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My Impressions and Feelings About Estoril

Estoril is exotic, architecturally rich, legendary, and expensive small town where almost everything revolves around the beach, gambling and relaxation...
This is a retrospective about how it really felt like...

Arriving from Cascais, I got off at Monte Estoril railway station by mistake - I rushed it a bit, but I didn't regret it at all.

After a nice walk along the coast, I finally arrived to the beautiful Praia do Tamariz.

The place welcomed me with the iconic sight of the beach with Cruz Fort right in front of me. Plenty of restaurants, ice-cream sellers and hot-hot Sun.

The beach itself was crowded and so were the restaurants - with their prices higher than what I saw in central Lisbon.

Along the shoreline - a number of hotels. Some established in ugly minimalist rectangular modern buildings, but also a large number of beautiful old holiday villas.

The Cascais-Estoril area is one of Portugal's more expensive places - when it comes to owning property.

Not anyone can afford owning a vacation home here at Estoril.

The lack of vast sandy beaches would hinder me from having a vacation home in this area.

Even the very few sandy beaches are sourounded by a vast number of cliffs, rocks hidden in the water. Some covered with slipper algae...

Nevertheless, it's scenic.

I spent long minutes watching the waves crushing against the cliffs, seeing what reveals when the watery carpet retracts.

The smaller cliffs in the proximity of the beach rarely get uncovered - only when the waves retract enough.

Estoril is also home to a number of golf courses and they hold gold championships here as well. (Some of the most well-known courses are: Quinta da Beloura, Penha Longa, Quinta da Marinha and Oitavos).

Although it's promoted as a great beach destination, I'd say it's beautiful, but if you love beach life very much, then most likely you will feel Estoril lags behind in some aspects.

Estoril is intriguing inland as well.

The rich have been building and buying retreat homes for quite a while, therefore it retains many of the old stylish vacation homes.

And it's not all Portuguese architecture that you can see here - fact proven by the Villa Guest House, which is built in Basque style.

With just over 26,000 inhabitants, most of Estoril is covered by neighbourhoods filled with villas. This is where some of the Portuguese elites and the rich foreigners hide from the rush and noise of daily life.

I didn't have much time for looking around, as this was the last place I was visiting outside Lisbon. It was late in the afternoon and I was preparing to depart.

Perhaps a very negative aspect that I've found was the scarcity of shops.

The distances are long, if you try to walk between its neighbourhoods. It was odd how almost no-one there knew about where a certain main avenue was located. Perhaps because many people whom I encountered weren't really locals...

Estoril is a great faimly destination, a high end vacation hotspot and, having one of Europe's biggest casinos - it's a great place for gambling.

The Casino Estoril is Europe's largest. It was also feautred in a James Bond movie.

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