St. George Castle, Sintra and the Palace of Pena

This morning we got up a little early had a breakfast of eggs and bacon and headed out to catch trolley #28 to the Castle of St. George. This is a wonderful medieval castle up on a hill overlooking all of Lisbon. We then walked down to the train station to board the #3 train to Sintra. On the way to Sintra we passed by some beautiful country side and some not so beautiful rundown old towns. There were large high rise condo buildings everywhere around here. 45 min later we arrived in the small town of Sintra. This was a small quaint town with what we were told 5 palaces scattered around the hills. We had lunch at a nice restaurant in the village. We had stopped at another restaurant where they were having a private party. The restaurant was full but the waiter gave us a card and wrote down the name of another good restaurant nearby. We had placed the card on the table and the waiter picked it up and started laughing.  I guess they don’t get to many referrals from other restaurant. After lunch we decided to go to the Pena National palace since it sounded more interesting. It was a palace of incredible fanciful carvings and design. Built by king Ferdinand II in 1847 it became the royal summer palace. In 1889 the palace was purchased by the Portuguese state and in 1910 it was turned into a museum. This palace is incredible! After seeing the palace we took the bus back to the train station and headed back to Lisbon. For dinner that evening we went to a local sushi restaurant. The sushi was good but I still like the sushi I get back home much better. Anyway we walked back towards the apartment and Anne wanted to stop in this local bar which was 3 or 4 doors down from out apartment for a drink and a bottle to go. We had our drinks and went back to the apartment to finish the bottle of wine. At this point it was getting late and we needed to get up early the next morning so we called it an night.

Castle of St. George.

Pina National Palace.

Whimsical entrance to the palace.