Cascais

After Lisbon, I came back to Oeiras to eat and then Nuno and I went to the mall to meet his friend. Afterwards, we did a little window shopping. In Zara, we tried on all the hats and Nuno attacked me with this ugly fur cape. Then we went to the grocery store. In the fruit section, one of the workers let us try this weird fruit whose name I don't know. It tasted like a lychie fruit. They had this seafood, some sort of crayfish, that was selling for 99 euros / kg. They were bright red but I doubt they taste any better than a good New Brunswick lobster.

Then, we went to Cascais, a small resort down 20 km outside of Oeiras. We drove through little villages until we got to the casino, which apparently is the biggest in Europe. It was big, with plenty of big cars in the parking lot.

We split a huge ice cream sundae and listened to the live music. It was horrible! The singer thought she was a cabaret performer or something. She was dancing like a plucked chicken and it was just excruciating to watch. Nuno and I could barely stop laughing. We decided to check out the games and he showed me how to play Roulette. The Asian man beside us must have lost some money because he kept banging his hand on the screen.

We checked out the art gallery upstairs. The most expensive painting as 50,000 euros and it was UGLY. Apparently the painter is one of the most famous in Portugal but this painting was crap. Geometric shapes in bright colours. Yuck. We both kept laughing at the outrageous price.

Then we drove down to the beach and walked along the shore. It was about 15 degrees out and no wind. The stars were so bright! I collected a few shells and Nuno tried to pry some mussels off the rocks. We wandered through little streets, still lit-up from Christmas. The tide was coming in and waves kept crashing against the rocks. Cascais is a little resort town and beside the ocean were swimming pools made out of concrete. It's a cool idea. Kids can swim in the "ocean" and still be close to Mom and Dad. The waves were crashing up against the walls and I could only imagine how it would it would be in the summer.