{"id":1043,"date":"2022-09-05T23:20:00","date_gmt":"2022-09-05T23:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transitorythoughts.com\/travel\/?p=1043"},"modified":"2022-10-02T13:40:12","modified_gmt":"2022-10-02T13:40:12","slug":"sep-5-sintra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transitorythoughts.com\/travel\/2022\/09\/05\/sep-5-sintra\/","title":{"rendered":"Sep 5 Sintra"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We took the train to Sintra from the Entrecampos station in Lisbon. The hour trip seemed fast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At Sintra, we bought the hop-on-hop-off ticket for the public bus which was waiting at the train station. The bus went thru town then up a switchback road through the forest to the Moorish castle. The 10th to 12th century walls and turrets overlook the valley directly above the village.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Since we had been planning a caf\u00e9 stop instead of hopping onto the tourist bus, we went right to the outdoor cafeteria at the castle and shared a large tuna sandwich on a long roll, a chocolate muffin and some drinks. A couple from California invited us to share their table since none were empty. We chatted about the park and moving plans. They’d also thought about moving and knew others who were, but they were more interested in a house overseas for splitting their time. Also, they’d gone to the Pena Palace earlier, but thought the continual lines and crowding made it a miserable experience.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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After lunch, we walked the ramparts and took photos. There were dramatic views and steep stone steps. It was busy but not horribly crowded. We took turns with others at the best photo spots. From the castle we could see the Pena Palace on a neighboring peak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We hopped back onto the bus to the Pena Palace and gardens. The gardens of tree ferns, hidden pools, and winding paths, were almost like a tamed Costa Rican jungle. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A sign said the pools were built to enhance the humidity to benefit the ferns. We got lost on the twisting paths and found our way out with help from Google, heading down to the Val de Lagos, small manmade ponds full of koi. We hopped back on the bus, circled back by the Pena entrance again, and got back to the Sintra village.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We had some really excellent sandwiches at a restaurant, Caf\u00e9 Paris, in the square in front of the National Palace. Pam had roast beef, seared but nearly raw, with anchovies and capers sauce. David had chicken with avocado spread. Very fresh and tasty, way above the typical ham and cheese at most caf\u00e9s. At first, we were going to order dinner, but it’s easy to forget that restaurants don’t serve dinner until after 7pm at the earliest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We walked back to the train before sunset and enjoyed the ride. We realized the train to Oriente station would be better than Rossio for getting back to our apartment — we could walk from Entrecampos. So we got off mid-journey and waited 15 minutes in the station to switch to the Oriente train. There was a Lidl grocery store in the station, so we bought a few breakfast items before heading back to our apartment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We took the train to Sintra from the Entrecampos station in Lisbon. The hour trip seemed fast. At Sintra, we bought the hop-on-hop-off ticket for the public bus which was waiting at the train station. … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1190,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lisboasep2022","latest_post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transitorythoughts.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transitorythoughts.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transitorythoughts.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transitorythoughts.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transitorythoughts.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1043"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.transitorythoughts.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1043\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1236,"href":"https:\/\/www.transitorythoughts.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1043\/revisions\/1236"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transitorythoughts.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transitorythoughts.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transitorythoughts.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transitorythoughts.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}