August 8th - Sintra

 Sintra - Look closely at the top of the hill, there is a Moorish castle up there dating from the 8th century

A local "watering hole", literally.... note the water source at the back between the pillars

One of many courtyards at the National Palace, a building started by the Moors and added onto by subsequent kings.  The Portuguese royals used it until the end of the 19th century.  Note the chimneys and the tile work.

The inside of the kitchen, there were probably at least 10 fires burning in here when in use, thus the need for the 2 conical chimneys to eliminate the smoke.

On the steps of of Campo Grande, the multi use "futbol" stadium

              We walked to the train station from our 4 star hotel (El Cheapo is on a streak!) and got on a train, then got off and got on another one, then finally took a long train into Sintra. Sintra looked kinda like a ratty city until you neared the castle. We took a FREE tour of the castle (Palacio Nacional) where the royal family of Portugal lived for a while. The kitchen had these 2 giant cone shaped chimneys. 

We wandered around town for a bit after that before finally having lunch at a delicious restaurant. After that we waited for the bus at the bus stop. While we were waiting, some Spanish boy scouts walked past us at the bus stop. One of them saw Ryan's Fernando Torres shirt (a player for the Spanish national team); his face lit up, and he started yelling "Espania! Espania!". Immediately, all of the boy scouts started singing a song that sounded like "yo soy Espanol" repeatedly, but I can't remember the rest of the words. We waited for ten more minutes, then gave up and started walking to the train station. While we were walking we saw the bus so we got on it. The bus passed our first stop, and it was so crowded we wouldn’t have been able to get on. We drove up the three km street till we reached the bus stop at the other castle in town. My mom saw how long the bus line for going down the hill was, and quickly decided we weren't going to go to the castle. 

After we took the trains back to Lisbon we hung out in the hotel for a while before walking to the soccer stadium across the street. In side the soccer stadium, there was a food court, grocery store, movie theatre, and more! We had a fast food dinner, then got ice cream at the grocery store before we went back to the hotel and went to bed (early as we were leaving for home in the morning).


Trevor

Sintra is a lovely, historic town located about 45 minutes from Lisbon.  Home to several castles built over the centuries, beautiful gardens and more, it is a  town that has lots more to see than we could accomplish on a crazy August Sunday.  The bus ride up the hill/mountain was interesting as the  bus was jammed with passengers, the roads were incredibly narrow, steep and  clogged with pedestrian and car traffic not to mention  parked cars which at times made passage nearly impossible.  This was not our best planning day as we got more caught up in the fact that we could go through the castle in town for free and didn't think about getting to the more impressive castle at the top of the hill while the crowds were a bit tamer in the morning.  Oh well, there is always next time!  (A mantra Tom and I used often as in nearly every place we visited, there was more to see than we had time for!)


Cathy