Day 11 - Sintra

After the crazy walk-a-thon yesterday, not sure I'm up for another one, but when in Portugal....

This morning we took a tour to Sintra.  Sintra is a beautiful area with several different estates/palaces.  We walked up, yes up, to the village square.  Where Jose, our guide, told us a sweet story about his grandparents and how they came to live in the National Palace of Sintra.

Our first stop was to the Quinta da Reglaeira estate. The estate is beautiful and one of the most interesting things, at least to me, was the Initiation Well. It is believed that this well was used in the initiation ritual to become a member of the Knights Templar.

For all of our families that have horses, you need to step up your horse stalls to this level.  Your horses deserve marble troughs.

In the picture below I am fairly certain I am thinking, "I'm sorry, you want me to walk up where?!?!  I don't think so Jose!"  Okay fine, but I'm probably going to complain, repeatedly.

View from the top.  Only 135 steps to the bottom, so glad we didn't have to walk back up those steps.  The closer we got to the bottom, the more water was seeping through the stone walls and onto the steps.

View from the bottom looking up

After successfully navigating the steps, we toured through the tunnels.  Super interesting and obviously a great time for a group picture. 😎

After touring the estate for a few hours we made our way back down to the village center for some lunch and a little shopping.  Can't help but to put in a picture of some of the flowers.

Thankfully it was basically a down hill walk to where the vehicles were parked.  Then we were on our final leg to Pena Palace. We drove up to the parking area, then walked down to get on a bus that took us almost all of the way up to the Pena Palace.

Nothing but uphill from there. 😟

The views from the palace are amazing.  

We were able to get a couple of more group shots in during the palace tour.

We left the Pena Palace and headed back down to cars and went to the Cabo da Roca Natural Park for just a quick stop.

Made the decision that we had seen enough and asked Jose to drop us off at his recommended location, LX Factory, for drinks and dinner.  Heidi decided the berries from the Sangria pitcher were too good to leave behind.

We headed back to the apartment where several loads of laundry were done and more cards were played.

Boa Noite!