14/07/18 – Sintra, Greater Lisbon
We had been putting off going to Sintra for no real reason other than we were having a nice relaxing time at Guincho and perhaps the thought of a very touristy town didn’t really sit too well with us after relaxing for a few days. Still, after 3 days of not doing much, it was time to move on and brave the hoards.
As we arrived it was nice to start to see some greenery again. It’s surprising how you get used to dry, sparse landscapes or coastal environments, but when you finally see grass and trees again, it reminds us of how much we miss it. It must remind us of England I guess.
Sintra is a narrow, hilly town and I was getting that feeling again that perhaps being in the Moho wasn’t the best choice of vehicle to visit this place. That said, we arrived Saturday morning and manged to arrive before 10:00 and bag a free parking space about 5 minutes outside the town.
The big draw of Sintra are the many coloured villas and palaces, in particular the Moorish castle and Pena Palace, both perched high above the town on top of a rather high hill. Given neither of us have done too much exercise recently we decided to take the hiking trail up through the forest with Marley in tow.
it was about half an hour of some fairly steep steps and winding tracks in the humidity of the morning before we broke cover and realised we were at the Moorish castle. Feeling a little hot and sweaty, we rested near the entrance before pressing on to the Pena Palace, another couple of hundred metres up the cobbled hill.
We were both surprised to see the odd motorhome braving the inclines. Perhaps they hadn’t experienced getting stuck and having to reverse down – sometimes, not knowing is better.
As we arrived at the top, it seemed half of the tourists in Portugal had turned up on one very large coach. We knew Marley probably wouldn’t be allowed in, but thought he might at least make it into the gardens. Sadly not.
Feeling flustered neither of us could decide if we wanted to take it in turns to go in or if one should do the whole thing and the other see the next site. In the end, we opted to get a tuk-tuk back down to the centre of town. It was expensive at €10 but worth it as we were both knackered from the walk up.
It took us about 5 minutes to get back to the centre of town, largely because we had Lewis Hamilton as a our driver, who managed to overtake 3 cars in one move on a bend…..
When we got out of the tuk-tuk, the other half of all the tourists in Portugal had joined those from the palace, so it was time for us to make like a guillotine…..and head off. Good job then that we had done most of the exploring when we first arrived.
Mafra, Greater Lisbon
We had planned to spend the evening at Mafra, so we headed to Intermarche on the outskirts of town to do a much needed service stop including some laundry.
For some reason, this turned into an epic laundry mission as we decided to make full use of the 18KG max wash load and wash all of our clothes plus our sheets and sofa throws…some 3 hours later and €18 lighter, we were leaving fully clean and smelling fresh!
To our surprise, the overnight stop was only a 5 minute drive away, and right next to the only reason for visiting Mafra, the-ridiculously-out-of-scale-compared-to-everything-else-in-the-town, Mafra Palace.
When we couldn’t find either of the overnight stops we decided that a picture from outside of the palace from the Moho window was enough for us.
To the Coast!
Praia Santa Rita
We had already made a brief stop at Ericeria and with it being Saturday afternoon, it was chocca. With nowhere for us to park we decided we would just drive up the coast to see if anywhere took our fancy en-route to our next planned stop of Nazare.
After about half an hours drive along mostly clifftops, past some rather strange looking windmills with long pointed sticky-out-bits from the centre of the sails, (we will have to look up why) we eventually saw a long beach carpark at sea level. This was Praia Santa Rita.
Not knowing if we could spend the night there, as it is right next to the main road and very obvious to any passing GNR (Portuguese Police) we sheepishly stayed in the van until the majority of beach-goers had left for the evening, before venturing out onto the beach with Marley.
It was well worth it, having this massive sandy expanse all to ourselves, bar a couple of other late surfers. Marley was in his element. We stayed to watch the sun-set over the Atlantic before bedding down. A nice end to an interesting and varied day.
