Tour -Sintra

 Today we took a driving tour with Anna. She was a very pleasant lady and had a wealth of information about Portugal – not just the history, but everything, culture, people, modern events, etc. we really enjoyed being with her the first place we went to was Quinta da Regaleria. it is classified as a world heritage site by UNESCO. On the property is a palace, a chapel, a well, waterfalls, many trails and beautiful landscaping. because of the Mediterranean climate, the plant stay green all year long and it’s very very lush. We first went to the initiation well Levels in this, referred to as Dante’s Hell. It’s a spiral staircase that leads down to the ground, and when you get there, there are several tunnels and a waterfall. The architect also put some symbols along the way from here we walked some of the paths outside and then over to the palace. There was no furniture in the palace, but we could still see, it’s beautiful construction with many tiles around. There were also some good views of the village below the plant life on the property was absolutely gorgeous. From here. We went to the village of Sintra and walked around. This is a very popular area, and there were many buses, taxis, and tourist everywhere. Like Lisbon, the town has hills, but smaller here and many quaint shops and streets, Anna gave us two pastries. One was the traditional custard pastry and another was an almond tasting pastry, then went into the Pena Palace. Here there were lots and lots of people and apparently 50,000 people a day visit here. It was crazy. We only did the tour of the outside terraces where we could see views of the valley. Once again had we decided to go inside the palace we probably would’ve waited anywhere from an hour to two hours, and it just wasn’t worth it, the palace is built with different architectural styles such as the Moorish style, Gothic style, Roman, and one other. As in the other traditional buildings, there were tiles everywhere we were able to go into the chapel and it was small, but pretty we got to see many gorgeous views through arches under trees , and from the balconies. Next Anna is towards the coast where we had lunch on the tour we were accompanied by three young college age girls. It was a pleasant lunch. I had the traditional Portuguese cod with potatoes, and Scotty had pasta with seafood after lunch, we walked along the shore , our final stop, was a winery where we tasted two wines. The wine in this area is grown by the sea in the sand of the two. We liked the white wine better, but we did not buy any. It was a long day and once again, we got many steps – this time 22,000 steps and 72 floors. On the way home we found a local craft bar called dupe and had an interesting conversation with the bartender like our tour guide. He also came from Brazil centuries ago. Portugal and Brazil had sea routes and people traveled back-and-forth and apparently they still do , one thing we noticed about the tour guide and the bartender was there incredible knowledge of their countries history. They also talked about the socialist views of the country and these two individuals seem to be somewhat frustrated by some aspects of their country. What was similar about these two individuals was they had been to other countries, and they knew that things could be better. Mostly we learned that Portugal is becoming a very touristy place and because of the cheaper cost of living, compared to other parts of Europe, people from around the world are moving in. That makes it very hard for the locals to afford to live there anymore. It’s a sad situation and even more confusing seeing that they depend on the tourist industry.