This morning we took the train out from Lisbon to a place called Sintra. Sintra is a stunning place full of historical castles and palaces, surrounded by lush green hills. Unfortunately today was also super rainy.
We got off the train and ran through the rain to find the bus that would take us to some of the sights, where we could hop off and hop on another one later. Wet and cold, and in a very fogged up bus, we began our journey through the town, and as we climbed up the mountainside, we wiped viewing holes into the windows. The view was beautiful, and even though we expected to slide off the hill at any moment, we really enjoyed it. We also have no idea how our pal Jasmine even climbed to all the sights without a bus when she came.
We got off first at the Moorish castle, an incredible medieval fortification that stretched up and around one of Sintra’s hills. Within the first few minutes of walking to the first building, we were completely soaked. Well at least Elise was, as her coat didn’t quite have the waterproofing that she had been expecting. We struggled on, because we knew it would be totally worth it. We got to the main centre of the fortification and were surrounded by the walls and towers, as well as trees and beautiful hydrangeas. We climbed up to the highest point along the ramparts, which we would like to say had an amazing view, but it was mostly clouds. The mist and cloud actually gave it a pretty cool atmosphere though, so we can’t complain!
Elise was clumsy and had a bit of a slip on her way down, so waited for Ash at the bottom while she walked another part of the ramparts. Eventually we both wandered back and waited for the bus to Pena National Palace.
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| Much wet. Very rain. |
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| Looking down towards another grand building in town |
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| Looking at Pena Palace |
From the bus stop we climbed the hill from the gate to the palace. It’s a pretty great sight to come upon and super strange. The palace is a towering, multi-coloured, multi storied complex sitting right on top of a hill, from which you can look down and see the Moorish castle that we had just come from. We toured around the buildings and rooms, some areas were the rooms of the royal family that had been converted from the monastery that had originally stood on the site. This then connected seamlessly to a much newer part of the palace, full of ridiculous paintings and decorations. It’s also under renovation; so many rooms were inaccessible or empty. We finished outside, and decided we hadn’t walked enough ramparts yet, so took the walkway around the main part of the building. The view by now was nil, as we were in the centre of a giant cloud, although this was pretty fun. And we were above the rain!
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| Tiled courtyard of former monastery turned royal chambers |
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| Good. A++ |
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| Ash v confused about how to watch from watch tower |
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| Looking at Moorish Castle |
We left after havin’ a laff at the sculptural entrance to the main buildings of the palace, see below.
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| Also. GIANT SLUG YOU GUYZZZZ |
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| Walking down from the Palace |
Back in town, things were starting to clear up and we decided to get off the bus and walk around to try and find some lunch. The little alleys are pretty lovely and we took a while to just look around, before decided on a tasty looking burger shop. So it was super tasty. Don’t even begin asking why we didn’t look for traditional Portuguese cuisine. We ate burgers with a pattie, salad and chilli con carne and it was super amazing.
After eating we walked through the town and took in the view that was finally clearing as we headed to the station.
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| Castle on the hill |
On the way home we stopped at a food marketplace called time out, with lots of stalls full of amazing food. We weren't super hungry, so we got two slices of pizza and two tasty looking cakes to share back at the apartment. See below. Note* The cookie stack was pretty much coffee pancakes, aka amazing.
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| Urgh. Amazing |
Love A&E
