I had purchased tickets in advance for the Pena Palace and the Moorish Castle and today was “our” day to go. This meant we actually woke earlier than the past two days. After coffee and getting ready we left the hotel, with a bit of time to spare, but not much, to catch our train.

Except I realized, after getting outside, that I forgot the tickets! Yep, crazy me. And we both forgot to lock the safe. So back we went. (Turns out I also had the tickets on my phone and I could have used those, but we DID need to lock the safe, so I’m rather glad I thought about the tickets.)

By the time we got to the train there were no seats available, so we stood for the whole ride. Thankfully it was a smooth ride and aside from the very loud accordion player who blessed us with his music for a while it was just fine.

It was interesting to see other parts of Lisbon. Clearly poorer parts. Tons of buildings that remind me to the projects in the US. Not all is perfect in Portugal, just like any country, I’m sure.

When we arrived in Sintra we stood in line for a shuttle. Or so we thought. Wrong place … we instead had to walk for about an hour to get to the shuttle, as one guy who was trying to get us to hire him to drive us said. But hey, we are fit and can do a walk, right? So we turned him down and started the walk.

And then the rain came … which convinced us rather quickly that we should get an Uber instead. (It’s never a good idea to grab the guys who pursue you at airports and train stations, as we learned once upon a time in Amsterdam. They might scam you.) The Uber driver was quite helpful, pointing out where a trail was for the Moorish Castle, and then he took us to the palace shuttle spot. The line was so long and so slow we eventually decided to walk. Oh, and we bought a couple sandwiches from a vending machine. (After getting into the palace we learned they have cafeterias there. Oops!)

The walk wasn’t bad, but did go uphill a bit. I think this is preparing us for our upcoming walking holiday, though, so I’m sort of fine with uphills. (Downhills, on the other hand, are NOT my friend.)

And the palace! What a crazy place. At times it rained. At times we were in fog. And it was pretty chilly. And windy. Really crazy weather. (We are hoping all the weather we’ve had here means we’ll have less of the crazy stuff when we do the walk.) But back to the palace … it’s just a fascinating place. Photos will show things in bright colors and no discoloring, but the walls are full of various kinds of what I’m assuming is mold or mildew. I even took a few close ups of the stuff.

After finishing with Pena Palace we went back down and found our way to the Moorish Castle.

Part of the walk down was on a trail and the rain meant we had a muddy walk, but we got to our destination and headed in. The first part, going up to the castle, was quite pretty.

The castle itself is in ruins, but is quite impressive. We went up one stairway and were on the top of that side. Even for Dan one area was too windy! We then turned around and saw we could walk from one side of the top of the castle to the other, much higher side. But yours truly couldn’t do it. The wind was simply too much. It felt like it would blow me off the top! So we went down and around to climb the other side. But nope, the wind there go crazy enough I couldn’t go to the top there at all. Dan did go, though, and I am assuming I’ll see his photos at some point. As he was still at the top I went to a place where I’d seen some flowers I wanted to shoot. Then I went further down to find a sunnier, somewhat wind-protected spot and enjoyed myself there. Upon his return we went out of the castle area.

Then we had to hike back down a trail. It was muddy and slippery, and some of the stone stairs were quite awkward. Dan kindly would point out some tricky areas and occasionally helped me get down particularly high and slippery spots. And then Dan slipped, landing on his knee. I’m so grateful nothing was broken, but he was bleeding, and his pants were torn. Darn! Expensive pants, too. But it could have been much, much worse, so we both know he got off pretty much in the best possible way.

The walk down soon got easier, and we ended up going through an area that had identification signs for a lot of the foliage, and there were little waterfalls that we just lovely. As we exited we saw the sign for the place.

Finally we were back in the town. It’s really quite a pretty little place. We treated ourselves to a spot of Ginjinha — they say it’s medicinal, after all! And we saw people going and coming from a particular area so we went to see what that was. Turns out that was the third place I’d considered visiting, Quinta da Regaleira, but I’d not purchased tickets. I’m glad I didn’t: we simply didn’t have the time or energy for it!

We walked back to the train station, enjoying more of Sintra sights.

We arrived to the station a bit too early, but I was fine with sitting and waiting for the train. When it finally arrived we got on quickly, grabbing seats. Hooray! Both of us dozed a bit on the way back to Lisbon, clearly weary after all the walking.

For dinner we went to a place just around the corner. It was clearly a tourist sort of spot, but they had tapas and we were fine with that. Mostly it was nice to be close to the hotel.

As we walked back it started drizzling. I guess we might have to get used to the rain. We bought little desserts to take back to the hotel, and enjoyed them in the quiet of our room.

Tomorrow we head to the next town, so the morning will be a slow one of relaxing and then packing.