July 13. Sintra

Today we had our morning coffee and early desert at Starbucks Rossio and then went to Sintra. We saw Castle of the Moors and Pena National Palace. Castle of the Moors area is pretty old – there was an 1000 year old church on its territory that one of Spain’s rulers who built Pena Summer palace had helped to turn into “romantic ruins.” What’s left of the Moors Castle is predominantly lots of stairs and protective walls with one scenic view upon another. There is massive amount of work under way to rebuild it. Georgia did a great job walking all day. Isabella had to be carried around the castle – maybe she is afraid of heights. Some places were scary – the barriers are very low in some places and the drop is substantial.

There was a funny moment. As we were leaving, we were playing a make believe game with Isabella to get her to keep up with Georgia. Isabella imagined that she “caught, fried, spiced, and ate Georgia.”  Near the exit Isabella finally caught up with Georgia. She lurched on Georgia but missed, and landed in some dust on the ground. Isabella did not get hurt but got very upset. So she screamed her heart out. There were some fine acoustics where we were. The guard actually thought there was a major problem going on, came over and wanted to help.



Pena Palace



We visited Pena in April. Pena is the local Disneyland. The builders had lumped one style upon the other in the fantastic combination of colors, structures, visuals. You probably can’t do too many historical movies on site because you won’t get a straight shot in one style. This time we saw the beautiful stained glass inside the chapel that we missed last time. All the colors were fresh like they’ve used synthetic dyes. It is about 200 years old. Too bad we could not take a picture of this. It probably would not do it justice.

This time around we decided skip the inside of the Palace. Most of décor there is not terrifically interesting. It looks like they had to fill their summer home with anything in so they’ve raided their storage and unloaded all the cheap travel souvenirs and knick knacks on the royal scale. Then again there was no Home Design magazine back then. Probably all those things meant something to them. And I am not an expert on antiques.

As we walked to the train station we stopped by in one of the parks with statues of fantastic animals. Kids enjoyed climbing these. There was also a little Japanese pavilion. I liked the walkway there – the tile bits were placed diagonally and looked like the tail of the snake. The inside had all the necessary elements – bonsai trees, little brook, bridge.. but it was littered with old leaves and bonsai trees stood on ugly cement cubes. That could be done better.

View of Moors Castle from Pena

After we got home we worked and then went to Cafe No Chiado downstairs. It is maintained by the National Centre de Culture. Most of the audience seems young family+ and probably people from the theater circuit and their friends. The food is terrific. Lots of interesting dishes.

During our evening walk we listened through a few opera, chorus, and orchestra numbers at the open air theater that has been set up next door at our arrival. All the seats were full. And it was 9:30pm. Some of the musicians were dressed in tuxedos, others, including the conductor, wore t-shirts. At one point the music rapidly ended and musician got up and started leaving. Turns out they were practicing for their real performance at 10pm.

We went up to St. Lucia viewpoint and looked at the city. It would seem that we visited all the main highpoints around us and there is not much more to see. We took the stairs down to Alfama and somehow wandered into the inner courtyard between the buildings. There were some older ladies chatting on their balconies. In the middle there was a booth with a ceramic painting studio. The artist sat inside drawing on some tiles. She had some blues recording playing. The whole backyard lit up only by the ceramic shop and reflections of her tiled work outside her studio on the ground and walls outside and the music felt surreal.

We kept wandering around. Most of the streets were dark sleeping. It is a complete maze of streets and stairs. We went up and down and across the narrow passages. Occasionally we would hear the sounds of Fado and would come into pocket of light and sound and activity. Dark eyed Portuguese beauties of the middle age in black dresses. There was a memorable image in one of those oasises: old Portuguese man, short, withered , smiling, very tipsy, trying to put a cigarette in his mouth. His wife sitting on a chair behind him swapped in black shawl, also smiling and looking very happy.