This was a really good day. What a scenic place to be.
Sintra is the classic historical day trip from Lisbon. A small sized town with all sorts of fantastic palaces and castles atop and alongside hills surrounding the old townsite. The walking through the town and hillsides gave wonderful panoramas to explore.
We got off the train with two destinations in mind, the Peña Palace, and the Moorish Castle. Both names that don’t give descriptions, so I’ll do a little better. The colorful castle and rocks on a hill. Arriving at the station you are greeted with many tour buses and tuk tuks that will offer you to whatever destination you have in mind. We opted for walking, and was warned that it would take an hour and a half to get to the Peña Palace gates. No worries, we have an hour and a half to get there before our timeslot.
45 minutes later, we were at the gates. The hike up was a scenic wander throughout old cobbled streets (apart from the oversized tour bus’s that crash through) and small dirt paths throughout the forest. Along the way were many small churches and homes. Each church had a little description of its history in front of it, which made the walk more enjoyable.
Once you get to the gates of the Peña Palace, your not home free yet. Those are the gates to the gardens. It’s an advertised half hour walk to the palace. No worries we said, we have 45 minutes to get there.
7 minutes later, we were in line at the palace. We think its to get people to pay for the shuttle bus, as its a pretty steep uphill. Or maybe our legs are extra juiced after The Fisherman’s Trail. Either way we had our sandwiches and waited for the palace to open to us.
The whole palace, and the land around Sintra, is all a curation of one man, King Ferdinand II of Portugal. This dude seemingly married into the family, spent his whole time doing art, and left it at that. The colours of the palace were all to his liking, he curated the gardens, even the interiors of the castles all had eccentric tiling and painting. He even changed the surrounding views. Apparently, the lands around the palace and hillsides were all previously tilled, and the Moorish Castle was a ruin for kids to play on. Ferdinand II didn’t like that, so he planted all of the hills and town with British inspired flora, and got the Moorish castle under restoration. The result of his work was really really lovely to witness.
The gardens around Peña palace are spectacular too. You can tell that the grounds are curated, but they allow a lot of wilderness to creep into it. There are pathways everywhere, and we got more than turned around a few times.
The Moorish Castle is barely a castle. There’s one wall over that watches over the landscape, with a courtyard in the middle. It’s clear time has taken a lot from this site. But the views from the top were just wonderful. Seeing the farms, town, ocean and other hilltops from there was fantastic. A highlight though, was eavesdropping on two presumed American girls at the top battlement. “This must be the highest point for anywhere around here,” one declares.
“I know, there’s nothing else at all.”
We didn’t let them know, but literally behind them was the hill the Peña palace was on, clearly higher than our current location. Its only a 300m walk between the two. Oh well.
We spent a little time in the town, there’s a royal palace, a few restaurants, and some other old gardens. We were getting tired though, so we went back to Lisbon.
The rest of the day in Lisbon was lovely. We found a east Asian food market, with a grocery on the bottom and restaurants on the top. What was supposed to be two bowls of soup, dumpling for Cam, ramen for myself, turned into a frenzy of dumpling tasting as we went to a couple more restaurants to try their version of fried dough. It was a fantastic evening of food. The night consisted of hopping from busker to busker, with a romantic time at the waters edge listening to famous lovey covers (I’m Yours by Jason Mraz, Perfect by Ed Sheeran etc.), and a dancer jumping into my arms twice, as I ended up part of a street dance routine as a prop.
You could spend a few nights in Sintra. It really is a town for sightseeing. So many more palaces and what not, and miles of paths and streets warping around the hills.
One more stop in Portugal. We will see you there!
We spent two nights in Sintra. It is a ghost town at night as most visitors do only a day visit. The moorish castle is beautifully lit up at night. The tuktuk drivers tried to convince us that is would take too long to walk up to the sites. We walked up and down through the forest. Well, forest is an overstatement – the trees alongside the roadway. When at Pena Palace, we didn’t go in but wandered through the gardens instead. And how did you enjoy the wind at moorish castle and sense of danger with the short walls? So happy for you both! Thanks for sharing your adventures.