off to the castle and the beach

we drive south to a beach laurie saw on her surf map called playa grande. We find a cute little Residencia to stay in with an amazing view. the price is cheap and we are happy. we check out the surf, but it does not look so good, so we go into Sintra the town near by. Sintra is known for its castles and palaces , so we decide to hike around the hills. we head up the hill to a castle at the top. the views are amazing and the wind is hollowing. it was a real adventure. Laurie was scared since the wind was pushing her around on top of these perches at the castle. there are no guard rails so you grab on anything you can. we spent a few hours at the top before heading back down to the beach. we grab a great dinner, of bbq fish and bbq octopus. we walk around town and meet the local icecream maker. we talk to them for a while and head off to bed.
the next day the surf is huge and we do not dare go in, so we went back to Sintra to see what we missed. we see the national palace and then go to the Quinta da Regaleira . both are stunning , but the quinta is something else. the property has hidden tunnels all over and it took us three hours to walk everywhere. we had a blast, i hit my head about a dozen times in these little passages. i could only imagine what it would be like to be a kid and play hide and go seek here. we had walked about five hours so we decided to grab some lunch. i could not resist and had the pig ear salad. it was delicious. we then took a drive to the other coast , and saw the last of the surf spots. nothing looked too inviting so we just cruised the coast back to our hotel. we found a neat spot where wind surfers and kite surfers were catching huge waves. we took a look at the two local spots, still double overhead no mercy waves, so we just took a walk on the beach and brought out a smash ball kit we had bought back in spain. we played about an hour before my cheap racket broke and we called it a day. we got some beers, sat watching the ocean and waited to go out to dinner. on the way to dinner i ran into a local fisherman who had his picture up in the icecream parlor, i shook his hand and had a translator(local girl) let him know that i saw his picture and that i was impressed with these two huge fish he had. He was so delighted to be recognized by two americans . That night we saw him at the icecream parlor where his picture was up. I guess he felt the urge to visit, since he was now famous with the americans again.
we woke up gave hugs to the little ladies who ran the place we stayed in. They loved laurie, with hugs and kisses on both cheeks, and grabbed me and once again marveled at how big i was. they kept grabbing my arms and lauging and smiling.
we drove off toward lisbon.