I am writing this feeling utterly exhausted so please forgive all the spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. My proof reader and censor, Barbara, has gone to sleep so I am on my own. Left the hotel at 7.40 this morning and got back at 5.40 this evening, 10 hours and we were on the go almost every minute.
Today we did a day trip out of Lisbon to Sintra. Sintra is a resort town in the foothills of Portugal’s Sintra Mountains about 30km from Lisbon. A UNESCO World Heritage/Culture/ Landscape site it has long been a favourite of royalty. It has a plethora of palaces and their gardens, aristocratic estates, a castle, parks, stately homes, woodlands and fountains, churches, chapels, convents, monasteries and hermitages. And now it is a huge tourist destination.
We had decided to visit just three sites and had pre-purchased entry tickets on line. These were: the Pena Palace and Park, the Moorish Castle and the Quinta da Regaleira. At the Pena Palace and Quinta da Regaleira you had to chose an entry time, eg 10.00, 10.30, 11.00 etc and the numbers entering at each time slot are capped. They are very strict about entry times. If you have a 10.00 slot and arrive at 10.35 then tough luck you miss out no matter what the reason. We had 10.00 booked at the Pena Palace and 2.30 at the Quinta de Regaleira.
We left the hotel at 7.40 and took the Metro to Oriente train station, the largest in Lisbon, where most suburban and cross-country trains leave from. From there a 50 minute ride to Sintra in a suburban train which was also covered by our Lisboa Card. From Sintra station you can walk up to the Pena Palace or take a bus. The walk is only about 1.5km, is very steep and windy but does go through beautiful woodland. The few people who walk take about 50 minutes and arrive, hot, sweaty and exhausted. Most take the bus although it has a bad rap. Scotturb have a monopoly on the service, charge high prices, always run late and at peak times do not provide enough buses. Not helping is the authorities pleading with people not to take their cars to Sintra attractions as there is little parking on the steep hill sides. We initially thought we might walk up but when we got off the train there was a bus right there waiting for us. It was nearly 9 am and new it would be tight to make it to our 10.00 time slot. So we got the bus, €4.55 each. It is 1.5km to walk up but the bus needs 10km to slowly wind up a narrow steep one-way road with innumerable switch backs and very tight corners. The bus took half an hour in a snail pace procession of buses, other cars and tuk tuks crawling their way up the hill. Both Pena Palace and the Moorish Castle are located on the top of the highest hills in the area.
The Pena Paláce ( Palacio da Pena, Pena means pity or mercy) started as a small chapel in the middle ages and by about 1500 had developed into a monastery. In the eighteenth century the monastery was damaged by lightning and was reduced to ruin by the 1755 earthquake. In 1838, as king consort, Ferdinand II, bought the monastery, surrounding land and estates and set out to transform what was left of the monastery into a summer palace for the royal family. The reconstruction was complete by 1847 and is an exuberant fairytale romantic style with vividly painted terraces, ornamental battlements, statues of mythical creatures, Moorish, Manueline and German Romantic influences. We made our time slot and had a great time exploring all the rooms, battlements, towers etc. It is always packed with visitors and you have to follow a defined one-way route through the building. You quickly become sensually saturated and overwhelmed with all the different colours, materials and designs. It was a relief to go outside and walk in the extensive gardens. This is also romantic with winding paths, pavilions, stone seats and plants from all over the world.
From the Pena Palace it is a short walk to the Moorish Castle (Castelo dos Mouros, Castle of the Moors), a hill top medieval castle built in the 8th and 9th centuries by the Moors who occupied most of Portugal and Spain. The castle has a 450 metre perimeter sits on top of a mountainous cliff and meanders over the steep granite terrain. The castle walls were badly damaged in the 1755 earthquake and Ferdinand II eventually bought the castle and lands when he bought the ruined monastery for the future Pena Palace. He repaired and embellished much of the castle walls and it quickly became a tourist attraction. The location is magnificent with views far out over the land and to the coast. Because the mountain is so steep you feel you are right on top of the Sintra village below.
From the castle we walked down to the historic centre of Sintra. This was the path we may have walked up and boy was it steep, with hundreds of steps and cobbled all the way. This was part of an ancient pilgrimage route to the old monastery. In the village we stopped for lunch at a tiny café and had Bacalhau á Bràs a Portuguese dish made from shreds of salted cod, onions and thinly chopped fried potatoes, all bound with eggs, garnished with black olives and sprinkled with fresh flat-leaf parsley. And very nice it was too.
After lunch we went to the Quinta da Regaleira, the main building of which is the Regaleira Palace, sometimes called the Palácio do Montiero dos Milhões, the nickname of the owner Antonio Augusto de Carvalho Montiero. The palace and surrounding gardens were constructed between 1904 and 1910 and are based on mixed designs of Romanesque, Renaissance, Gothic and Manueline architecture. The lush gardens have lakes, caves, towers, and a beautiful chapel of the Holy Trinity. By far the most fascinating structure is the Initiatory Well.
The well is an underground gallery with a spiral staircase supported by sculpted columns which leads down to the bottom of the well. The staircase has nine levels separated by flights on 15 steps, invoking references to Dante’s Divine Comedy and the 9 circles of hell, paradise or purgatory. Montiero was very much into alchemical meanings such as those found in Freemasonry, the Templars and Rosicrucians. The well is said to be initiatory as it is said to have been used in initiation rites in Freemasonry. The symbolism of the site is related to the belief that the earth is the maternal womb from which life comes, but also the tomb to which it will return. At the bottom of the well are tunnels carved out of the rock which lead to a lake and waterfall, another unfinished well and lower areas of the gardens. By now we were wilting with sensory overload and so after a quick look through the palace and gardens we made our way back to the train station and our train back to Lisbon. Sintra station is a little gem with beautiful tiles, and historic Sintra is beautiful with steep narrow little streets and alleys and some very fine buildings including a very highly decorated building for the local City Council.
So it was a full on day and we need a quiet rest day tomorrow to recover. In Sintra it was at first quite misty up on the mountains but the sun eventually came out and it warmed up to about 22 degrees. Up on the tops, on the north side of the palace and castle walls it was breezy and cold, but on the south side it was calm and warm. I suspect there is always some breeze up there.
I have now run out of steam so the photos will have to wait until tomorrow. Don’t forget to come back and have a look, there are some amazing ones!