Óbidos

This was the day our rental car was broken into, and my backpack got stolen. We will call it "the beginning of the nightmare."

But before that, it was fun.

We left the hotel and, after having breakfast, we headed to Óbidos. This is a quite touristy town, with the main streets packed with souvenir stores, but it is also beautiful. An impressive intact Moorish wall surrounds the historical center. You can go up the stairs and walk around it, but it is scary! There are no guardrails, and it can feel windy. We climbed up, and my dad and I were grabbing to the wall for our lives as people around us walked and looked at us, clearly thinking, "what is wrong with these two." I'm sure that someone who's not like me would enjoy walking all over the wall, though.

I said that the town is very touristy and full of shops but hey, nothing wrong with that if you're into buying cute stuff. We got a couple of plates and an ornament for our Christmas exchange and tried a travesseiro, a flaky Portuguese pastry filled with egg and almond cream. It was so good!

We had lunch at Real Casa Do Petisco, which I think ended up being a bit fancier (and with smaller plates) than what we had thought, and we headed to the car. We were planning to keep driving north, but... surprise. The car window was broken, and our backpacks were nowhere to be found. We were not the only ones. Other cars had been broken into, and we saw other travelers affected. Apparently, this is not a rare occurrance and I feel so dumb for leaving my bag on sight.

I carried the most valuable stuff (documents, for example!), and we had to go to the police station to file a report, which was a pain because the policeman didn't speak Spanish, not English. This ruined our plans, and we had to go back to Lisbon to figure out how to replace my papers. We stayed at the Marquês de Pombal hotel and went to Cervejaria Ribadouro for dinner. Their specialty is seafood, and we were not that hungry, but it was very close to the hotel, and we were exhausted.Read more