Sintra

Monday was a long and eventful day. We packed a lot into it, sacrificing lunch, everyone's feet, various tempers, and many details of many tourist sites. It was epic. We set off from Cerdeira and drove three hours south to Sintra, on the coast. We were misled by Google maps into thinking we could park and walk into the grounds of the Pena Palace, but instead we had to park on the streets of the crowded town (so many tourists!) and walk uphill 30 minutes through park trails to reach the gate entrance.... and then another 30 minutes from there to the actual palace. It was steeply up most of the way, which I say as a Portlander who regularly walks hills, and Steve's pace was once again extremely brisk.

The park was beautiful, though, with huge trees, many flowers, and various stone structures (houses, bridges, gazebos, towers, water cisterns).

A rock climber! I would rate it a 5.2 or 5.3, at most.

The kids were hungry and breathing hard, but they were good company and kept going, even playing games.

We finally made it to the top of the hill, and it was cloudy, and the Pena Palace was just fine. We've seen photos that looked amazing, but those were from some other vantage point and not the park immediately surrounding it.

We headed next to the Moorish castle ruins, which was in the same general park vicinity, more or less, but we had no map, and Google maps was no help whatsoever in finding any of the park trails, and there was minimal signage in the park itself. So there was wandering, back-tracking, finding switchbacks that may or may not have helped (swetchbacks is what we dubbed those), and some hysterical laughter.

Seb and Liesl were hiding on top of this rock, hoping to surprise us, but we surprised them by taking a different trail and approaching from an unexpected direction. So then he tried to put her out of her hiking misery.

We reached a juncture where you could walk down to the town and our car, or up and to the Moorish castle. Both kids opted for down, together, and we let them go. Steve and I continued on to see the ruins together. The park surrounding the castle was again really gorgeously maintained and landscaped. It reminded me a bit of the Japanese garden in Portland. But then there were thousand-year old grain storage silos, and a defensive wall built to keep out the barbarians (Vikings?), and more.

Too bad it was so foggy -- couldn't see the full view out to the ocean.

Enormous water cistern.

Steve and I cheated and took a tuktuk back down to the town, to meet the kids. But we had an ulterior motive for our shortcut: we wanted to see the Quinta da Regaleira, a third castle, and the last entry was at 5:30. We convinced the kids to walk some more, and squeaked in the gates at 5:28. 

The Quinta's grounds were again beautiful, even more manicured. I felt a little sad that we didn't have more time, but we made a beeline for the Initiation Well.

We could look up and see the Moorish castle, now in bright sunshine. The fog cleared as soon as we came down.

There were many more sights to see, both at the Quinta, at other palaces and gardens in the area, and the town of Sintra had many interesting shops I would've liked to browse. But we had to hustle out to our hotel on the coast in order to make it by the 7pm check-in. Plus we hadn't eaten anything but snacks since breakfast. So we checked in to our gorgeous room on the ocean, and went out for a seafood dinner overlooking the ocean.

The view from our dining table, of a small beach (complete with probably drunken skinny-dippers), a huge seawater swimming pool, and the cliffs.

Seb and I left dinner a little early and walked home along the coastal trail -- 10 minutes, as the sun was setting. The above and below photos are of the restaurant.

The gateway into our house, and our hotel house. Ours is the farthest left in the pic.

We all curled up and watched Euro soccer again -- Portugal v Slovenia. My phone said I'd walked almost 9 miles.