This morning was an easy start – we weren’t running on a schedule so had a time for a nice relaxed breakfast and some internetting. At around 9.45am we headed off to the train station to do our own little day trip to Sintra, a coastal touristy town just 40 minutes out of the city. There was an amusing moment when I was on the train and Andy almost got left behind, oops. The train ride was relaxing until about half way through when a whole class of little children clambered on board – then it was just amusing watching them play various hand clapping games.
At Sintra we jumped off the train and onto the tourist shuttle bus (our whole trip out here involved pretty much no waiting for transport at all). First stop, an old Moorish castle up on a hill with a view of the whole town. The castle was very pretty, sort of rambling across the hill top. We climbed all around the walls in the gale force winds that were blowing, past a lot of archaeological digs and renovations. Lots of exercise for us!
Next we headed up to the Palace, even higher on the hill. It was beautiful here, probably my favourite place in Portugal so far. The palace itself was a mix of red, yellow and blue tiles, with quirky architecture and a random assortment of shrubs and flowers. The inside of the rooms were also very interesting, with decorated vaulted ceilings and funky chandeliers. I enjoyed walking around here very much, particularly when the sun came out. We stopped quickly for a random assortment of foods for lunch, sausage rolls, almonds and a giant chocolate muffin, coupled with espresso shots and peach juice.
At around 1pm we jumped back on the tourist bus and onto the train again. Once back in Lisbon the sun was out in full force and we strolled back along the main shopping strip to the water, stopping to look in at a few sales on the way (the usual suspects, H&M, Zara, Bershka…). Andy bought a t-shirt, I bought nothing :( As I wrote yesterday, Lisbon is the perfect city just to walk around and I enjoyed doing this very much. Eventually, back to the hotel for what is becoming our routine siesta – Andy is sick and I’ve got a sore throat coming on so we were keen to get some rest before the evening.
At 4.30pm we started ‘The Gourmet Walk’ by Inside Lisbon tours with Paulo as our guide – I want to write the specific tour name because I cannot rave enough about how much I enjoyed this. The tour was meant to go for three hours, it ended up going for five (for 25 euro, food included) and within that time I went from thinking Lisbon is a nice city to thinking Lisbon is amazing. It was a completely unique experience, learning about the history and culture of a city through it’s food. And the food – we didn’t eat anything that wasn’t incredible. It started with shots of cherry and cinnamon liqueur, moved to port wine with cheese and marmalade, then the famous Portuguese tarts with espresso, beer, beans, cod cakes, peri peri Pork, cod fish salad, flambéed chorizo, red wine…. so good! The guide certainly knew his stuff, we were hanging off his every word and I’ve added lots of little quirky facts to my knowledge base. We were happy to be leaving tomorrow but now we just want to stay an extra week to eat at all the amazing little places he showed us. Certainly reason to come back again.
At around 9.30pm we were back at the hostel. We were considering going out again to check out some of the places the Gourmet guide recommended… some of the others in our tour group were going out to bars too. However, my throat was now on fire and Andy still wasn’t 100% so we decided to call it a night. Overall, today was unexpectedly amazing – I have enjoyed this city much more than I thought I would!!