Appreciating the good life at Praia da Nazaré

First, I want to mention the cookie. Not the one I bought from the elderly woman in the plaza that fronts the Santuário de Nossa Senhora da Nazaré (or Sanctuary of Our Lady of Nazareth) and that ended up aggravating a cracked molar that, a couple of weeks later, would have to be pulled.

No, the cookie I mean is the one that I bought at the road-side café called Le Petit Chef Belge, the one that rivals the “signature cookies” sold at Spokane’s My Fresh Basket and was so tasty that I had to buy a second one for my wife Mary Pat.

We were on the second day of our visit to Nazaré , the Portuguese beach town that is famous for playing host to gangs of surfers who every winter season are intent on riding the giant waves that the town is famous for. And as I didn’t want to pull our rental car out of the cramped hotel garage where I had stashed it, Mary Pat and I – accompanied by our Spokane friends Ann and Matt – decided to Uber to the upper part of the town, Sitio.

Nazaré, as I wrote previously, has two basic levels. The lower town features a mix of housing, hotels, restaurants and shops, all stretched along the wide, sandy beach called Praia da Nazaré . The upper town, the Sitio neighborhood, sits atop a promontory from which you can see miles up and down the coast, not to mention out to sea – where, in the winter, the big waves are generated.

So why take an Uber when Nazaré boasts a funicular that Rick Steves among others advises visitors to ride? Because for reasons we could never discover, it wasn’t in operation. So, we had little choice but to find other transportation because simply hiking up that hill, despite what our friendly guide Steves says, was more than we could handle, especially in what promised to be a sweltering day. In any event, the Uber was easy to arrange, and the ride took just a few minutes. The driver – an elderly guy whom Matt chatted with in Portuguese – dropped us off a block or so from Sitio’s main plaza. From there, we did manage to walk the half mile down the slope that leads to the Forte de São Miguel Arcanjo .

Originally built as an actual fort in 1577, the stone building – which sits some 110 meters above the beach – is now a combination museum and viewpoint. For a mere 2 euro, we were admitted to what turned out to be both an education in oceanography and an honoring of the surfers who have made Nazaré world famous. It was in rooms adjoining the museum that we were able to see a colorful collection of surfboards, each bearing the individual owners’ biographies (including that of record-setting Garrett McNamara ). More important, in the museum itself was where we received a crash course on the undersea geography that makes the base of the promontory such a big-wave surfing paradise.

Why are the waves so big? Well, you can get a detailed explanation by clicking here . The short answer involves the intersection of a narrow undersea canyon with the continental shelf, combined with currents and offshore wind – especially strong between November and February. When we were there, however, the waves were no bigger than what you might experience at Coeur d’Alene Lake when a powerboat races by. Yet the view is magnificent, especially on sunny days.

That’s when we gave in to the weather. Instead of hiking back up the slope to the main plaza under that same blazing sun, we jumped on a Tuk Tuk. And that’s when we stumbled upon Le Petit Chef Belge . While ordering much-needed drinks for us all, I noticed on the menu board something that smacked of market-speak: the “100 Foot Wave” hamburger, which was invented by McNamara and his wife, Nicole. As good as it looked, though, I was more interested in the thick chocolate-pecan cookies that sat under a plastic hood – and which I ended up buying, twice, sharing both, of course, with Mary Pat.

That left us plenty of time to tour the afore-mentioned Sanctuary of Our Lady of Nazareth, a church famous for a small wooden statue known as the Black Madonna. ( Click here to learn the statue’s back story .) Supposedly brought to Nazaré sometime in the 4th century from the ancient holy city of Nazareth itself (thus earning the town its name), the statue for a number of reasons is considered by the faithful to be symbolic of miracles.

Tired from our mid-day hike, not to mention our short religious pilgrimage, and drained of energy by the heat, we caught a taxi back to our hotel for a much-needed siesta. Then, in the early evening, we were again refreshed enough to take a long walk along the seashore to the restaurant Pangeia By The Sea .

As I’ve written all along, most of the restaurants we encountered in Portugal accommodated us with the kind of enthusiasm unlike any I’ve experienced in any other country. At least not on a regular basis. And Pangeia By the Sea was no different. The owner personally sat us at a corner table, on a patio enclosed by glass but with an open ceiling, giving us a great view of the sunset.

The dishes we ordered matched the service, being a mixed seafood medley of appetizers and entrees (Ann, no fan of fish, ordered pasta). Everything came quickly (but not too quickly), giving us time to relax, sip at our respective drinks (glasses of Portuguese Vinho Verde wine for Mary Pat and me) and talk about our day.

All too soon, the meal was over, we were again on the cement boardwalk, slowly making our way back up the beach toward our hotel. I recall taking a moment, my stomach full of good, solid Portuguese food, and looking at all the lights radiating from the buildings along the street that gave Nazaré a particularly comforting glow. I turned from that view just in time to catch the fading rays of the sun as it set over the Atlantic.

I remember thinking, though hardly for the first time, that life – is good.

Next up : Arriving at the “End of the World.”