15 - 17 Aug 09
we headed towards Alcobaca, a little town we planned on spending the night in before plunging to Lisbon,
Just before the turn to, I saw the Baltalha Cathedral. I immediately pulled off. The Cathedral was awesome, literally and figuratively. The city was clean and pretty and the people were much more polite. My spirits raised bit. The Cathedral was a massive structure and I was tempted to spend the night there walking around, but we decided that we should keep going as 
Alcobaca was supposed to be nice as well and it would mean a short ride to Lisbon. We did, however, spend a good couple of hours looking in and around the square and cathedral and both really liked it. We then headed to Alcobaca, but not before being surounded by a few guys who were facinated by the Anubis then our trip.
Shortly after we arrived at Alcobaca, we checked into the 7€ (total) a night municipal campground, it was great!!! Small cheep quiet clean, and friendly unlike in Porto or the campground the night before. I was not worried and no one was scowling at us. After settling in and eating fresh spaghetti, with homemade tomato sauce and canned meatballs (the meatballs were not the best idea,, the rest was great though). We went for a walk and saw some very pretty little townhouses and an amazing monastery all by night. Strangely enough we also came across a Moroccan Berber tent in the middle of the city….. A young man went to Morocco, fell in love with it and is now promoting (on his own euro) Morocco and a lot of northern Africa. He was a bit mad and I think had religious undertones to his promotion.
The city was dominated by a huge monastery that filled the central square, it was surrounded by alleyways full of shops and restaurants. There were a surprising number of empty houses that once again could be easily used as hotels and B&B. None the less the town had a small and peaceful feel to it. The first four days in this country I did not find anything we really liked then in the space of 4 hours we found two Portugal was redeeming itself.