All the online ‘Lisbon Travel’ websites had one thing in common: ‘YOU HAVE TO VISIT SINTRA.’ Sintra is a town approximately 40 minutes from downtown Lisbon, and it is home to a Moorish castle and much more stunning architecture. Conveniently, the train station next to my hotel brought us there, so it was even easier to get to for us, and boy was it worth the trip. We’re even considering re-visiting it sometime in the next two days while we’re still in Lisbon.
Once at Sintra train station, there is a short walk to the old historical centre, and from there you see a sort of large hill/mountain that you can climb that brings you to the castle.
Sintra was built by the Arabs when they had taken over Portugal nearly a millennium ago, and so the stunning Arabic architecture in these ancient buildings is noticeable and quite remarkable really. Take a look:
And if you like climbing and hiking, this may be the place for you. The mountain is not necessarily a hiking mountain, but it is a good place to hike as the climb is rather long and very scenic as it is dotted with old shops and cute little restaurants. As we approached the top, there was a line up because it turned out there was a cover charge of 8 euros per person, expensive but it turned out to be totally worth it! Check out the stunning views from the top of the castle:
Honestly, the experience of seeing this wonderful view cannot be matched. I have to admit, understanding the Portuguese here is ridiculously hard. I can almost perfectly understand written Portuguese because it is very similar to Spanish and Italian, but spoken Portuguese is nearly impossible. They pronounce the “s” sounds like we would “sch,” but like really intensely, and that really throws me off, it’s unfortunate because I don’t like it when I can’t speak the local language, luckily outside of Portugal I speak the language of most of the countries, so I should be fine there. Today walking back down the mountain from Sintra we did get lost, and it was tough asking for directions but most of the people here do understand Spanish so it really wasn’t that bad.
I don’t think I’ll be blogging every day, but I definitely will blog if ever I have some down time, it is 10:45 here for us after all.
Picture of the day:
This was the first building we saw after arriving in Sintra, and the architecture on this building was truly stunning for me.
Beach tomorrow (if weather permits)!! Should be fun!
Studying Abroad in Madrid!! 