We were very sad to leave Porto when the time came–what an amazing city! Driving straight to Lisbon wouldn’t take too long, but there were so many places we wanted to see along the way. We ended up only being able to see a a handful of things on the drive south, leaving plenty of ideas for our next time in Portugal. After a quick stop in Coimbra for lunch, we visited Fátima (to see the Sanctuary of Fátima, which was constructed following the claims of three shepherd children in 1917 that they had been visited by the Virgin Mary who had entrusted them with three secrets), Nazaré Beach (which sees some of the largest waves in the world; an 80-foot wave was surfed there in 2017 and is thought to be the biggest wave ever ridden), and Óbidos (a walled city that we didn’t have enough time to explore…just got a peek from outside the castle walls).
We pulled into Lisbon close to 7pm, in large part because of an accidentally long stop in Nazaré. Nazaré was totally packed with nowhere to park, so Anya and Tate jumped out near the beach to take some pictures while I started circling the area in the car. After quite awhile of not being able to find them, I sent William and Findlay to look for them with instructions to return right away to the exact corner where they got out, but during my next circle around, the police blocked the road to the beach so I had no way to get back to where I’d left them! I felt like a child throwing his shoes into a tree to get a ball down but just getting shoes stuck instead. Keegan was my last “shoe” and I wasn’t about to throw him out there. Thankfully, Anya and I simultaneously decided this would be a good time to activate a Travel Pass on our phones and were able to connect and find each other, and then I drove Anya as close as I could get to where the older boys should be and she tracked them down. They were totally unfazed at being temporarily stranded in a Portuguese beach town. I think this sort of thing would’ve really stressed me out early in our trip, but at this point I mostly just find it funny and am thankful for the memories!
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