Today we were tourists. Sintra is considered the most touristy destination in Portugal. Home to the old royal palace and many other Disney-like sites. Today, we joined in with the throngs of other tourists. Many traveling alone. Lots in large tour groups following someone with a flag and listening on their headsets. What I decided today, is that every major site requires hiking up steep hills. Nothing about this town would be considered handicap accessible. What a work-out! And, we paced ourselves and didn’t try to do it all. The town has a super-efficient system of tourist bus routes up steep scary hills on very narrow roads to the major attractions. Yet, even after they drop you off, you still have a long ways to go – all uphill. We did the Palace of Pena which is a must-see. Unfortunately, we got there at the busiest and hottest time just before the noon hour. Lines were long. Even on a Monday. First a line to buy tickets. Then a line to get on a shuttle bus – only to find out we didn’t have the extra ticket we needed for that. So we hoofed it up the steep hill. Then we did buy shuttle bus tickets, but not the one we meant to buy. It just took us back to the main entrance. We ended up cutting our visit short and vowing to come back in the off season to see more of the huge park and grounds.
We took the bus ride back down to town where we had a delightful lunch at the restaurant adjoining the wine bar we ate at last night. We struck up a conversation with the folks at the next table who were fresh off their flight from San Francisco. Just 2 days after the gentleman had a stroke! He was very envious of our wine since his doctor told him he couldn’t have any on this trip. Great, affordable lunch (which is typically the big meal of the day.) We had starter olives & bread, fresh pear & arugula salad, main courses of Sea bream and tender pork with sweet potatoes, rice pudding and a glass of wine – for 11 euros each. Of course, we decided to stay longer and have more wine. Even in an upscale restaurant in a very touristy destination, you can get good value on meals. And no tipping.
After our leisurely lunch, we jumped on the Bus 434 again for another white-knuckle ride up the mountainside to the ruins of the Moorish Castle. Crowds had thinned a lot as it was about 4:00 pm. We did a lot more uphill hiking. But, the view was amazing. All the way to the Atlantic. Definitely worth the level of effort and sweat.
Apparently I had screwed up our airbnb booking in our rush to change our flights and get out of town early. Once we got to a place with WiFi we learned that our innkeeper had been trying to reach us since noon because she thought we were checking out today instead of tomorrow. Ooops. My bad. Luckily, the room was still available. She thought we were dead or something. Which probably happens on the roads more often than they disclose.
Per my phone, by the time we got back to our room to clean up for dinner, we had done 3.4 miles and 15 floors. All of Sintra is uphill…
A few random photos from our day below.
