We flew from Germany to Portugal yesterday. We flew into Lisbon and picked up a rental car and drove a little over an hour north to Nazaré. The town is located on the Atlantic Ocean and is most known for the giant surfing waves. The town is located on a beautiful beach with some of the cleanest sand I have seen. I don’t think they have seaweed here. The beach is very wide and pretty long. I hear in the summer time, the beach is packed with umbrellas and people laying everywhere. On the north side of the rock is where the worlds largest waves are. The waves are big around October – February so today just looked like a normal day at the beach. If you do a search on Nazaré, you will see some pretty cool videos of the big waves that people have surfed.

We stayed on the much calmer side of the ocean as that is where the town is. We started by being some of the first people down on the beach this morning. I decided to have my photo taken and of course one of the larger waves came in and got me soaked. It took some time for my shorts to dry but it was refreshing. There was a girls beach soccer tournament going on that was interesting to watch. We then went to the local market to see the locals shop. I was successful in ordering a pastry but I didn’t try much more than that.

We spent the afternoon walking around the neighborhood on top of the hill. We took the funicular up and the stairs back down. There were beautiful views of the town and ocean on top as well as a fort turned into a surfing museum. It was very windy up there but it sounds like a lot of people go up there to watch surfing competitions.

The town was packed full of people by the time we came back down. The road was lined with cars and the sidewalk was full. There were a lot more people on the beach. I liked the morning hours a lot better when everyone was still sleeping. Dinner here doesn’t usually start until around 7 and they stay up a lot later.

With only two nights here, we are off to the next town tomorrow. I have enjoyed this town so much that we actually considered canceling our next hotel to stay here another 2 nights. We didn’t end up doing this but I would easily recommend this town to anyone coming to Portugal outside of the crowded summer months.