Sintra, Portugal

Posted October 8, 2019

Arrival in Sintra

• 

• 

• 

We arrived in Sintra after a 40 minute train ride from Lisbon. Sintra is a resort town in the foothills of Portugal’s Sintra Mountains with two main draws – the Moorish Castle and the Pena Palace, both set high on nearby hilltops above town. 

We stayed in a tiny, quaint hotel, the Monte Da Lua Guesthouse, directly across from the train station.  We stayed two nights, giving us plenty of time to see the sites. 

We had our plan of attack all mapped out. We arrived in the afternoon and the sun was shining brightly and blue filled the sky.  Rick Steves (travel writer) recommended visiting the Moorish Castle at sunset for a real treat. With this in mind, we decided to kill some time walking around the town, then head up to the Castle around 5:30 pm and stay through sunset.  

We set out for the town on the wide cobblestone sidewalks that wind along the road from our hotel to the town center. The hills rose up on all sides of us, full of lush, green trees. We passed manicured, colorful flowerbeds, stunning views, city hall, small restaurants, and hippie craft vendors.  

Moorish Castle

As planned, we caught the bus at 5:30 pm, heading deep into the hills towards the Moorish Castle.   As we entered the bus, I noticed a few clouds moving in, and I was thinking we were in for a spectacular sunset! The bus climbed higher and higher into the hills, and it got foggier and foggier. At the top, we saw the Moorish Castle entrance and everything was blanketed in thick fog.   No sunset for us. 

The Moorish Castle ticket-taker was a happy, friendly, good looking man in his mid-30’s, who apologized for the fog.  He went on to explain that the fog moves in late in the day, every day, like clockwork. Hmmmm…Rick Steves hadn’t mentioned that. 

We made the best of it, at least we had the entire Moorish Castle practically to ourselves. The fog did lend an eerie kind of medieval feel to the whole castle vibe.  Standing on the high castle walls, we watched as thick fog rolled through the tree tops and over the castle walls.

Maybe a sunset was overrated after all. The misty fog was ethereal.

Pena Palace

We set our alarms that night for early the next morning to get to the Pena Palace before the tour groups from Lisbon arrived.

Unfortunately, the fog from the previous night was still in full force. As far as I could tell, the throngs of tour groups hadn’t arrived from Lisbon yet, so at least we had that in our favor.

The Palace is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and rightly so.  The Palace is a major example of the 19th century Romanticism style of architecture, with deep reds and bright yellow exteriors and a whimsical design throughout.

After a tour of the castle interior, we found a great place to sit and wait out the fog.

We nursed our water bottle, waiting……. ….waiting….
waiting….for more than an hour until the sun started to break through the heavy fog and we could see a bit of blue sky, occasional views of the glorious mountains and town below, and even the Atlantic Ocean in the distance.

The Military Ceremony

After the Pena Palace visit, we headed into town for a second time. Things seemed very different this time. Instead of craft vendors lining the streets, we saw police, and the main road into Sintra was closed.

As we got closer and closer to town, there were more and more police. Approaching the main square, where the National Palace resides, we could hear a band playing. 

The policeman I asked told me there was a military ceremony at the square, just ahead, and the Portuguese President was there! I wiggled my way up to the front of the packed crowd of (mostly) tourists and watched for a few minutes.  The band played, the military men marched and carried out commands. After a while we’d seen enough and moved on.

We explored Sintra for about an hour, but needed a break from walking the steep pathways, and perhaps a snack. Typically we make a point to avoid cafe’s in a town’s main square, they are often very overpriced and low-quality. After weighing our options, we finally decided to plunk down dead center across from the square, where the ceremony was still ongoing.  By now the crowds watching the ceremony had significantly dwindled to a few die-hard fans. 

The President

Suddenly a heavy police presence was moving towards us, and all the military top-brass started lining up along along the cafe edge where we sat eating our overpriced pastel de natas, a Portuguese pastry specialty.

The President of Portugal, flanked on both sides by buff military guards, was about 8 feet away from us. I googled to verify what the President looked like, to be sure it was him. It was. Then the troops paraded down the cobblestone street in front of the President, the military big-wigs, and us, with the band playing in the background, while they all saluted each other. What a cool experience. 

Wins & Losses

Wins

• I had the best shrimp crepes on earth, not rolled, but flat and layered with gooey cheese and rich cream sauce at Rick Steve’s favorite restaurant in town, Restaurante Regional de Sintra
• We had sunny weather (in town, that is)
• Our hotel had silky smooth, high quality bed sheets
• We saw the President and he thanked us for coming to Portugal (ok, that second part didn’t happen)

Losses

• We didn’t see a sunset from the Moorish Castle (we didn’t see anything from the Moorish Castle, except fog)
• The best shrimp crepes on earth were served in a restaurant that was lit like a surgical room in a hospital. A little bright, one might say
• We had to “shimmy” sideways to enter our tiny hotel bathroom, sometimes slightly wedging in the narrow passage between the mauve porcelain sink and the corner of a wall covered in cold tiles.