Sintra is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Portugal. It is home to multiple amazing attractions including The Palace of Monserrate (shown above) and The Sintra National Palace. It was the first place that my mom and I visited on our first full day in Portugal.
After visiting Rome on my own, I returned to my apartment in Kaiserslautern, Germany for a week or two. I had made plans with my family members to meet them in different places and travel with them individually for a couple of weeks each. I had met my dad in Budapest and we traveled through Hungary, Slovenia, and Croatia. Then I met my brother in Santorini, Greece and we ended up taking a road trip through Turkey. The last family member that I had plans with was my mom, and we decided to meet up in Portugal.
We met at the Lisbon airport (1 in the map above), then rented a car and drove to an apartment that we rented in Ericeira (2). After getting a good night's sleep, we drove down to Sintra (3) for some good old fashioned sight seeing.
I'd like to do a post about Ericeira because it's a beautiful, sleepy, beach town that's popular with surfers. And we really enjoyed our stay there. Unfortunately, I only have a handful of photos of the town.
We arrived in Sintra, and for some reason we parked far away from the National Palace. I think there might have been parking problems closer to the palace. The day was nice and we enjoyed the walk.
Next to the road was this awesome fountain. The woman walking away with the bottle had filled it up at the fountain. I don't know if the water is supposed to be blessed, or if it's just a good natural spring.
This evocative sculpture was also next to the road.
This cool looking little building is the town hall of Sintra.
After a short walk, we made it to the palace and went inside to check it out. It's a big building, but it's sparsely decorated. It seemed a little bit underwhelming after being in Rome and The Vatican.
This is one of the problems with traveling. After you see "the best" of a type of site, it's hard to get excited about other sites. A similar thing happened to me after going to Angkor Wat. After seeing the amazing temples in Cambodia, all other temples seemed small and boring.
The Sintra National Palace was beautiful and had a really cool, unique, almost minimalist style. It was fun to see, but it didn't have the same wow-factor that Rome had.
The palace did have some cool ceilings. I liked how the Portuguese focused more on different animals instead of the pudgy naked kids that the Romans seemed obsessed with.
I love birds, and I love painted ceilings. The Sintra National Palace was a good fit for me.
The style of these ceilings seems really unique to me. The repetition of the same animal over and over almost has a graffiti feel to it.
The palace gardens were probably my favorite part of the palace.
We spent a couple of hours at the palace then went out into the city. We took a bus to The Palace of Monserrate.
The Palace of Monserrate is drop-dead gorgeous. It definitely has a wow-factor. The only thing that makes it not-so-impressive is it's age. It's a fairly new building. Construction was started on it in 1863.
The style and detail on this building is incredible.
The detail work is mostly done with plaster and isn't as impressive as stone carving. But the end result can not be denied. It looks like the leaves are paper-thin.
The interior of the building is covered from wall to wall with incredible lace-like carvings.
The whole building had an airy, dream-like quality to it. The modern lighting that has been added to the building really makes the design come to life.
The "palace" is more of a large house than a palace, so there isn't a whole lot to explore inside. But that doesn't take away from how cool it is. The building is located on a huge piece of land with a giant garden.
I was getting tired from being on my feet all day, so I didn't take many photos of the garden.
After a while we took the bus back into town to get our rental car. We drove back to our apartment in Ericeira, then went out for sushi for dinner.
It was a long day, but it was fun to do some sight seeing with my mom. I know that I had done some shorter day-trips with her, but most of our traveling had been done as a family. When we traveled as a family, usually my brother and I would go off and do our thing, and my parents would do their thing. It was fun to be able to do an extended trip with just the two of us.
The next day we would tour the city of Lisbon. After that, we were going to hit the road and go south for some real traveling and adventure!
I hope you enjoyed some of the photos and that you'll join me tomorrow as the City to City Tour continues in the wonderful city of Lisbon!
