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| Arriving in Sintra |
On
our second day in Portugal we decided to take a day trip to the nearby town of
Sintra. Everyone who has been to the
Lisbon area suggests it, and it was definitely worth a visit. We walked from our hostel to city center
(which was beautiful and open) in order to find the train station that would
take us to Sintra. We needed to eat
something for breakfast so we stopped at a café that didn’t look too busy and
ordered our Spanish usual, café con leche y tostada con mermelada (coffee with
milk and toast with jam). I learned
something new because the food arrived, and the coffee tasted watery. The reason is because it was more like
American coffee with the coffee brewed with water instead of the Spanish
version in which café con leche is brewed in an espresso-type machine and then
combined with steamed milk. The
mermelada was all fancy and came in little glass jars and the bread was like
American sandwich bread and not the baguette that we are used to. We had a feeling we were in trouble
money-wise, and we were, spending more than €5 a person for such a simple
breakfast (compare it to our freaking awesome chicken). Welcome to tourist restaurants!
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| Stone staircase |
We
made it to Sintra without too much trouble, though figuring out how to order
tickets at self-serve ticket stations that really only know Portuguese proved
disastrous. Right off the train, Sintra
seemed wonderful. We followed the masses
and quickly surmised that the main sites to see were the Castelo de Moros y
Palacio de Pena. The bus station was
located in the valley, and the sites were at the top of what was basically a
mountain, so we started walking up street after cobblestone street. Eventually we came to a stone staircase/path
that was supposed to lead to the Castle.
It had some gorgeous views, and you could see the towns nearby spread
out before us, but it was definitely a hike and some layers of clothing were
removed in the process.
El
Castelo de Moros like all the castles we have visited was really cool! I
wouldn’t necessarily say that it was my favorite because of the fact that it
wasn’t free and was really crowded with tourists (not that we are locals or
anything), but it was beautiful. We
could see all the way to the Atlantic Ocean from the top! I wanted to visit, but we didn’t have time
since we were really only in Lisboa for two days.
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| Palacio de Pena |
Next
we headed to el Palacio de Pena. I am
not sure if Pena means pain in Portuguese like it does in Spanish, but that is
what we joked because a pretty significant amount of pain was going on by the
time we made it there. Unfortunately by
this time the fog was rolling it, but it was still really neat to see. The
colors would normally be really bright yellows and red. The Palace is where the royal family resided
during the 1800s and possibly other times, but I am not sure. The outside was extremely impressive, and we
weren’t allowed to take pictures inside.
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| El Palacio looking creepy in the fog |
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| Me, excited to be eating chicken again |
Finally
with the energy that we could still muster we walked carefully down the
cobblestone streets and back down the mountain in the rain. We could have taken a bus, but determination
(stubbornness) and resistance to falling into the tourist traps forced us to
persist. We headed back to Lisboa and to
a second night of that amazing chicken for dinner. Honestly it was so good that I would go back
to Lisboa just for the chicken. We were
so tired that we chilled in our room and went to bed by 10.
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