I had a choice between visiting the town of Cascais or Sintra, and Sintra sounded a bit better. The train took about 45 minutes to get to the end of the line, I was a bit worried that the tourist cards hadn't worked when touching on, but they worked at the other end so I wasn't trapped on the platform (another 4.30 euros saved).
Sintra is quite a small village, geared towards the high number of visitors and tourists they get during the year. We walked through the city centre and past the National Palace before reaching the big road up hill. According to my watch it took 45 minutes to walk 4 kilometres with 300 metres elevation. Not only was there lots of cars heading up the mountain to watch out for, bus lots of tour buses too, and even worse where the crazy cyclists racing down it.
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| Sintra. |
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| National Palace. |
At least we got to the Palacio Pena, 12.60 euros for entry (saving a modest 1.40 each). The line to buy tickets took forever, mostly because there was all kinds of combinations tickets and add-ons that had to be explained to every customer, so that wasted a good twenty minutes.
The palace grounds and gardens could have occupied a half day on their own, but we headed straight up to the palace like just about everyone else. The palace was painted all kinds of fun colors like blue, red and yellow and had some interesting shapes and wall decorations too.
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| Palacio Pena. |
I started with a trip around the outside of the palace, which had some great views of the palace grounds, the Castelo dos Mouros walls constructed on another mountain, and the town of Sintra much further below. Being on top of the mountain it was incredibly windy close to the edge. Next we proceeded inside which quickly came to a halt as there was only a single line to move throughout the rooms in a single direction. There was the usual combination of slow people and those who use flash photography even when it clearly says not to. Along the route there was endless rooms full of old furniture, but strangely a lot of the ceilings were just painted imitations, no longer the original art work.
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| Outside Palacio Pena. |
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| Still outside Palacio Pena. |
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| Inside Palacio Pena. |
Outside in the gardens I tried to climb up to where a warrior statue had been placed on the top of some rock formation, but it seemed a little bit treacherous to try and get up (and back down again) so I gave up on that idea. So the trip to the palace lasted close to two hours, without about a 45 minute walk in each direction as well - you can take a bus if you're feeling lazy too.
After getting the train back to Lisbon we stopped for lunch back at Rossio Square again, I was amazed by the number of tuk tuks and similar unsafe road vehicles doing endless laps around the city looking for passengers.
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| The famed Tram 28. |
I took the underground from Martim Moniz to Oriente on the east coast, a surprisingly massive, open air station next to a similarly designed Vasco de Gama shopping centre. From my limited research much of this are was built for expo 1998, proof that expo's after a complete waste of time (excluding Knoxville). The area included:
- Vasco da Gama shopping centre
- A sports store where I found an FC Porto away shirt, but it was 80 euros
- A lottery store was selling tickets for Portugal vs France for September 4 - just missed out
- MEO Arena - some dome
- Oceanario de Lisboa - some aquarium
- Vasco da Gama bridge - this crazy 17.3 kilometre bridge
- Vasco da Gama tower - they should just called this place Da Gama land
- Telecabine Lisbon cable cars
- I got a one way ticket down to the other end of the coast
- Parque das Nacoes - a small park where the cable cars end
- Pavilhao do Conhecimento - some science museum for kids
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| Oriente station. |
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| Vasco da Gama centre. |
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| Not sure if I love it or hate it. |
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| Vasco da Gama tower. |
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| The cable cars. |
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| Onboard the cable cars. |
There was meant to be lots of street art around too according to the map, but somehow I missed or didn't notice nearly all of them.
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| This is art. |
Back into the city again to end the day, I finally got a chance to stop at Parque Eduardo VII, which overlooks the whole city. To finish the set I also stopped in at Estadio da Luz, Benfica's football stadium.
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| Parque Eduardo VII. |
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| Estadio da Luz. |
- Lisbon
- Tourist Rating - 9 out of 10
- Good
- Different pastries
- No charge for toilets (also stupidly known as WC for water closets)
- Sunshine every day
- Underground metro
- Bad
- More tourists and queues
- No traffic lights at the far side of the intersection
- Pedestrians can't see green/red lights or arrows
- Not many supermarkets
- Tram service not so reliable
- Missed Out
- Cascais
- Electricity museum (and Water museum, thankfully not in the same location)
- Freeport outlets
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