Cascais Portugal
When thinking about planning this trip, I knew that I wanted to go to the beach because the beach is my happy place! It’s one of the places where I feel the most free. I truly love being by the water any water mostly, but there’s something about being at the beach where your toes are in the sand and you can just listen to the waves and see out to the horizon. It’s just magical and there’s nothing like it!
View from our hotel room!
Researching beaches in Portugal I found the gem that is Cascais. It seemed to be a cute little beach town, not too busy, or crowded just very chill and relaxed so that is where I put my efforts in looking for accommodations and things to do.
In Cascais we stayed at Baia hotel which had an amazing breakfast and wonderful service. We stopped at the bar one afternoon before we went to the beach and wanted to try a local spirit. The bartender recommended, Aldeia Velha (like Portuguese grape moonshine). The bartender was definitely generous in sharing the information and the libations so we had a nice little walk to the beach!
Directly across from our hotel was a small sand beach that never got too crowded, but if you walk along the way you can find another path with a lot more strip of beach that had a lot more activities, some paddle boarding, and more people out and about enjoying the beach.
There were so many adorable restaurants, great food, wonderful seafood, and nice shops too!
The first day we were there the weather was not ideal, it was cloudy and a little cold so we spent the day walking around, eating, shopping, we rented the, Link, scooters and tried our first scooter experience. My husband was really into it, he’s always wanted to try them in all of the cities that we’ve visited so far and I have been a wimp so since this town was so small and pretty slow, as in not a lot of traffic by cars or people, I felt more comfortable trying out the scooter here. So we rented the scooters and took them for a little ride along the town to get to another part of the beach.
They say that this place is The Charm of the Atlantic Coast and I can definitely see why.
On our last day we hit up the beach again spent some time just chilling in the sun and watching the waves. We walked around and found this outdoor market that was happening. It was similar to a flea market there were stalls with clothing, bags and shoes, textile things like curtains, sheets, and more. The further you walk along there was an indoor area that had flowers, fruits and vegetables. Above the market with the fruit and vegetables they had restaurants and we decided to have lunch there at a restaurant called Local! So good, and fresh tasty food!
Here are my fave food spots:
Kul- Restaurant - we had lunch and the most delicious sangria ever!
Local- Poke bowls and tacos yum!
Terrace- cute outdoor rooftop terrace, good steak
Baia hotel- Great location, tasty breakfast, nice people
If your visit to Portugal starts in Lisbon, check out some of these trips, and ways to get to Cascais as well!