Jonathan, Emily, and Daniel (and one more) to Portugal and Italy: Day 8, Monday, Happy to you, smash, goodbye! 9-23-13

Today we tried to take it easy. We walked around Sintra town and looked at gift shops. Daniel loves balls so much, and whenever he sees someone playing with one, even if it's 500 feet away, he wants to run to it. So we bought him a little soccer ball. The problem is that it's not pumped up, but he loves it anyway. He carried it for most of the walk through Sintra, and he throws it around the apartment.

We came back to the apartment after lunch and took naps. Then we drove to Adraga beach, which is about 20 minutes away. It is a nice, medium sized beach with cliffs surrounding it. The waves were very large and the air was chilly enough that Emily put on her sweater. But Daniel ran around in his diaper. We wanted to give him time where he was in charge, since we're always dragging him around and telling him he can't run into traffic or play with that leaf because we need to go... So I played the games he wanted to play, and it made him very happy. His favorite game was when I would make a little sand tower with a cup, and then he would say “Happy to you!”, which is his version of the happy birthday song which he sang because he thought the tower looked like a birthday cake, and then he would say “smash!” and smash the tower, and then “goodbye!”. Everyone once in a while, he would lick it. We played this game at least 800 times. He was brave enough to run out into the shallow water if I was with him, but it was a little cold.

We went back to the same restaurant we went to 2 nights ago for dinner. It was really good again. The cook is a skinny old lady with no front teeth, and she speaks decent English. Her granddaughter (I'm guessing) is the only waitress/other employee. The cook lady insisted we order through her granddaughter, even though we'd spent the last 10 minutes talking with her about what she was going to cook us. And her granddaughter didn't speak English. Once again everyone in there was local, and Daniel befriended them all. I got a traditional Portuguese octopus stew, and it was delicious. Usually octopus is a little chewy, but this was nice and tender.