Aug 2011
[Day154] Sintra Excursion
Oh, before I noticed the gap between this travelogue and the actual travel date has became more than 1 year. Well, although I need to tackle it with the accuracy of my memory, I'll keep up writing this blog at my own pace.
This time I'm going to write about the story of when I went to Sintra, a small town next to Lisbon. Sintra is famous for being located on the Western edge of the Eurasian continent and also has some old palaces build in the monarchic era. As the access to the town was not really convenient, I had to consider about the transportation but luckily my accommodation, travellers house, was carrying a budget bus tour around the area and I decided to hop on.
On the previous posts, I wrote some about my personal anti excursion tour policy. I prefer keeping my own pace to being dragged by guides and that's why I chose backpacking. However, this tour to Sintra was hosted by Traveller's House that is world's no1 hostel ranked at hostelworld.com and knows very well about the preferences of backpackers. Their basic style was that a merry driver just took us to the attractions and let us walk around the each area freely. On the bus, we listened to Portuguese history from the driver told and talked made chitchat with the fellow passengers. It was so relaxing that I became thinking of these kinds of "take-it-easy" trips are not that bad even though I like a sort of a hard core backpacking like toiling away on the unfamiliar roads yet laughing away the troubles.
The tour first arrived at Pena National Palace which is the foremost tourist attraction of Sintra. Unfortunately, it was prohibited to take photographs of its interiors, but shooting the brightly coloured exterior which is a mixture of multi construction manners was fun enough. I was wondering how come they decorated the walls with such a flashy style.
The next one was a famous castle too(sorry I forgot the name of it). It was like a little adventure to walk around the green garden with streams as there was a well down to the underground plus underground passages to the streams. Although the size of the building itself was smaller than the Pena Palace, I fully enjoyed walking on this castle and the area.
Cabo da Roca (Cape Roka) the westernmost cape of the Eurasia is the place I really wanted to come on this excursion. Having departed from the far east 6 months ago, I finally arrived at the western edge and observing to the even west, there should be the America continent over the ocean. Thinking of the journey afterwards, I was so exhilarated. Ideally, it would've been great if we could watch the sunset from here but it was the point I had give in due to the tour. Maybe for the next time in the future.
I stayed in Lisbon for 7 days in total and time went by so quickly as usual. From here, I was going to travel around Europe by train for 100 days. I'll write not about travelogues but general information about trains in Europe.
