Sintra, famous for its picturesque hilltop palace, was a short train ride north. Since it’s a major tourist destination, and since the memories of the roped-off interiors of the Pizzi Palace merge with countless roped-off dining rooms and drawing rooms and bedrooms of the Schoenbrunn Palace, etc., we chose not to go inside and tour the Peña Palace (darling of Portuguese postcards) because it was really only a royal hood ornament perched on an outcropping of a thickly forested park. If we got tickets to the Peña Palace, we could skirt around the palace and explore the lush royal hunting grounds. So that was the plan: snapshots of romantic palace before roaming royal park followed by a trek to a 9th Century castle down the hill and then finishing the day off by catching a bus into Sintra to take in another palace (National) and perhaps find a glass of Sangria for Ella in town.
We caught the Lisbon train to Sintra at the Rossio station early enough in the morning to avoid the heaviest tourist traffic. (The thing about train stations in Portugal is that they are shy on signage and well disguised, so if you’re looking for the correct station you have to pay strict attention to the blue dot on the Google map and not question whether you’re entering what looks like an 18th Century prison.) It was interesting passing through the outer reaches of Lisbon where there was cluster after cluster of honeycombed high rise apartments. I guess I’m not accustomed to an inner city motif dominating the burbs. Nearing Sintra, the skyline lowered as if in inverse proportion to the increasing value of real estate.
In Sintra we successfully pulled off our tourist-phobic maneuvers. We got on a bus to the Peña Palace traveling on a narrow winding one lane road up the royal hill past 18th Century chalets with red-jacketed guards seated by the gates. (One look at their surly faces made me want to storm the nearest Bastille.) it wasn’t too crowded when we hit the entrance to the Peña Palace and park. We paid our grudging respect to the palace by getting some shots around drawbridge, then went into the park…
…and up the path to Crux Alta which is above the palace and is a fine lookout if you climb the rocks and avoid letting the big white cross spoil the view.
We only saw a couple of people while hiking up. On the way down we stopped at a kiosk and relaxed with a couple cappuccinos. It was really very pleasant.
After exiting the park, the next tourist notch on our belt was the Moorish castle. Another steep hill, another monument to Medieval battlements. A lot of stony steps leading up to those stony turrets. You churn your way up to look over the valley…
…and then over to the Peña palace, and you say, right, that is one heck of a domain, but, ah, isn’t it a little chilly up here? In the distance I can see this quaint town laid out around a plaza in front of a not too grandiose palace and there something about that that seems warm and convivial. Enough with clomping around where the eagles roost, let’s slip into the valley and join the simple townsfolk.
Loved the “people enjoying the view”