We woke up to a beautiful day so headed down to the beachfront in Nazaré for a look around. We arrived in town and the streets were covered in sand. I guess the storm had blown it off the beach because it was everywhere. There were some people shovelling out the kids playground and you could barely see the small fence around it. The sand was piled in the streets from where they had already cleaned. We parked on the beachfront and hopped out to go for a short walk. We saw a lady laying out some fish to dry on racks. She was the only one working today since most of the other racks had been blown away in the storm and the men were still trying to find them, clean them up or repair them as needed. The waves were still quite amazing considering it wasn't terribly windy and we had fun watching them pound onto the beach. We walked along for a ways towards the breakwater and were amazed at how high the spray from the waves went when they crashed.

Next we went to the town of Alcobaça which is known for its monastery. Before visiting the monastery we decided to check out the market which our guidebook said was best on Mondays. At the entrance there were people selling fruit. Since our supply had dwindled, we decided to pick up a few more things and wandered along browsing. Eventually we stopped at one stand and I pointed to the pears and showed 6 fingers, not knowing how to say 6 or pears in Portuguese. The lady filled in for me and then we moved on to apples… I wanted to know if she had any crunchy ones, but was definitely not going to be able to ask that! Instead I asked if she spoke English (no) and then French (yes). So I asked for some not soft apples since she didn’t know the word crunchy. We picked up four of them and then 10 clementines. The grand total was €1.79! The oranges were delicious and easily beat out anything we can get at home. We then looked around at the rest of the market. There was salt cod from the region displayed on huge tables. We also saw live chickens, rabbits and guinea pigs for sale – a definite first for us! The next room over had a few bakers and we picked up a bread and treat for later. We wandered the veg stands as well but didn’t need anything at that particular time (also there seems to be a lot of cabbage for sale and we couldn’t imagine fitting one of those in our fridge!). We then headed back to the van to drop off our purchases and then head over to the monastery.

Construction started on the monastery in 1178 and the first monks arrived in 1228. The church is the largest in Portugal and was of a much simpler design that the one in Batalha. At the front of the church, on either side are two tombs. They are the tombs of Dom Pedro (King Peter I) and Dona Inês de Castro who were in love. Unluckily for them, Pedro’s father was concerned about Spanish influence and had Inês murdered. The tombs are feet-to-feet in each transept so that when the angels wake them on Judgement day, the first thing they will see is each other. The tombs were quite ornately carved and except for some damage by Napoleon’s troops, are in quite good shape. The Hall of Kings statues of most of Portugal’s kings up to 1755. They even had a wider pedestal installed in anticipation of the first queen and her big dress, but after the earthquake there was no more money for statues. The cloisters were quite ornate and we enjoyed looking at all the details on the pillars. There were also orange trees in the middle which are rather fascinating since we’ve never seen oranges or lemons growing before! It is very tempting to just reach up and pick one from all the trees we’ve passed by, but so far we’ve resisted. We visited the refectory which is where the monks ate and Anoop climbed up to the "Reader’s Pulpit" where a monk would read while the others ate. The kitchen next door was incredible. The thee-part oven could roast 7 oxen simultaneously! It really was enormous. They could feed up to 999 monks and the peasants who worked on the church-owned land. We finished our visit from the second level of the cloisters with views into the courtyard below.

We then headed over to the walled town of Óbidos which had a neat 16^th century aqueduct and a 14^th century wall. The houses were all whitewashed and the yellow and blue trims were traditionally used to mark out property lines. We passed by a pillory which was used to tie miscreants to in order to receive whatever punishment was deemed appropriate. We visited a small church which had a painted wood ceiling. Then we continued on down the lane to the castle at the end. It has since been converted into a fancy hotel, but there were great views from the terrace below. We then headed back to the entrance of town and headed up on to the ramparts. They were quite slippery so we only went on the wider part for a view. You could walk the whole way around, but they were quite sloped and had no guide rails. We decided it was perhaps better in the summer when it hadn’t just been raining and growing moss on the cobbles! Óbidos was a cute town and we were glad we had stopped by on our way to Lisbon.

We managed to circumnavigate Lisbon and not go through the mess of its downtown autoroutes. We decided the detour around was worth the €2.40 in autoroute fees, just to avoid the confusion. We eventually found our way to camp after a pre-mature exit from the highway and settled in for the next few nights.