I know I’ve been talking about sticking to one place in the past posts. But now I took off to Cascais, a small pretty town about 90 minutes from Baleal. I’ve been here a couple of times before and I’ve always enjoyed the place.
Interesting encounters
While Baleal is mainly just about surfing, this place has a lot more to offer. A lot of great restaurants, even some great vegan and vegetarian places that I’ve enjoyed a lot on my last trips here. There are surfing options here too but the parking situation has been pretty difficult at least for Guincho beach. I haven’t surfed here yet, but I’ve had two great days and a fun evening in the town yesterday.
I bumped into some really interesting people yesterday. While having lunch, a Canadian woman Sophia, joined my table. She had accidentally taken the wrong train and ended up in Cascais. Sophia leads a nomadic lifestyle and has been living around the world for the past six years. She now works for a company in California and has pretty much the opposite working hours than I do: she starts at three and works until eleven.
I also enjoyed the company of a lovely Scottish couple who are here on holiday. They told me about their trip and I gave them a couple of good tips. Later I ended up going for drinks with a barmaid from a craft beer bar and her three local friends. Random encounters are so much fun.
Meeting a colleague
Today instead of a random encounter I had a planned meet-up. I met a colleague I’ve been working a lot with the past three years for the first time face to face. My company has several offices and he’s based in the Helsinki one. He told me last week that he’s coming to Lisbon with a friend for a week so we set up a meeting here in Cascais. We had good food at a Peruvian restaurant and walked around the city.
Boca do Inferno
Boca do Inferno (translates to Hell’s mouth) here in Cascais is a pretty impressive place. It’s a big hole in the cliffs that has an opening in the bottom for the waves. When the swell is big it acts almost like a geyser. But besides being an impressive sight there’s some cool history connected to it too.
A British occultist, mountaineer, painter (and many more things) Alistair Crowley staged his suicide here in 1930 only to appear at the opening of his own art exhibition in Berlin three weeks later. The guy really knew how to take his audience… Ozzy Osbourne made a song about him in the early eighties too: Mr Crowley.