November 1st is a holiday in Portugal (All Saints Day) so some things were closed. We decided since the weather was supposed to be pretty nice and given that it was a holiday, we would head up the coast to Nazare which is less than an hour away. Nazare is the site where big wave surfers come from around the world to challenge themselves on monster waves – some of the largest in the world. A German surfer broke the world record here in May by surfing a wave 86 feet tall.
Now that we’re getting the hang of navigating the backroads of Portugal, it was a pretty smooth drive up to Nazare. It is a very nice town with broad sandy beaches and occasional monster waves rolling in from October through March. We walked around the main beach area for a while and then on the way back to the car, we stopped to look at the listings in the windows of several real estate offices. We were fairly encouraged by what we saw. It seemed like nice places are still affordable and the town of Nazare has a nice little vibe to it.
We wanted to find the lookout where people go to watch the surfers when the big waves come rolling in. Thanks to Google maps we were able to once again undertake a mini version of Mr. Toad’s wild ride and climb up above Nazare to the overlook. Parking was a small challenge once we got there but we found a spot and walked out on the cliffs above Nazare. It was a spectacular view.
After we finished our tour of Nazare, we headed back to Caldas da Rainha even though we knew many things would be closed due to the holiday. However, one of our main objectives was to visit a large ’hypermercado’, I.e. a large Target kind of store. We found one and went in to see what kinds of things they had and what the prices were like. We were pleasantly surprised to find that a large percentage of the products we saw were less expensive or comparably priced to similar American products. We even found Skippy peanut butter!!! We found a little restaurant that was open and grabbed some lunch before heading back to our hotel.
Tomorrow we are heading back to Caldas da Rainha to see if we can get a better sense of the city when everything is open. In addition, we have a meeting with a local realtor in the morning to get a better understanding of both the long term rental and purchase markets in this area of the country. We still have a lot left to learn and explore but if we had to pick a place based upon where we have been so far, I think it would be the town of Nazare.