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Sintra to Lisbon, Portugal, October 20. 2018

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What a fucking day, that's all I can say.  Nothing bad happened, it just was difficult.
If every hostel were like Casa Azul, fancy hotels would not exist.  I had a great sleep and then Antonio was there bright and early to serve a fabulous breakfast.  After, I decided to leave my car parked and walk to Quinta da Regliera because parking is such an issue.  So many European cities were built long before anyone even dreamed of cars and so the streets are narrow and parking is often on the sidewalk.  It was a beautiful day so I was happy to walk.  Along the way, more sculptures-

Quinta da Regaleira was built between 1904 and 1910 during the last years of the Portuguese monarchy.  Antonio Augusto Carvalho Monteiro, or Moneybags Monteiro as he was nicknamed, owned the property last and it was his favorite country estate.  I guess he had more than one.  Luigi Manini was the architect of this weird place-

The Initiation Wells are really inverted towers.  They were never water sources but use…
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Nazaré, Obidos and Sintra, Portugal, October 19, 2018

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I had a big day!  First it didn't help that I was awake at 5 am.  I was on the road by 9 and decided to check out lower Nazaré.  There were few people around so parking was simple.  They have a fish drying demonstration on the beach because they are trying to preserve the ancestral tradition where the men catch the fish and the wives dry them to sell.  There's netting all around the fish to keep the birds away-






Octopus-



One of the fisherman's wives, peddling her product-

Last night I stayed up on top of the plateau on the left.  The lighthouse is visible on the far left side.  It's not a tall lighthouse, more like a fort-

The waves weren't nearly as crazy on this beach as on the north shore yesterday-


Nazaré looks like a typical beach town-

I stopped in a shop to ask about the significance of the rooster to Portugal.  Legend says that years ago at a banquet hosted by a rich landowner in Barcelos, silver was stolen and one guest was accused of the theft.  He was tried by …
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