Arrabidays|Days created with your favourite activities
Escape Directory|Guide to the best on Lisbon's south side
Afterwards we ventured inside the fortress and were pleasantly surprised to find a quaint museum of oceanography. There were large, old-fashioned jars, each containing a sea animal floating in formaldehyde. It reminded me of my school science laboratory and still captured my curiosity, as it had done all those years ago.
DolphinDay
Perhaps more impressionable was that it wasn’t so much that I went out to see dolphins… it was more that they had come to see me! It is little known, even in Portugal, that a family of bottlenose dolphins resides full time in the bay of Setúbal. Why they have chosen this spot is uncertain, maybe because it was voted one of the top 30 bays in the world? It does mean, however, that we can see them here in their own environment almost any time we like.
At the office of Vertigem Azul, just in front of the fishing harbour of Setubal, we were welcomed by Pedro and Maria João who are both keen to enlighten people to the plight of these dolphins and the bay in which they live. We boarded a huge, gleaming white Catamaran. We floated silently in the bay, while all around us we were teased by dolphins playing peek-a-boo, first from one side of the boat, than the other.
Lunch was planned in another spot where dolphins can be seen, in the bay of Portinho where the restaurants stand above the water on stilts and there is a view of a very small fortress. We ordered grilled Robalo, sea bream, with a green salad and watched the fish below us swimming in and out of the shadows, cast by anchored boats.
