Óbidos: a day trip from Lisbon

Hi, human beings of the internet!

Yesterday I took the day to visit one of the most breath-taking places in Portugal: a medieval town called Óbidos.

This village is about a 1 hour drive from Lisbon and is one of the most well preserved medieval places in the country. We drove up from Cascais and we spent around 36 EUR including petrol and tolls. But there are quite a few bus tours that can take you from Lisbon to Óbidos that seem comfortable and are about 8 EUR per trip.

When you are arriving to the highway exist that leads to Óbidos, you will be able to immediately see the castle walls that surround the vila, and the view is amazing. We parked our car there (they have plenty of parking spaces) and we paid 2.25 for 2 hours, approximately. Then we walked our way to the village.

Once you get to the main entrance, you will find a labyrinth of small streets and white houses where you will be able to find the most beautiful things, from local hand crafts to the famous liquor Ginja de Óbidos. One of the things I would highly recommend is to go up to the wall (right on the left when you walk in) and look at the beautiful view - this is really insane, and because it is such a small place you can see it all when you go up.

After walking for a while around the small streets, we decided to stop at Chocolataria Prazer e Vício, a small shop that has some delicious chocolate bonbons and ginja. This is a small family business, and the lady who was there was the kindest person we met. She taught us that, when searching from ginja in Óbidos, if you want to taste the real one you need to find a place that sells it with the certification of authenticity, since some of the local shops sell ginja from other parts of the country. We tasted one called Ti Ginja and, although I don’t really appreciate alcoholic beverages, I had one and Sebastian also had one, and he said it was one of the best he had tried.

Ginja is served in a classical chocolate cup, that you can eat afterwards, and we also tasted two chocolates: the salted caramel and the toffee one. All of them were delicious, and we paid a total of 4 EUR (1 EUR each ginja and 1 EUR each chocolate).

At the time we were there, there was also a medieval concert going on - we were kind of in a hurry because we had lunch reservations so we were not able to stick around, but this is something that I wouldn’t mind having watched for a little bit!

Although there are plenty of restaurants inside the vila of Óbidos, we decided to go to the beach in the afternoon so we had lunch at a place called Cais da Praia, in Foz do Arelho - which is the beach area closest to Óbidos. Sebastian had octopus and I ordered the most delicious grilled tuna steak, definitely one of the best I have had!

Although Óbidos is a small place and you can see everything quite quickly, I would say it is very much worth the day trips. They occasionally throw some bigger events like the Chocolate Market, the Christmas Market and also the Medieval Fair, and you can check when they are held in here.

My personal opinion: you should definitely take one extra day in Lisbon to visit Óbidos, but make sure you plan ahead because, sadly, the town is impacted by its own popularity. We arrived there quite early on a Sunday morning and the streets were already quite busy. I believe visiting it early in the morning during a week day might be the best time to go there.

And that will be it for this post. Cheers!

Happy Piggy in Óbidos!