The Daily Diary of a Wandering Restaurateur
Life's a Beach
At this point I should probably remind you that our normal routine on a trip like this is to rise whenever we wake up,
fumble around with breakfast of some sort in the apartment, and after a casual morning routine, head out for a couple of
hours around the crack of noon to see the sights. We find one meal a day sufficient most of the time, often supplemented
by a snack before or after. That one meal is either a late lunch or an early dinner. Rarely will we eat both.
I realize this is a radical departure from the non-stop dawn-to-dark activity schedule many Americans seem to adopt when
they make an overseas trip ... and I suppose if this was a once-in-a-lifetime vacation for us, we might feel the urge to do
more or see more. But we are travelers, not tourists. For us the attraction is in the being rather than in the
seeing.
Getting there is NOT half the fun and air travel becomes more of a hassle every year. The upside to the amount of travel I
do in my normal course of affairs is that I always seem to have about a million frequent flyer miles I can tap, so for the
past twenty years or so, we've been able to make one -- often two and occasionally three -- trips out of the country to
experience other cultures and seek out new experiences. We always travel with the idea that we will be back, so there's no
pressure to do it all right now. Eventually we will be wrong about the returning part, but it does make for a more relaxed
trip.
Today we went to the beach. No, don't picture us in bathing suits frolicing in the surf. You
won't be able to unsee that vision. Instead, imagine a lunchtime snack and a cold beer while gazing at the water from the
deck of the snack bar at Cresmina Dunes Park on the Atlantic Coast. For some reason it's always therapeutic to watch the
water. It was cool in the shade and there was a slight breeze but the glass panels around the deck did their intended job
well. It was deliciously warm in the sun ... on December 22nd! Gotta love that!
The dunes themselves are protected from damage by a raised boardwalk that also makes the area handicapped-accessible. Nice
work there. I tried my first tosta, sort of a flatbread-meets-quesadilla affair, this one filled with egg, bacon,
tomato and such. Light but filling. It might be worth a little experimentation to create your own variation on this theme.
I can see an item like this working well on lunch menus elsewhere in the world.
The appropriate move for the day was obvious: drive along the coast back through beautiful
downtown Cascais and the neighboring town of Estoril to do a little driveby shooting (with a camera, of course!) I can't
provide details on exactly what we saw, except that perfectly formed "tree" in the third shot is actually a cell phone
tower. Very civilized! Hopefully the few shots included will at least give you a feel for what we saw. Hard to imagine
Lisbon is only another half hour down the coast.
It's the Friday before Christmas and it seemed like everyone was out and about, so while we loved the feel of the town of
Cascais itself, we couldn't find an easy place to park and the traffic was driving us crazy. We both felt a lot more
comfortable when we got outside the central area and away from the hustle and bustle. Are we just getting older ... or
perhaps just being more honest with ourselves?
PS: We have internet access but for some reason the system won't give me access to the program that lets me post these
reports to my website. I'll keep writing them, though, and upload them as soon as I can. Maybe I'll have better luck in
Lisbon.
© 2017 Restaurant Doctor
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