Wednesday was our last full day in Portugal. It has been seven lightning quick weeks.. Despite all the locations, all the experiences, and all the miles.. there’s just so much more here to see and do!

As with most days we started with breakfast, but.. this day was mostly so Savitri could say goodbye to the adorable 3 year old dog that lounges in the dining room every meal. We pet him a lot but never got his name..

Our first destination for the day was Bacalhôa Buddha Eden in Bombarral. This is a sort of bizarre place which I’ll let you read up on. The short version is that a very rich Portuguese man was deeply offended by the Taliban destroying Buddhist statues in the Middle East so committed to building a sanctuary here to help balance things. I don’t know if he succeeded in that goal, but he created a truly amazing place that is peaceful and artistically stunning. We expected to drop in for an hour or so and ended up walking all of the grounds for several hours. There are hundreds if not thousands of statues. I’d say they’re mostly Asian, but certainly also African. A huge portion of the art is animals, and I’m not sure what cultural lens we’re seeing them through other than where we think the animals live(d). Regardless.. a huge amount of effort was put into assembling both the art and the presentation of it within a welcoming natural space. There are many actual animals living there as well, and you have to think they wear a badge of privilege as well! This is a story in pictures, please excuse the load time..

Keep in mind that almost all of the statues (and live animals I suppose..) are life-sized or larger.

I absolutely love that humans and other animals are all mixed together. It highlights personality in the animals and nature in the humans.

Ok out of the bamboo and woods.. and into spectacular groups of iron animals. Somehow the artist(s?) captured the nobility and still with those empty eyes a ghost-like quality.

These herons are WAY bigger than life, maybe 20 ft tall, which magnified their elegance. Maybe it’s because we were there well before the peak of tourist season but it was very serene and peaceful throughout.

A terra cotta army was assembled across several fields. This bright blue theme was present throughout the park.

Our beloved lizards are ever-present, rustling in the leaves. Every once in a while one lets us get really close..

We agree that Riki would love the buddhas on the hilltop! Here are some favorites. It’s not as meditative as Corinth, but it’s ok..

Did I mention that this place is HUGE?

Finally.. not sure who these little blue dudes are (I’m pretty sure the one on the right is a lesser-known Avenger) but they watched us stumble back out into the real world.

Our next stop was Óbidos, an old walled castle city on a hill. Unlike many old cities, this one is fully intact, including the towering wall in sight at all times. It really gave a sense of what it would have been like to live there, even if today the streets are packed with tourists, street musicians, and trinket sellers. Actually those were also probably representative too.. albeit very very different looking! We did manage to find quieter streets still, and many narrow winding steep paths/alleys/stairways (often mixed together, all built of cobblestones). It would be a cool place to stay in. We had lunch there at Adega do Ramada. The food didn’t have the creativity and “wow factor” we sometimes get, but was pretty good. Savitri’s hamburger was actually two patties without anything else, and likely literally ham and beef burger combined (as is the custom in Portugal we find). My potatoes were very simply boiled or baked, but with some sauces and spices I enjoyed them. That’s pretty representative.. we kind of finished preparing our meals. I will say that my grilled “gilded sea bream” was excellent. It is served whole, again as-is here customary for smaller white fish, so I had to debone it and remove the head, but that’s fairly easy. It was nice and moist with a nice char on the outside.

Of course we had to visit the Óbidos Chocolate Shop for a monster cupcake and a coffee.

Our last stop for the day was Nazaré. It is famously the site of the largest surfing waves in the world due to the shape of the ocean floor leading to it. The sea was very calm while we were there, but you could easily imagine house-size swells funneling into it. We started by driving up to the cliff-top view point on the north side of the city, then dropped into the beachfront area for perspective (and by “perspective” I mean “gelato”!). Somehow we had managed to get three small desserts, none of which really did it for Savitri so we needed old faithful gelato. We went to Gelatomania, and they delivered.