Granted, much of what we’d read about the event was translated from Portuguese, and almost certainly we still didn’t read it closely enough.

As our bus turned north toward Guincho in the later afternoon, I started to anticipate international crowds, big waves, media presence, maybe an awards ceremony. Much of why I chose to stay in Cascais this summer was from the fun I had surfing while down in Cape Town. Even if conditions wouldn’t allow me to do it, I could still watch those who could.

Right off the bat, the beaches looked mostly empty. Once down on the sand, we realized how windy it was. Visibility fluctuated, suddenly clear, suddenly like a desert sandstorm. The swells were whipped so hard in all directions by gusts, the water looked like broken glass. The sand was biting our shins so hard I wished I’d worn pants. We covered our faces and braced ourselves, walking toward the oasis of three big Billbong tents, assuming this is where the action would be.

It became obvious that the “girls” part of the “Billabong Girls Competition” was the focus. Inside the tent, 50 girls between ages of 8-16 joined arms and were swaying to some kind of loud bellydancing music while the slightly Billabong pros encouraged them from the sidelines. After three days of surf activities, I guess we were seeing the tail-end of whatever female bonding experience had come out of it, sponsored by Billabong and various suntan lotion corporations.

Wistar was already in the tent, looking back at me in confusion. I began to step inside, pulling out my camera to caputure whatever the hell this was supposed to be, but a bouncer guy quickly told me “nao entrado” and explained it was only for girls and teens. “Oh” was all I could say. We slowwllly backed out of there and tried to get our bearings again.

We walked to Guincho’s north end and tried to rent wetsuits and boards, but the lifeguards confirmed it was way too rough. Indeed, waves were striking the cliffs so hard that explosions of spray and mist were raining all over the parking lots.

We made our way back toward the tents, puzzled and a little deflated. There were a small handful of wind-surfers in the water, but no surfers to be found. Wistar found herself speaking with an Australian woman who said she was the lead singer of a “punk band” who’d be playing soon and that we should stick around. The conditions could not have been less conducive to seeing a band, given the deafening winds and stinging sand, but I guess they’d already loaded a bunch of equipment inside one of the tents.

Soon thereafter, in the tent where the band was setting up, we saw only awkward adolescent girls, wrestling with each other, having water fights and chatting with the older Billabong girls who had, presumably at some point during the weekend, done some actual surfing. There was also a thin young woman lying on her stomach in the sand while an older guy with a grey beard rubbed her butt with massage balls. Seriously! I pray he was actually a) licensed somehow, b) invited to the event, and c) invited to rub this girl’s butt. I started to wonder who was supervising this surfing/non-surfing event.

As the band began to sound-check, even from the first few notes, it became obvious that no matter what they sounded like, just the knowledge that they’d volunteered to play to an adolescent surfer-girl audience like this one virtually guaranteed that they would suck on an epic level. The Billabong banner behind the band said it all: the entire four-day event was essentially an excuse to advertise shirts, flip flops and other crap, with some surfing demo’s thrown in for entertainment.

Then sun was sinking and we started to leave before noticing the white caps were actually flattening out and the wind was calming. Out of nowhere there were now 8 surfers paddling out toward the swells. I got optimistic, then I remembered the rental shop was closed. I managed to get a few photos:

Ten minutes later, the wind became painful again, the surfers came in and we caught the next bus back to Cascais.

(pics)

This square was mostly obliterated after the earthquakes and eventually rebuilt to revitalize commerce. It’s also where King Carlos was assassinated. It’s a really imposing and beautiful structure and we paused for a bit to breathe it in. Exiting under the archway, a toothless old man breezed up to us offering, “Coca? Weed? Coca? Weed?” He did his best to erase any charm from the experience.

We meandered up and down the neighborhoods which were narrow, windy, mysterious and sometimes urine-smelling. I liked that there didn’t seem to be much of a grid to things. We found a hole-in-the-wall place for lunch where I got spicy red snapper and potatoes. The “street” we ate on was not actually a street, but a 70-degree inclined pedestrian path which cut between two main roads. We had a beautiful view of the walls of Castelo São Jorge, a relic of Christian and Moorish attacks, looming over the city for fortification.

Without much idea of how to scale it, we approached the hill beneath the castle and just started walking, up and up. The incline was steep and took us in and out of some surly looking neighborhoods where again the prevailing fragrance was human urine. Instead of metal signage with neat little board-of-tourism-funded logos, we just saw the word “Castel»” written on buildings in spray paint every 10 blocks, which did the job just as well.

The panoramic view from the castle walls was well worth the steep walk:

(pic)

Also in a courtyard playing guitar was an older man who scowled as he played through a little 5-watt amp:

(vid)

The Moorish and Alfama neighborhoods at the top behind the castle seemed pretty hip, with great views of the water and cramped little streets with cafes. I overheard a half-dozen languages on our walk back down. At some point I got the hiccups which last for 40 minutes, all the way back to the train, and halfway back to Cascais.

After getting the okay to come out and scrimmage with them, I took the train to a little beach town halfway to Lisbon called Carcavelos. From there I walked to the sports complex at St. Julian’s Academy, a prestigious school for international students. The field was turf, with nice goals and outdoor lighting — all infinitely better than anything we’ve got in Charlottesville, even for in-season SOCA matches. One of the first guys to show up explained that St. Julian’s was host to some of the training and recruitment for Arsenal.

We played for two hours, 6 v 6, and it was everything I could’ve asked for. The players were very welcoming and they spoke fluent Portguese and English, often together, on and off the field, yet ethnically they were all clearly from English and French families. I ended up scoring three goals and having a blast. The level of skill and seriousness was just about perfect.

Afterward there was even a clubhouse nearby that served drinks for players afterward, which I declined because I needed to get back to Cascais. I’ve gone back three times for pickup games and wished I could be around to play during the Casuals’ regular season.

Because of the odd schedule, we’ve been at a loss for how to spend evenings. Most nights by the time I’m done with dinner, I’m a little too addled to do anything ambitious. So we’ve been to the theater, something we never do in Charlottesville, and see Hancock, Wanted and The Dark Knight. The air conditioner has been broken all three times we’ve gone.

Another funny thing is there are assigned seats, and an intermission. Seeing Wanted, it was too dark to read our tickets so we sat in someone else’s seat. Sure enough we had to move again when the rightful owners found us. But we were lugging backpacks and laptops and had to step over three people to move, so we definitely made an impression.

Before seeing Batman, we went to a cozy little ivy-covered restaurant that seemed popular among older Portuguese locals. I did what I usually do – order the weirdest thing on the menu, which was wild boar shanks. It turned to be really really juicy and lean and served with lemon and garlic better. Some of the best meat ever. A couple nights later I finally had peri peri chicken which is coated with red pepper glaze. Another night, sopa alentejana: buttery broth, cilantro, hunks of bread and boiled egg whites. All meals served with traditional sheep’s cheese and bread!

During Batman, I began getting drowsy from the boar meat and the fact the movie was 2.5 hours. Then I lost concentration altogether because 2-3 teenagers diagonally across the room were checking their text-messages compulsively which required the bright blue LED light on their cell phone to flicker. I finally lost it, stepped across the aisle, leaned over a guy and almost yelled, “I CAN’T SEE THE DAMN MOVIE WITH THAT LIGHT ON.” He looked at me, fearful and surprised, and put the phone away. He almost surely didn’t speak English, but I think he got the point.

After the movie let out, he put his head down and bolted past our seats before his eyes could meet mine. I felt like a real joykilling adult for the first time. It felt alright.

We also passed a church and a courtyard with a fish pond.

Within walking distance of our apartment is the maritime museum, which we have not visited, but outside it is a stone foot-bridge and a little lagoon where kids swim. It’s one of the most photographed corners of the town, if Flickr is any indication.

Further down the coastal highway, we stopped at Boca Do Inferno, a giant chasm carved by the ocean. Unfortunately there was no way to climb down to the little swimming hole at the bottom:

We followed the walking path along the coast toward Santa Marta Lighthouse. Halfway there we noticed you could actually scale down the steep cliffs and sunbathe, which we did for a few hours.

Unfortunately, the wind was so intense it kept blowing my 145lb frame off the path and I almost biffed on my bike a couple times before regaining control. The previous day I’d biked about halfway and the area was completely whited out from mist and fog coming off the ocean. I had no idea what the scenery looked like. Today was completely clear and we could see all the way to Sintra.

Guincho turns out to be one of the best beaches in Portugal, mainly for surfing and kite-surfing. It’s long and deep and was remarkably clean and uncrowded. Because of the wind, the breakers were out of control and quickly killed my surfing plans. Wistar didn’t want me to die and looking out at the waves pounding the high cliffs, I agreed.

There were 10-15 kite surfers going at it, though. Sometimes they caught air by banking into an oncoming wave, but just often they’d skip along the water and simply be lifted straight up, vertically, by the crazy winds. Some were carried 300-400 feet from shore. We wondered if they could just kite-surf all the way back to Cascais along the coast.

Some things I’ve noticed about the beaches here:

1. No Coke cans, no cigarette packaging, no Doritos bags. The city pays for groundskeeping (not to mention public dumpsters which get emptied daily), but in general people seem to exercise common sense when it comes to litter
2. No one is 400lbs; I haven’t yet spotted an EZ scooter
3. Women can sunbathe topless at non-nude beaches without anyone calling the police
4. No radios blaring
5. People can drink a beer in public with impunity
6. Even among the few who drink too many, there are no fights or gun incidents
7. No one blinks, comments or cares in the presence of all the races, genders and sexual preferences on the beach
8. Development of this major piece of coastline is non-existent, minus a few restaurants. The rest is parkland. The views are clean and beautiful, the historical sites intact

Refreshing, is all I’m saying.

Back in town, after two days of heavy biking in heavy gusts, my hair would not lay down. I wanted to go out to eat and look presentable, so I tried mashing it down but it was outta control.

We ended up eating at a low-budget Portuguese place that didn’t bother with any fancy menus and they didn’t speak English and didn’t seem to clear on the whole waiter/patron relationship, for that matter. We somehow still ordered a palatable meal which was salted cod and potatoes for me and some kind of omelet for Wistar. We also got a chance to try sopa de legumes, a Portuguese standard of mainly puréed carrots and potatoes, and in this case, kale.

On the walk back we found this young guy and his dog busking for spare change. Notice how the dog only seems partially clear on why he must hold a basket in his mouth.

The road to Sintra was mostly within site of the ocean, but wound around many tight curves a couple hundred feet up. This brought back many a bad memory about the Road to Hana in Maui, something we did as a family back in 1986. Like the Hana Route, the twisty road to Sintra made me very queasy so I tried to just concentrate on the landscape. The bus driver barreled us through many small towns with one-way streets and only 1-2 feet of room on either side of the bus, barely preventing us from scraping the buildings as we passed.

We did manage to see Cabo da Roca along the way, the westernmost point of Europe. This was awesome because six months ago I was privileged enough to see the southernmost tip of Africa. I’m done bragging.

The town of Sintra was really pretty and charming by itself, but its main attractions sit on a small mountain overlooking the city: The Castle of the Moors and The Pena Palace. The former was surrendered and abandoned and the latter was eventually renovated into a palace for King Ferdinand. The colors and textiles weren’t like anything we’d ever seen:

[pic]

When we finished walking around the palace, we took a bus down the mountain, but gave the driver our tickets for the Cascais bus, not the Sintra palace bus. He tried to tell us we were wrong, but he spoke no English and we only understand bits and pieces of Portuguese. The whole ride down the mountain, we both explained ourselves in our own languages, making no headway, though he amused not angry. At the bottom of the mountain, Wistar checked her backpack and found the right tickets. We swallowed our pride, apologized and hopped the bus back to Cascais.

We were greeted in Cascais by our landlords, a couple in their 60s. He’s Japanese and she’s American and they met on a steam ship in 1968 traveling from Hong Kong to Japan. They’re an unusual and very sweet couple. He has giant Elvis sideburns and I suspect they’re ex-hippies. He says the sideburns make him susceptible to young people approaching him on the promenade asking, “Need any dope?”

They own multiple apartments here and the one they’re renting us is right in the heart of the beach and commerce area. It’s also right up the street from a giant fortress/venue where we heard Branford Marsalis’s band warming up for the jazz festival. There are fishing boats everywhere and a giant sail race just for handicapped folks. The wind comes blasting off the beaches, it’s an ideal coast for any kind of sailing. Our whole neighborhood smells like seafood.

The beaches alongside our apartment are configured similar to those in Cape Town — each about 100yds wide and divided by cliffs. We wondered if they were divided by subject matter like many of them were in Cape Town — gay beach, family beach, quiet beach, party beach. Each has their own small lagoon where kids play soccer.

During a walk around the marina, we also discovered a heavily-canopied park with curvy little dirt trails where peacocks poked their heads out from behind trees. The trail opened into a large green field where they were holding horse-jumping trials with hundreds of spectators. This is all just 100 yds from our apartment, but hidden in this dense park — nice discovery.

The next couple months I’ll be working full-time from a laptop at Beefeater’s, a faux-Brit place on the main promenade. They keep the lights down low and there is no shortage of 80s music and soccer matches on TV — it’s almost like they knew I was coming. So far everyone is very approachable and hospitable.

Tomorrow we’ll bike to Guincho to figure out where the surf-able waves might be.