira. Nearly 7 weeks in without a surf and safe to say Mike was very keen to get to this place. Ericeira is a world surfing reserve, and apparently all the big surfers go there. The only way I could tell it was a big surfing town was because in this little place there were massive Billabong & Quicksilver shops (and even a big ad for Billabong on the side of the road featuring one of Mike's surfer friends from Newcastle, Ryan).

We stayed at this awesome hostel called the Blue Buddha which was basically a beach house with bunk beds. It was absolute beachfront, with a big open living room and kitchen so we could cook, and the view was spectacular. It was so nice to be paying hostel prices yet waking up to the sound of the ocean. It was also nice to be at a place where we were the only Australians for a change. We shared the house with the French, English, a German, South African and a Slovakian, and arrived at a good time because on our first night they were all cooking up a BBQ with sausages, steak and salmon cooked on the coal BBQ, so we joined in on that too.

A sunset from the balcony of the Blue Buddah Hostel

The owner of the hostel was really friendly, and when she wasn't up at reception at the other Blue Buddha hostel, she would often pop by and sit in the loungeroom. In her mid forties, she spoke perfect English, and one day even asked a couple of us out to coffee and cake in the afternoon because 'she didn't want to go back to work'. We got talking about how Portugal has only really developed in the last 30 years, and it was great to get a local's insight while we indulged in a few of the local baked specialities.

As for the surf: After trekking through the town trying to find a place that hired surfboards (not big foam planks for beginners), Mike managed to hire a good surfboard that he really liked and a wetsuit for €70 for 3 days. He was all set, and all he needed was some waves to be complete. Unlucky for us, the surf spots are quite spread out around Ericeira and you really need a car to get around. We had heard about this beach Coxos which is apparently a good surf spot, and one of the people in our hostel said 'it's only a half hour walk'. Determined, Mike took on the uphill trek one day only to get to Coxos to find there was actually no surf.... 5.6 kilometers later. He was pretty beaten after that walk that he sat working out exactly how far he walked-11.2km. Then one day later he says "you know, I walked the equivalent of my house to Westfield, and back". Poor Mike ..at least he got some exercise??

While Mike was hunting down surf, I got to explore Ericeira and pretend I was a local. It was nice to relax and not worry about sightseeing and filling every minute of the day, and after laying on the beach I would go to the food markets to buy some fresh vegetables for our lunch and dinner, or visit the local bakeries and try out some of the amazing things they do with flour and sugar over here, making sure to bring one back for Mike too so he would be happy if the surf was bad.

It was very easy to save money in this town because we could cook or buy food really cheaply. We got our first real taste of a Portugese dinner though by visiting a Churrasqueria, which apparently they get for takeaway one night a week over here. We got a whole BBQ chicken cooked Portugese style with peri peri sauce and a big box of hot chips for under €10, and it was enough to add to our lunch for the next day. I really loved Ericeira, and if it wasn't for the fact we have limited time traveling without a visa, could have easily stayed and soaked up the lifestyle some more.

PENICHE:

Up the coast from Ericeira, Peniche was our last surf beach stop in Portugal before heading north to Porto. From the people we had met we had heard good things about Peniche, with some people saying they got 'the best waves of the trip' at the local beaches Baleal and Supertubos, while another guy we met said the beaches in the area were the nicest of Portugal. With high hopes, we went to the bus station in Ericeira and tried to buy a ticket to Peniche, thinking it would be about a 1-2 hour journey since it only takes 50 minutes to drive.

After a bit of language trouble, one bus driver told us 'you come with me' to take what we assumed would be a trip with only 1 bus change in the middle. 4.5 hours and 3 buses later, and we finally arrived in Peniche. We should have taken that as a sign that our next two nights weren't going to be that spectacular.

Cold rain and terrible surf meant that the one full day we had in Peniche was pretty disappointing. We started the day trying to track down a surfboard with no luck. Every place we went Mike would ask for a 6ft board, and they would pull out foam boards and say 'you want 7?'. When he realised the surf was all onshore, we decided to walk around the town a little instead. Having just come from Ericeira, a little town with skinny cobbled streets and streets full of blue and white houses, the town of Peniche was not nice at all. Peniche is situated on a peninsula, surrounded by factories so it wasn't the prettiest of places when the skies were grey and gloomy.

In one break of the rain we did try and explore around the walls of the city, and walked to the Western-most point of Europe (about a 2.5 hour round trip) While sitting at the lookout we noticed a dog nearby, and for some reason he decided he liked the look of us and wanted to come home with us. We thought we he seemed alright, until we started the walk home and he wouldn't stop following us and we realised he might be a bit too clingy for our liking. Every time we turned a corner and thought we had lost him, he'd come bounding down the street until he got to Mike's side. It took nearly an hour until we got into a part of town where he got distracted and we managed to leave our little friend behind.

And while the weather wasn't all that good, we did go out for a nice meal that I think was one of the best meals I've had in Portugal- for €9.50 I got vegetable soup, Portuguese-style roasted chicken with rice and chips, ice cream, coffee and a 1/2L carafe of red wine. We were pleasantly surprised that we managed to walk away from the restaurant cheaply though- the second we sat down they brought over a plate of prawns and a plate of dips, olives, cheeses and breads. Since we'd realised early on in our travels that there's no such thing as a free meal, we asked how much it was... All up it was something like €20. Luckily we sent that away, and managed to have our nice meal without falling into the tourist trap. So at least travel has taught us something so far- nothing comes for free in Europe, and if it looks too good to be true, it probably is!