Hillary can no longer say she's in her 30. To celebrate her birthday, we decided to get out of town and explore the Alentejo coast. We have visited the interior Alentejo region several times, but this was our first time to drive down the 100 miles or so of coast south of Lisbon.
We started by going to our new favorite beach, Comporta, an hour and a half from Lisbon. It had beautiful turquoise water and soft sand. Although there were many people taking advantage of the great day and Monday holiday, the beach was so long that we walked a little further and had plenty of space.
Because we're going to Italy next weekend, we were trying to do this on the cheap. We borrowed a tent from friends and planned to find a campsite. We stopped at the first campground south of Comporta, but it was completely full. We called a another one an hour further south and although the tent sites were full, they had an available "teepee" that we could rent for the night. It was more triangle-shaped shed than teepee, but it did the trick.
The next day, the teepee wasn't available, but we were able to pitch our tent. The campground was really interesting because lots of Portuguese go there and spend weeks. They set up elaborate sites with TVs, refrigerators, floors and potted plants. Our campsite wasn't so elaborate.
After spending our day at another beautiful beach, Zambujeira do Mar (photo above), we went back to Milfontes where we had camped and relied on our local food review book to pick one of the best restaurants we've been to in the region to celebrate Hillary's birthday. We had a great meal and Hillary's sister, Brooke, reached us by cell phone to say happy birthday right before we sat down. The next day, we made our way back to Lisbon via another stop at Comporta beach. It wasn't the fanciest birthday vacation, but it was great.
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