Sintra - Castles in the sky

Today we booked a private tour to go visit Sintra and some nearby coastal towns. Our guide was very pleasant but rather useless and he ended up being more of a private taxi driver taking us from place to place and waiting while we explored on our own, without imparting much information about what we saw. We started off at Sintra up in the mountains which was the resort of the kings and queens of Portugal, and there are an eclectic mix of palaces and castles. Our first stop was the Moorish Castle, a medieval castle built by the Moors in 8th and 9th centuries. It was cloudy all morning and then as the light broke through I got his shot of the castle. Then we went on to the Pena Palace which is meant to express 19th century Romanticism but I swear the architect was tripping on LSD when he designed this Disney-on-steroids castle in the sky, and his decorator surely got the gaudiest reject colours from Dulux with which to paint it! As you can gather I was not that impressed with it. The loos were the dirtiest I have seen in a while, and why do the women’s loos always have such majorly long queues? As for tourists with flipping selfie sticks, I was close to reaching over to snap them in two (the sticks, not the tourists!) Not my favourite destination!

We then headed down to the mountain to see the coastal area of Sintra. The Atlantic Ocean has some impressive huge waves crashing on to the beaches, it was lovely to watch them and I got some good shots of huge waves breaking. We had lunch booked at a very well located seafood restaurant overlooking the sea, where we enjoyed a delicious fish meal. The views from there were excellent. The first extra was taken there, as was the second extra. You can see the restaurant on the lower cliffs with the wall of glass windows. I had to show what a precarious job these people have trying to fix the cliffs, dangling from the crane like that - I did manage to clone out the crane in other shots so I do have scenic images of this view.

After lunch the sun broke through the clouds again and we visited Cabo da Roca in good late light. This is the most western point of Europe, and there is a very attractive light house there (and more annoying tourists with selfie sticks). The medieval Europeans used to think that this was the end of the world!

After taking many photos we moved on to Caiscais which is a very attractive coastal town with a good marina - Gavin had sailed there from the UK a few years ago and wanted me to see it as it is so charming. It has many beaches and the Boca do Inferno, a gap in the rocks where the sea water rushes through in an explosive manner.

Last stop was Estoril which is famous for it’s casino, which is the biggest in Europe. It is a luxury resort and was home to the King of Italy and many spies during WWII as Portugal remained neutral during the war. 

It was a very interesting day seeing these areas near to Lisbon. Tomorrow morning we leave early to get the train to Porto.