5/28: day 2 (pre-trip)

Today was the second full day of our pre-trip, or more accurately, the first day that we were operating without a serious sleep deficit. The day was dedicated to a took a day trip to Sintra. Mike arranged this with Explore Lisbon and we met the guide (Joao) and a mini-bus after a 10-minute walk from our hotel. I brought the laptop because I was able to keep up with the day's blog while riding in the mini-bus.

The attraction in Sintra is the Park and Palace of Pena that is now a UNESCO heritage site.  We arrived at 10:00am and it was a good thing because we waited about 15 minutes to get in even though the tour had pre-purchased tickets for us (14 euro) and once we got in, we followed a line of tourists along a single route through the interior. As we left, the lines to get in were probably over an hour long. What took us over an hour for the entire tour, it could easily have been a half-day excursion for people arriving when we were leaving.

There’s a free shuttle that takes tourists from the entrance up to the palace. Here is a picture of the shuttle. Joao told us that we could get a true Portuguese experience by taking the shuttle bus: sardines in a can.

We walked up the hill instead and saw some interesting things along the way.

Here's our tour guide Joao playing botanist.

One of the interesting things about the grounds of the palace is that many of the gardens are planted with exotic (non-native) species. Here’s a picture of one of the areas that contained New World plants and what you’re seeing are sequoia.  Another area had species from China.

Neither Walter nor I can remember what this one is. If someone else remembers, add it to the comments!

As we walked up the cobbled roadway, the palace came into view. Because of the fog, it was quite dramatic.

Looks a little like Monty Python and the Holy Grail?

The exterior of the palace was really interesting.  Because the Portuguese were explorers (i.e, oppressors of indigenous cultures),

they brought back ideas from many other countries. (There was a room in the castle that was covered with these tiles.)

The appearance of Moorish culture is evident in many of the exterior structures of this palace.

The multiple colors and multiple architechtural styles reminded me of Segrada Familia by Gaudi in Barcelona.

The weather was misty and windy. It made taking pictures of the scenery from the vantage point of the palace pointless. The view from the castle might have been quite nice but we'll never know. Here's a picture of the fog at the top. The young man behind Walter is Jared, a young man from California who is a graphic designer for a software company.

The interior was actually much less interesting than the exterior although it might have been due to the fact that we could not move at our own pace. Everyone moved at pretty much the same speed which meant it was too slow most of the time.

At one point, Stu jumped the line and he was on the balcony on the other side of the courtyard.

It is clear that Portugal has not quite solved the problem of its own success as a tourist destination.  The day was spent in lines and fighting crowds. The narrow country roads could barely handle two-way traffic and parking was a nightmare. We really appreciated not having to do this ourselves.

Here’s a picture from the village.

Despite creating a turn-out for busses, vehicles often had to double-park to let passengers get on and off.

Our next stop was at Cabo da Roca, the western-most spot in continental Europe. Here is the monument marking the spot.

But the scenery was the main attraction. It’s hard to get a sense of the magnitude of the drop-off from where we were standing at the top of the cliffs to the ocean below but here’s a try.

I wish I had the telephoto lens for these shots.

The dangerous areas were roped off and clearly marked. Still, some people insist on tempting fate.

Our final stop was in Cascais, a seaside village that is considered a suburb of Lisbon, about 45 minutes away. It is a modern town and there is some money here so this combination of factors makes much less charming. We walked through the area where the shops are located and it started raining so we found a restaurant where we sat it out over drinks. Our tour guide pointed out that the weather was not usually like this. That became the joke of the day.

On the way, we saw some municipal workers re-setting some of the stones that make up the sidewalks. It is manual labor in every sense of the word. Here are a couple of pictures of them, smoothing out the surface, chipping the stones to create the correct shape, setting them into the subsurface and tapping them into place. It didn’t look like they used any materials to keep the stones in place other than good fit and gravity.

Here is what the final product looks like.