Don't Stop 'til You Get Enough(Michael Jackson) - Cruisin' the circuit to Nazare and Alcobaca and home

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What a difference a good night’s sleep makes and because our plans for the day mean a short tour of the immediate area with visits to Nazare and Alcobaca we enjoyed some extra time in bed catching up on rest.

Our first port of call was Nazare which meant a drive down through the hill villages and back over the coastal plain to the coast.

Nazare is essentially in two parts, that on the coast with a wide beach and the older part high on a cliffside overlooking the beach and Atlantic Ocean.

The upper part is what held the interest for us and we could probably have driven there and taken a car park to explore. But with the option of a funicular between the top and the bottom we opted for a park by the beach and took the ride to the top.

As we strolled along the beach the voices we were hearing were more and more English and it either that the northern holiday travel season is underway or we are now getting into territory where the Brits like to travel to or a mix of both.

The view of the upper town, also known as Sitio,from the beach is quite dramatic with towering almost vertical cliffs with houses perched right on the edge and in a couple of instances on craggy outcrops which had nothing of substance beneath them.

Our short ride to the top was interesting in itself, not only for the views but also for the nationalities we shared the cable car with. We had Germans, Swiss, Thai (we think she was a mail order bride of her British partner) and a Canadian who was a Portuguese resident, as he told everyone within earshot in a conversation with one of the German passengers.

The funicular which serves as an important link for residents of both parts of Nazare had a novel feature of pet cages of all sizes in which residents put their pets to be transported up and down.

According to legend Nazare got its name from a small wooden statue of the Virgin Mary or Black Madonna that was bought here in 711 after earlier arriving in a town in Spain being bought there directly from Nazareth in the Holy Land.

The statue was initially kept in a small chapel which is still there today but was moved to its current location in the Church of Nossa Senhora da Nazare which was built in the 14^th century and rebuilt on several occasion since.

While the church is not large the altar like the others we have seen in Portugal is very dominant with gold being the main colour that stands out.

High above the altar is the Black Madonna encased in glass.

We had arrived in the church as a tour party was leaving so we thought it a good idea to get a close advantage point while we could.

And it was just as well we did because another larger group arrived. They seemed to be a religious group complete with a couple of monks or abbots dressed in their garb plus a couple of nuns.

There were a lot of photographs taken in front of the statue and then out of the blue the group started singing which took us by surprise but was very pleasant to sit back and listen to.

We thought something might have been up when the small gate to the altar was opened and one of the group disappeared through a side door only to reappear a couple of minutes later in priest garb carrying communion wine and glasses and candles were being lit.

We weren’t sure if there was to be a full blown mass as part of the group had left the church but we didn’t want to get caught up in something when we couldn’t leave when we wanted to. So we beat a hasty retreat having got to see all we came in for.

The square in which the church is located was full of local merchants selling their wares ranging from textiles through to elderly local women dressed in traditional black long outfits selling what appeared to be nuts.

The view out over the beach and down to the seaside part of the town was as spectacular as the view was from down there up to the cliff.

Nazare has a record we weren’t aware of until our visit and that is of the largest wave ever surfed at 24metres in 2011.This occurred just around the point from the town and from our position on the cliff we could see that although there were waves today they were nowhere near that sort of size !

After a quick cheap lunch at a cafe near the beach we headed off to the UNESCO site of Alcobaca about 10km away and part of a circuit to take us back to the apartment.

Now we are really getting back in Portugal’s history today and this visit to the Monastery continues that theme.

The building is vast and it soon became clear the advantage of these historic buildings having UNESCO status. The town itself is relatively small and it would be hard to imagine how it could ever hope to restore and maintain such a structure once neglect occurs which we have seen with other historical buildings of perhaps not the same value.

The monastery was started in 1178 with the church part being completed in 1272.The rest of the building which actually from the outside gives the appearance of being constructed in one continuous period was actually built over several centuries.

One of the interesting facts was that the river than ran where the building came to be expanded had to be diverted yet at the same time gave running water directly into the monastery.

You can visit the church for free but we decided to take the €6 tour of the other buildings of interest. The person selling the tickets was convinced we wanted to pay the half price 65yrs+ charge and she took some convincing we weren’t eligble, yet.

The nave of the church is quite dramatic in a severe looking way with a simple altar.

It was in the side chapels that things got interesting with tombs of kings and queens of Portugal from the 13^th and 14^th centuries. A couple of the tombs were even quite spooky to look at supported by stone creatures and with ghostly looking angels ‘floating ‘over the image of the body within the tomb.

The tour through the buildings open in the monastery told the story of how the place was started and how it has become such a revered site in Portugal.

Probably the most impressive room was the kitchen which had a massive fireplace in which the food was cooked. A sign noted that an ox could be cooked over a spit in the fireplace and then moved to what was one of the largest butchers chopping boards we have ever seen. Over the fireplace was a conical shaped chimney that when you stood underneath, such was the size of the thing, and you had to lean back to see where the chimney exited at the top of the building.



We headed home satisfied at our days outing with more appreciation of Portugal’s very long history. Our stamina still low after the bug but on the improve.

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