An eerie sight in the morning and a visit to Lisbon

Nazare has quite a reputation - it claims the largest wave in the world but certainly the largest wave ever surfed - a massive 100' high! Here's a photo of me ripping it up just off the Nazare headland light house, that waves just a tad under 100', pretty exciting!





Happily as we rounded the headland the waves were  not too bad.







We parked up in the rather dilapidated marina where we found this little chap wandering round the pontoon under the beady eye of his parents.

There are some nice beaches here but sadly they are all quite steep and the waves (a little more civilised by this time) were dumping badly on the beach so we couldn't get in for a swim and a play in the waves.
We headed off for a bike ride instead to this rather impressive church and monastery (there seem to be quite a few in this very Catholic country).






On the way back we came across a pine forest with every tree tapped for its sap, a nice smelling sticky substance said to be used for a huge variety of things from sealants and an application to the bows of violins to a treatment to rheumatism and even a laxative!



The following morning we woke to a very eerie sight. The sun  glowed a deep red in a very hazy sky and a quick look around told us that something not good had happened as the deck was covered in what seemed to be black ash. Word soon went round the marina about the terrible forest fire that had happened during the night just 30 miles from us; we were directly down wind of the fire.

Later that morning we jumped on a bus inland for some sight seeing from which we intended cycle back but the road we planned to cycle on was so busy that we aborted and returned to the boat for a quiet afternoon washing the decks and doing a few other jobs.

We have had a spell of completely windless days and the following morning was no different as we headed for Lisbon under motor dropping anchor 5 hours later in Cascais harbour a few miles from Lisbon city centre.
Its getting hot here; it is a wilting 36 degrees on the streets of Lisbon!

Lisbon has the usual eclectic mix of big city architecture and buildings but two stood out as particularly special, a church recently converted into a national pantheon and the Jeronimos monestary. A pantheon, once a collective place for all the local Gods has more recently become a place for a group of famous people and so it now is in Lisbon. Amongst the heros is Vasco da Gama, Portugals hero explorer famed for being the first to reach India in 1500.

Portugal was in the 15th century the first of the  colonial powers of the renaissance which by 1570 extended right through south east Asia to Japan.  Portugal became hugely wealthy on the back of the spice trade. 'Vasco' has always been the nickname for the navigator in my family!
The pantheon, constructed from an unfinished church, was completed in 1960 and is a magnificent space with huge domed roofs and a wonderfully calming and uplifting atmosphere. I'm afraid photos really cannot do it justice.

Jeronimos monastery is quite the most extraordinarily ornate place I have ever seen. Its cavernous church and intricately decorated cloisters are magnificent.
















Tomorrow we will head inland for an explore on our bikes.....