Sintra Day 1! I LOVE the beach!

Today was our free day, which worked out perfectly because we needed some time to sleep in after living out our Taylor Swift dreams! So we slept in and had a nice, slow start to the day. We went to the Starbucks right down the street from our guest house and got some drinks and sandwiches. Very yum. After that we got ready to go to the beach. I was feeling pretty tired and admittedly not super enthusiastic about it haha. We made plans with some of the other girls to head to a grocery store before the beach so we met up with them and headed that direction to get some sustenance for our beach day. Then we ordered some Ubers and made our way to the coast! The beach we were planning on going to was called Praia de Ursa and we were told it required a 30 minute hike to get to. I was thinking like a walk, maybe slightly downhill, but we got there and it was more of a 70 degree incline type situation haha. We apprehensively started to make our way down, and any reservations I had about going to the beach immediately vanished. Just LOOK at these views!!!

 

At one point there was a rope to help stabilize haha. It was actually such a fun little adventure going down the side of the cliff! Every view was incredible, and when we got down to the beach it was just breathtaking. It wasn't busy at all and it almost felt like we had our own private beach. The water was so turquoise, the sand was so soft and warm, and it was just a beautiful day all around! Perfect weather for the beach. I set my stuff down and then immediately dipped my toes in the water - which was completely freezing, so we all decided to just run in and get it over with, and it was amazing. There was a nice amount of waves to make it fun, and we could just float and swim. After a little bit of being in the ocean, I headed back to my blanket to dry off a little and eat my picnic. Lemonade, blueberries, and pao de quejo make the perfect beach lunch! We on and off tanned, swam, and took cute beach pics (of course). It was seriously the perfect beach day! We spent quite a while there and then it started getting more busy and there was laundry to be done and blog posts to be written :( So we headed back up the cliff, which was a lot easier than our way down, had to wait 30 minutes for an Uber (tragic), and then made it back to Sintra!

Audrey, Sophie, and I went and did our laundry together and it felt so nice to have clean clothes. We met a nice guy from Oregon at the laundromat and chatted with him haha. There was not a laundromat close to us in Sintra so we had to walk a good 20 minutes but it was very worth it, and we saw some pretty things! Good end to the day.