Óbidos is a famous Medieval village on top of a hill. Its wall encircles the hilltop with its castle at the highest point. It is near the coast of central Portugal, inland from Peniche. You can get there in about an hour by car and two hours by train north of Lisboa. In 2023, before our trip back to the United States for Christmas, we made a 3-day trip to Óbidos.
Photos of Óbidos
14 December 2023
We got ourselves out of the house at 9am to get the bus at the Sete Rios station in Lisboa. We took the Rede Expressos bus to Caldas da Rainha. It was direct and took 1 hour and 10 minutes. I enjoyed seeing the green countryside in December, much greener than in mid-summer.
In Caldas, we got a Bolt to take us to Óbidos, about 7km away. Our driver was driving a Tesla Model 3, which was a new twist on the ride-sharing experience. The displays reminded us of our Kia Niro, which we had really liked driving in Massachusetts. We talked cars and with the driver for the 10-minute ride. He also told us about the scenic estuary, Lagoa de Óbidos, that was 10km west of us on the coast.
Cars are mostly restricted from inside the medieval walls, and one of the main car gates behind the castle was closed because that was the site of the Christmas festival. Our driver brought us to the lower end of town, near the local bus stop. This was perfect, because the best way to experience the town was to walk in past all the shops and food stalls. There was even a group of young people exhibiting birds of prey. You could pay for a chance hold a bird on your wrist. They were very friendly even though we didn’t buy. The girl we talked with was an enthusiastic naturalist.
The main street is shops and restaurants with streetside tables and lots of ginginha stalls. Ginginha is a liqueur made from cherries. Many sellers make it themselves and there are subtle varieties of flavors. On the street, it’s often served in chocolate cups. We bought two bottles of a friendly lady’s peppery holiday version. We bought the chocolate cups too, so we could bring it to a holiday party back in the U.S.
We had reservations to stay at the castle – how fun is that! The castle, with its square and round towers, is at the top of the hill. One side of the castle is part of the wall. Pousada do Castelo has guest rooms in the castle as well as in another building just below. I hadn’t realized that we didn’t have a castle room, but we were upgraded, to our pleasant surprise.
The room itself was small and looked onto the castle courtyard. The hallway had slit windows that looked out from the wall onto farmland. The room itself was dark wood with wooden beams in the ceiling. Wooden shutters on the inside kept out the nighttime cold. Our room felt like a charming Tudor cabinet. There was a very nice restaurant serving breakfast and dinner on another side of the courtyard. The courtyard itself was a lovely garden with big old trees. Outside the castle too, by the hotel office, was a grassy terrace that overlooked the village. You could order coffee and other refreshments there.
On our first day, we had lunch at Tasca Torta, recommended by the hotel clerk. We had sardines on cornbread, plump mussels in seafood broth, lombos of fish (was it robalo or dourado?), and chicken kebab. Lombo seems to mean a loin of any meat or fish. Maybe “lombo” means that the fish is deboned, too. (It’s more typical to be served a whole grilled fish, head, tail, bones and all. It was nice not to have to navigate the bones.)
We checked out the shops. Some were very crafty and others had the same type of souvenirs as everywhere else. The quality seemed better though. We particularly liked the cork products. We found an art gallery with drawings of libraries, both imagined and real. The artists were people of all ages, including kids.
We climbed some stone stairs beside the castle to get to the top of the wall. The view of the surrounding countryside was magnificent. I (Pam) didn’t want to walk along the wall though. It was narrow, with no railing on the inside. It would be a bit anxiety-producing to have to pass people, with no railing or barrier on the inside edge. We had a great view from the wall, looking out between the teeth on the top of the wall (the merlons of the crenelated parapet – I just looked up these words in Wikipedia). The view was great with no need to walk further. The wall went around the town, but it also matched the contour of the hill, so walking the wall also meant descending the hill from the castle at the top.
We found a dinner spot at Petrarum Domus on the main street, across from the Tasca Torta lunch spot. We ate light, sharing a goat cheese with honey and nuts for appetizer and a smoked salmon salad and a sobremesa (dessert) of chocolate mousse. We had a lively conversation in our dinner alcove with a mother and her children, and a couple from Connecticut who now live in Praia do Sol in the Algarve.
Back at the hotel we did some exercises and stretching, reading, email, and wrote the first draft of this diary. Then a good night’s sleep.
15 December 2023
So relaxed! We both slept late, all the way until 9am. Then, in another wing of the castle, we enjoyed the extensive breakfast, with options for eggs, and great pastries and fruit. They had fresh maracujá (passion fruit), which is a curious texture with a sour taste. I like the juice and the fruit is fun to try.
The morning is cold here in December, but by 10:30am it was comfortable. I needed to buy a cap with a brim, because it was too warm to wear my light winter hat. I chose a wild jungle-print baseball cap saying “Portugal” across the front. I like it a lot but will I be embarrassed to wear it later?
We visited a medieval church and old stone chapel with a modern sculpture. A man was raising a woman out of hellfire, or he was cursing her and preventing her from getting out of a hellscape. There was no plaque identifying the theme.
We found a store with some very nice cork items. We bought placemats, wallets, a visor, and a hat. We also bought ginginha and chocolate cups, after having a chance to try the friendly vendor’s three variations of the cherry liqueur.
We had lunch at Avocado, a restaurant with natural and vegan options. We had black bean soup with coconut milk, a baked avocado covered in sesame seeds with bacon and toast, and a beetroot burger. We chatted with a couple from Canada on vacation and an English man who lived by the lagoon nearby and had a lot of fruit trees.
In the later afternoon we got tickets for the Vila Natal, which was north of the castle, but within the wall. The theme was Harry Potter. There were live owls, as well as a train for kids, a skating rink, a zip line, and a tubing hill. There were, of course, various food vendors and a tent with a stage. We watched an enactment of a fairy tale, but we didn’t understand the dialog. The fair was entertaining, but definitely mostly for kids. All day long, large groups of school children went up the hill to the Vila Natal. Other small groups of kids included parents and grandparents, and probably aunts and uncles. Very popular!
16 December 2023
We woke up earlier that yesterday and went to look for birds along the wall. The west wall had a doorway and there were hiking paths along the outside of the wall, with plenty of tree cover. The hill was steep below the path. Along the path, there were picnic tables. In summer, people could find very pleasant shade at midday there.
The breakfast had so many nice choices that I skipped my habitual yogurt and granola. We had scrambled eggs, beans, stewed mushrooms, pastries, fruit – delicious!
We had lunch at Alcaide, a traditional restaurant. Their dining room had a view out over the wall. We tried to eat light. We had vegetable and seafood crepes as appetizers. Then I had sopa alentejana, which was hunks of bread in a garlic broth with cilantro. David had a salad. For dessert, we shared Toucinho do Céu, a conventual dessert made with almonds, eggs, sugar, and almost no flour. The name means “bacon from heaven”. Some of the traditional recipes actually include bacon.
Final notes
We discovered we didn’t need to go back to Caldas da Rainha to get a bus home. There was a bus stop right outside the wall that had a bus to Lisboa every hour. This bus company is Rodoviária do Oeste. Here’s a good web page about it: BUS AND TRAIN TO ÓBIDOS FROM LISBON
Óbidos is a small town, and on Saturday it was getting even more crowded. It was a good plan to come on Thursday and leave on Saturday. Let the people who work all week have the weekend.
Óbidos had plenty of international tourists too. We talked with several Canadian vacationers, and expats living in the Algarve, Aveiro, and near Óbidos. We overheard lots of Americans too.