Well, it is our last day here to see things. We hadn't really planned on a big day, but it turned out that way.
We had to drive over that bridge again, and it wasn't as bad as yesterday, but still crazy. Our Pousada today is an 18th century palace, located across from the Portuguese "Versailles".
Our choice of sightseeing today was Sintra- but first we took a little side trip to a little quilt shop in Oeiros. I follow their blog online and wanted to see if I could get something Portuguese to take home. The shop is little but full! The owner was great and I enjoyed looking around- but they only carry American fabric, as many of the Portuguese textile mills are no longer in production- and the ones that are, don't product quilt-quality fabric. It was fun to go there anyway!
Sintra. Wow. Turned out to be a pretty exciting day! We tried to find this palace but the GPS just couldn't. We ended up parking in the old part of town, having lunch, and walking around the quaint shops and homes. Then we took an open-air bus ride to see the town. It was then we found out that we could take a city bus up to not only the palace we had been looking for, but a Moorish castle too! You can walk up- but it is a 90 minute walk and it was dreadfully hot and humid.
The Moorish castle was probably the highest up we climbed on our whole trip. Just amazing. You could see for miles in every direction.
The palace is pretty amazing too, but in a different way. It is huge, garish, and way too full of outlandishly expensive and over-the-top pieces of everything you could possibly imagine. It was something to see for sure.
We had a delicious dinner at the Pousada and it was a terrific evening to end a terrific vacation.
Dear Christa, you were so close to my house, you could have come for tea and a quilty chat. I live (am just moving from) Cascais, at the foot of Sintra. I can see the palace from my house, also.... When you were on the other side of the red bridge you could have gone to Arco Iris a Metro quilt shop, Paula sells Portuguese Chita fabrics... you will have to do the trip again!! Thanks for visiting my blog, I'll be back posting soon!
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