Chapter Five: The Fishing Village of Nazare and an Unfinished Monastery

The next stop on our tour was a small fishing village called Nazare. We looked out onto the coast with our tour guide Gonzalo. The beach looked clean and inviting and if the weather had been nicer I think we would have ended our tour immediately and had a day on the beach.


Some of the houses are pretty close to the water. I'd hate to see what happens when the water level gets too high.

Gonzalo kindly took a photo of Molly, Laura, and me. I have a pretty sweet hair thing going on, but that's the danger of a windy beach town, right?

This is the church in the village. It reminds me of something out of Monkey Island. It would be cool to have a palm tree growing right outside of our church back home. Or maybe just to have a palm tree anywhere close to my house.


After we ate lunch in Nazare (lunch featured shrimp with the heads still attached...the nightmares continue) we went on our merry way to an ancient monastery. By the time we got there, it was raining in earnest and we had bundled up more tightly.

The monastery was never finished, so parts of it are without a roof. Even when we were inside we were getting rained on. There is a whole section that is not completed, so it was basically just a cylinder that was open at the top.

The inside of the church (one of the finished parts...no risk of getting rained on in here) does not disappoint. The ceilings are high, the columns are wide, all is right with the world.