Sintra's got no soul

We took a train journey out of the city today - to Sintra, a small town in the mountains to the west of Lisboa. Its slightly cooler climate attracted the nobles and the upper classes over summer in the era of the monarchy. They built fanciful "holiday" palaces and mansions set in romantic gardens that took advantage of the amazing views from the mountains to the Atlantic coast. Sintra is one of Lisboa's most popular tourist destinations and today it was very crowded with swarms of people on package tours. We all found this really off putting....making us realise that if something is a popular tourist destination in Europe it will probably be too crowded for us!!

We started off the day in our usual Lisboa style: coffee and a pastry - today we found a place near the  Estacio do Rossio just off Pedro 1V Square. 

Then a 40 minute train ride to Sintra - and on to the crowded #434 bus to take us up the hair pin turns of the scarily narrow road up to the Palacio Nacional da Pena (Pena Palace) - the Disney style palace and park at the highest point above Sintra. 

The palace was commissioned by King Ferdinand 11 in the 1840s.  He wanted to transform the remains of a monastery on the site into a palace that would be the summer residence of the Portuguese royal family.  A German amateur architect brought the project to fruition (and we think he had a lot to answer for... although King Ferdinand and his Queen Maria 11 apparently intervened a lot with their ideas for decorating the rooms).

 We are sure Walt Disney visited this palace before he built Fantasy Land.

This "holiday house" had great views - out to the coast and the mouth of the Tagus River and Lisboa to the south east.

Parts of the original cloister of the old monastery are still evident..

 .....but the rooms of the palace looked really ugly to us. Extravagant, heavy handed, ornate, over decorated, incoherent......No wonder the Portuguese got sick of their over extravagant, out of touch royal family..while the country's economy and political fortunes were being blown out of the water in the 19th century!!!

I tried to focus on the things I did like..... Maxie and I quite liked the trompe l'oeil painted vaulted ceilings in the old section of the palace...

..and I did like this tiny room off one of the terraces (used as a cupboard in the palace's heyday)... 

 ..and the kitchen was great..with its full set of serious copper cookware...

 ...but I did not like this hideous gargoyle confection at all......

Rob and Rod were both really turned off by the crowds swarming over this building - the selfie stick wielding young things from Asia and the gold chained European matrons in the group tours...they voted we quit Sintra and high tail it back to Lisboa for one of our lovely long late lunches!! We agreed immediately - the thought of fighting with the gold chain ladies for a table at one of the tourist restaurants in the (too charming) Sintra township was the only incentive we needed to get going. 

Back in Lisboa...aah...we made it to the beautiful, buzzy Rua Augusta just in time for a 3.30pm lunch at the wonderful Casa Brasileira...for more beautifully cooked seafood, paella and Pasteis after ...aah

We walked down the length of Rua Augusta afterwards, through the Rua Augusta Arch.........

 .....past the gi-normous monument to Dom Jose 1, the King of Portugal at the time of the earthquake in 1755....

 ..and then we walked along the riverbank back to the apartment in Rua Salgadeiras, just as people were settling into their early evening drinking session by the water, as the sun got lower in the sky. I think those deckchairs at the edge of this outdoor bar space would be the prime spot in Lisboa for a drink at this time of the day.......