Portugal Road Trip: Cascais

It was a long and hot two days drive back through the middle of Spain, but things cooled off once we got back to the coast of Portugal. We’ve both been to Lisbon a couple of times, so we decided to change it up and stay in nearby Cascais for this quick visit.

A lot of Americans have been moving to Portugal in general over the last few years and many of them to Lisbon and Cascais. Our guest house hostess didn’t seem too happy about her town being overrun with American expats, but she was still very nice to us visitors. And lucky for us, her house was a very cool place to stay. It was a three-story, old Portuguese home with seven bedrooms, but we didn’t run into too many other guests.

When we first arrived, the weather conditions were extremely windy. You can tell from the number of kite surfers:

But on the second day, the winds calmed down a little and we were able to surf a bit at Praia do Guincho. It was really foggy and—I discovered—rocky, but we had a pretty good time.

At night, we ventured into downtown Cascais, which sort of has a vibe like it could be plucked from southern California. There were certainly a lot of expats and English speakers from all over. The second night we stayed more local and closer to our guest house and had some really delicious tapas and spareribs at Pateo do Petisco Torre.

Next, it was off to return the rental car and commence the second part of our trip.

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