Today I decided to head out of Lisbon for a bit and see what some of the rest of Portugal was like. Sintra is a small, fairy tale-like city that is located at the bottom of the Sintra Mountains. It has a population of about 33,000 people and is essentially a tourist suburb of Lisbon. A 40 minute train ride, in a very clean train that was nowhere near as packed as the one to Civitavecchia, took us to Sintra.
We decided to try and get to the Palace of Pena which we had heard great things about but didn’t realize how far of a walk it was. Literally 5 miles of uphill walking led us to a beautiful park that was the grounds of the Palace. Interestingly enough the Palace of Pena is considered one of the Seven Wonders of Portugal and is often used by the Portuguese president for special occasions.
Historically the palace was a monastery that was destroyed by lightening in the 18th century. Then, in 1755 the historic “Great Earthquake” of Lisbon occurred leaving the monastery in ruins. In 1838 King Ferdinand II decided to acquire the monastery and he transformed the remains into a summer residence for the Portuguese royal family. Ever since then it has been kept in pristine condition and is now a major tourist attraction. But, enough for the history of the palace and let me tell you about how beautiful it was:
Gorgeous! Absolutely, unbelievably, breathtakingly gorgeous! The outside really looked like a real life fantasy tale. I felt I was in a Disney princess’s movie as I was walking through all 14 rooms of the palace. The outside had many turrets that seemed to tower all the way to the sky. And, let me tell you, the view from the top was incredible- I could see all the way across Sintra to the ocean (about 18 km away.) I am struggling to put into the beauty that the entire experience so I will put up pictures later (I know I have been saying that a lot but really- a picture is worth a thousand words.)
Then, it was time to get back to the train station. Only problem-a 5 mile walk downhill didn’t sound like the best, so we managed to convince a taxi driver to take 5 of us in his taxi. We had to stop a little bit away from the train station since he wasn’t suppose to have so many people in the taxi and since we saw an ice cream store nearby we, of course, had to stop in and get some before boarding the train back to Lisbon.
Once we got back to Lisbon it was time for dinner. Overall the food that I have had in Portugal has been sub-par compared to that from the rest of the countries I have been to so we decided to branch out and try some Thai food. It was the best Thai food I have ever had. The pineapple rice that we ordered literally came in a hollowed out pineapple! In addition all of the plates came with carrots that were cut into small Tulip shapes and was delicious. It was quite delicious and the mohitos that we went for after pretty much topped off a wonderful day. Overall it was an awesome way to end the last night in port J
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