Kiwi Roaming

Sintra sits on the outskirts of Lisbon and it is kinda surreal to visit. In reality tho Sintra is actually a very large town which is part of greater Lisbon with a 385,000 population but the tourists just go to one small part which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This area is like a big forrest park full of hills with a castle or palace or grand home sitting on top of each peak creating spectacular vistas.

We decided not to take a package tour but train and bus ourselves around instead. With the dodgy looking weather forecast we arrived on the train and caught one of the two “official” hop on hop off bus routes up to the Moorish Castle then the Pena Palace. There were also tuktuks and other buses, taxi’s etc navigating the narrow narrow streets, which luckily are one way, as well as people driving themselves. We discovered along the way there is a local bus too which would have cost a fraction of the €13.50 we paid for the day. Upshot is you wouldn’t want to walk here it is soooooo steep.

Moorish Castle – pre-Moor artefacts have been found in the Sintra mountains including Bronze Age stuff (which is apparently in the British Museum) but the oldest of the hilltop structures is a Moorish castle built in the 8th and 9th century. We thought about skipping this as we have been to quite a few Moorish castles now but so pleased we didn’t – it was awe inspiring. Built on giant rocks which erupt from the earth this structure is simply massive. The wall is 450m long and you can walk virtually the whole thing.

The Moors weren’t the only people who contributed to this castle which was extensively fortified by King Ferdinand I in the 1300s and King Ferdinand II after the 1755 earthquake to protect his palace further up the mountain – the Pena Palace.

The views from the towers and walls are amazing, with vistas to the sea and across the landscape. You feel like you are precariously high when walking around and as the wind came up it was quite scary in places. The size of the rocks the stone walls are constructed on are just massive, metres high and wide. There is moss growing on the sheltered parts of the walls and well preserved cistern walls, also the remnants of a chapel. There is a whole visitor block with toilets etc being built on the inside of the walls (currently all about 150m away by the road).

Pena Palace – the most famous of the many castles here is the palace King Ferdinand II built for himself on top of an old monastery. The most striking thing is the colours, which to be fair are now fading when you come up close but from any distance look fantastic. The other striking thing is the architecture, it seems the King insisted on inclusion of Moorish arches and ornate embellishments. The tile work is also fantastic, almost fanciful, very colourful with beautiful patterns.

We bought a ground pass only after reading reviews, the weather was really starting to close in with the wind gusting and cloud getting darker. Both the Pena Palace and the Moorish Castle involved lots of walking up hill, my watch declared I had done 53 flights of steps which did not surprise us at all.

There is no one vista that shows the whole palace at once, at times you can only see Red parts and others only Yellow. There are turrets and domes, courtyards and up on the walls interesting alcoves. With a grounds only ticket we could explore everywhere outside the palace and into the chapel, this includes the long steep arched corridors which are painted white in contrast with the colour elsewhere. Also built on enormous rocks the height and scale of this place is incredible.

We headed back down after a good explore and eating our homemade sandwiches at one of the closed cafe terraces, it was really dark and started to rain as we got back on the bus to complete the loop of this route alighting back at the railway station.

There is a second bus loop which takes us to a variety of other palaces so we popped into a wee patisserie for locally baked goods and a coke to give us a boost after all that walking, then hopped on the other bus. While we waited for the bus we could see the Moorish palace disappear behind the increasingly low cloud – so really pleased we visited when we did. With the rain set in which also meant there was very low light and it was cold, so we decided not to explore any other palaces or grounds and just look at the glimpses of places from the bus tour.

Back on the train we chatted about how we had managed to break the ticket machines at both the castle and the palace today, how opulent and indulgent the whole notion of grand palaces and stately homes in one area are and what it might be like to stay there in one of the many hotels.