Another trip to the ocean…

Although Lisbon is on a river that flows into the Atlantic, there are no real beaches here in the city. Since we had been to the coastal beaches in Biarritz, San Sebastian and Porto, we decided to take a train trip out along the coast. There was an ulterior motive as well.

Just 2 stops from the end of the line is the town of Estoril. It’s main claim to fame is a huge casino popular in WWII with spies and exiled royalty. One of these was British agent Ian Fleming who’s remit here was to keep an eye on suspected double agents. He used this experience at the casino as the inspiration for the first James Bond novel Casino Royale. We were very disappointed when we arrived to find that although it is a place of interest in guidebooks, it was remodeled in the 1960’s and not in a very pretty way.

I was unable to find a suitable photo of what the original looked like to share here but from what I can see, it was much more glamorous. We didn’t go inside for 2 reasons, the first was it is only open at night (and until 3 am) and you still need semi-formal attire to enter. Neither fit our situation:)

Still Estoril was a nice clean town. The casino sits at the top of the city park which was huge and beautiful.

The more interesting buildings were the hotels, one of which is featured below.

From Estoril, we walked the almost 2 miles to the end of the beach to the town of Cascais. Both Estoril and Cascais were clean bright towns in contrast with the grittier Lisbon or even Porto. Graffiti is a fact of life in Portugal. Some can be considered artistic but much of it is just tagging. There wasn’t any in the upscale coastal towns.

I wasn’t expecting to find so many American real estate companies here. In fact, the biggest surprise was in Estoril where there is a Berkshire Hathaway Home Services office. We also see ReMax, Keller Williams, Century 21 and commercial firms CBRE, JLL and others.

Unique tile roof design. Zoomed in for a better look but a bit stretched.

Unique shiny gold roof along our walk from Estoril to Cascais.

Along the beach promenade we saw these roofs and as we got closer to Cascais proper there was a harbor filled with fishing boats.

We then wandered into the streets of the town looking for a spot of lunch and a tour around to see what it looked like.

Seaside house

Church interior. Most of the churches look pretty plain from the outside but inside are very ornate.

There was nothing that was spectacular on this trip and the casino was a big let down. However, it was nice, pleasant day out although with temps hovering in the mid 80’s and high humidity it was tiring. It was nice to spend time in clean, bright towns for a change.

There will be one more adventure before it is time to go back to England.