July 01 – July 09, 2019; 1021 nm and 109 days after departure from La Rochelle

“For beach lounging, a dip in the cooling Atlantic waters, a rich seafood meal, or simply a stroll by the sea, Lisbon heads to Cascais. This former enclave of exiled European monarchs in the mid-20th century remains an elegant town of large mansions, cobblestone streets, and a Mediterranean feel by the Atlantic.” That is the introduction of a tourism guide for Cascais. It is true, but somehow we couldn’t really fall in love with the beautiful, perfectly designed little town. To us it presented itself a bit artificial though it looks great!

After our 30 hour sail, we stayed the first days in the marina of Cascais hoping to catch up with our luck of sleep from the trip and the last week in Porto.😉 We did not do much, a stroll here, a coffee there, finding the supermarkets. Oh and, as I lost a part of a tooth while sailing 🙄 (yes! we sail tough🤣) I needed to go to a dentist. Awesome! I found a nice dentist lady. She was definively the funniest dentist I’ve ever been to so far. She was making one joke after another and singing while I was sitting in the dentist chair with my mouth streched wide open, not able to counterattack her jokes. Often talking (in Portugues) to her assistant and then laughing their butts off. I sometimes felt a bit laughed at if you know what I mean. 🤪 Hard to believe but she also did a good job and I kind of enjoyed this unsusual entertaining dental visit. 🤓

Being so lazy for a couple of days, our bodys were screaming for some exercise! Ok not really, but we were in the mood to rent some bikes to explore the surrounings of Cascais. That was a nice change instead of walking for miles. Only for a short time … my rear end was complaining after 20 km of riding. Ouch! So rather back to walking.

June and July is party and event time in Portogal. As well of course in Cascais. The town is packed with tourists and people who want to sell what ever is possible, artists and lots of fairly good musicians. What we enjoyed watching very much, was a very amazing “futbalvolley” event. That is an awesome game! It is like beach volleyball but without using your hands and arms. Incredible how the (usually good looking and with perfect shaped bodies) boys move to get the ball over the net. Fun to watch! Espeacially when one is watching the boys playing and sweating while oneself is sitting and drinking a cool piñacolada served in a pineapple, yammi!😁

Saturday we moved out of the marina into the anchorage of Cascais to be able to jump into the still very cold water and to enjoy a bit more privacy. While heading back with the dinghy to the marina to check out we met another German couple. Anikó and Ernst, they invited us to their catamaran “Seabra” for a coffee. That was very nice of them and interesting for us as we were always curious to see how a cat looks like (mainly from the inside). Cats are very huge boats with a lot of space. The feeling is more like being in/on an appartement than a boat. A complete different world… It would  be interesting to experience the feeling of sailing a cat one day, it must be very different to a monohull. Anyway, we had a nice chat with the couple of Seabra and who knows we might see them again somewhere. They headed off the next day. Thank you guys for the nice afternoon!

Three nights of anchoring and off we went to Lisbon. We were very much looking forward to this, not only because of Lisbon being a great city to visit but as Jana and Benoit will be joining us sailing down to the Algarve. Yeahhhhhh Yeppppeeeeeeeee