Today we picked up the hire car and headed to Sintra. Sintra is where the very wealthy Lisboans used to go when it got too hot in the City (although Cascais is now also a modern favourite). The old town is set up in the hills (about 400m) and has its own microclimate which keeps it cool. The roads are very windy and the sat nav kept trying to send us up streets with no entry signs so we had to resort to google maps on the phone to get us to the hotel.
Having finally arrived, we had a lovely lunch out on the terrace (finally some green food!).
Francisco (our guide from Lisbon) and Carlos II (a new driver, also called Carlos but not to be confused with Sir Carlos from earlier) met us after lunch for our tour of two palaces.
First, we visited the Palácio Nacional de Sintra which is made up of a collection of royal buildings and believed to have been constructed around the 10th or 11th century. We particularly liked the huge medieval kitchens complete with smoke room/plate warmer, indoor BBQ and multiple cooking stations. It was also fun to see the historic tableware, huge platters shaped like animals (a cows head to serve beef in and a huge fish for…well…fish obviously).
Next we visited the house and gardens of Quinta da Regaleira. Created by the hugely wealthy António Carvalho Monteiro with the help of Italian opera-set designer Luigi Manini, the house and gardens are an extravagant flight of fancy – complete with a hidden spiral staircase (behind a hidden revolving rock door!) which leads into a grotto/man made cave system, ending in a little “Garden of Eden” (with a little waterfall and stepping stones). There is also a chapel and mini fake-castle walls, all overlaid with lush greenery, flowers and vines, designed to give the feeling of stepping into a magical fairy tale world. I could definitely see the theatre design influence in these gardens and I can see why the place was popular with writers and artists, including Hans Christian Andersen.
At the end of our tour we walked into the centre of the historic town and pottered around the little shops. We stopped at the famous Piriquita to feast on Sintra’s traditional cakes, travesseiros (a puff pastry oblong with sweet ground almond and cinnamon centre and sugar coating). Yum.