After the Surfcamp we drove a bit South to a little town called Figueira da Foz. Since the swell of Hurricane Erin was scheduled to arrive on Tuesday we had one more surfing session with Surf‘Scool here in Figueira on Monday. After the camp it feels good to have a small place just for the four of us again. It‘s a lot quieter (both good and bad, the boys loved having so much to do) but we also need to recharge a bit after the last week.
Tuesday was Nazaré day. On Wednesday we visited the Salines (Salt museum) here in Figueira. The cool thing at this place is, that you can do a little loop trail (5 km) around the salt pools and watch the people harvesting all the salt from the small pools. There are many lakes and streams around this area, which means you also get to see a lot of birds and to our surprise also flamingos. This was our highlight. Especially when these rather large birds start to fly over you. Something we haven‘t seen before. After the walk, there‘s a little salt water pool to relax your feet. Exactly what our feet needed, after that 1.5 hour walk.
The next day we decided to take another surf break, since the waves were still very big. So we went to the Palácio Sotto Maior. We weren‘t sure if this would be worth it but boy, this really was a nice surprise! I would say this is an amazing but still very unknown place to visit. We went there at 10 am (right when they open), to hopefully get an English tour. And we were lucky! The bonus was that we were the only ones there, so we got a private tour! We learned that this house was built by the richest Portugese man living during the beginning of the 20th century! He had hired a French architect to design the house, mostly to impress his business partners. We‘re pretty sure it worked really well! It has more rooms than you can count, an elevator (sadly stuck and they haven‘t been able to find a company that could repair it), house telephone, electrical wiring, real toilets and bathtubs and not just one but two safes.
It felt like traveling back in time 100 years and getting a glimpse of how one would‘ve lived in 1930 – if you happened to be super rich and had 30 servants to keep the place running. We enjoyed the tour a lot and can only recommend going there.
On Friday we started our surf sessions again. The leftovers of the Erin swell caused a lot of crazy (that is unsurfable) waves for us parents but the kids had the time of their lives. Catching wave after wave on their own! in the shallows. Saturday and Sunday were still quite big but we had fun in the whitewater together with the kids.
We also discovered a small public swimming pool – right here on the beach of Figueira da Foz. Only 50 people can be in there, so to make sure that everyone can get some water time you can only stay in the pool for 30 min. Then the next group can get in. It‘s a fair system and the little salt water pool is so much fun! It‘s also nice when (as it was the last days) the waves on the beach are too dangerous for swimmers.
We also built a little sand castle, but sadly the ocean reclaimed it pretty quickly. All in all we had a good time here in Portugal, our flight back is on Tuesday so we‘ll enjoy some more seafood until then and try to pack everything (including souvenirs) in our bags.
