Cascais: On the Coast of Somewhere Beautiful

Today we returned to the beach town of Cascais (pronounced kash-KAISH), which we had spent a majority of the day yesterday exploring, too. It is straight west of Lisbon as far as possible before running into the Atlantic, and is the closest point we will be to home during our trip. (By the way - enlarge the pic to the right to see how incredible the beach looked in person.)

The town consists of narrow streets flanked by the slender, tight, high buildings that seem to be a staple in Europe. With relentless sun bearing down from above and the unique-to-Lisbon (at least so far) tiled pavement of white reflecting from below, the entire town was washed in a beautiful, stringent white. Thankfully, it was kept cool by the Atlantic coast, which conditioned the air and provided refreshing sea breezes. Both sides of the winding side streets that interlaced Cascais were lined with small cafés, novelty souvenir shops, and high end designer fashion stores. The former two spilled out into the streets with tableclothed patio seating, racks of inexpensive wears, and hopeful vendors doing their best not to be overtly pushy. In the background of the scattered plazas teeming with outside seating and lunchtime diners, accordion players serenaded as pigeons and the occasional dog kept their distance, but remained alert for discarded scraps.

A landing peppered with outside café seating and ice cream vendors ended at a low block wall that overlooked a secluded beach, protected on its right and let by cliff walls upon which sat beautifully quaint – if somewhat tired – housing. The beach itself was not wide, and when completely full of sunbathers would accommodate less than a hundred people. The beach was quite full – young sun worshipers, older folks, families with small children playing with one another in the surf, and of course a European sense of modesty. On the cliffs that overlooked the water several dozen feet from the shoreline, a group of local teens worked up the courage to make the ~20 foot dive into the cold sea below. Back up the steps leading to the beach and through more radiatingly clean and white side streets with sights and sounds and smells that tantalized, through more plazas fill of afternoon diners and gentle music, and we emerged at a larger stretch of beach that abutted a wide causeway several hundred feet long and teeming with the activity of workers attending to their daily activities. Even the water was ethereally brilliant, and matched well the not-quite-real diffusion of light emanating from the streets and buildings surrounding it. I could really only imagine a place like this to exist in a storybook.