We rented a house in Sao Martinho do Porto for our week with Whitney. We stopped on our way from Lisbon to Sao Martinho, to see the Mafra National Palace. It was hard for us to imagine the place being entirely built between 1717 and 1755. The library at Mafra was over the top,
with 36,000 leather bound volumes from the 1700's.
Sunday was a rainy day, but we went to Nazare late in the afternoon and enjoyed an hour
of cleared skies, and later a hike down to the beach nearest our house.
Whitney had a surf lesson on Monday morning in Baleal, a village about 20 miles from
Sao Martinho. Papa and I watched Whitney and walked about the village. There were big waves, a bit of rain and a rainbow over Baleal. We drove to Peniche to see the ancient Fortaleza,
and then to Alcobaca, to see the monastery begun in the mid 1100's.
