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Published: August 26th 2016
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Lisbon – August 23, 2016 – Last Day
Today Harlan and I decided to take the train to Sintra to do some sightseeing while Karen visited the Museu Nacional do Azulejo (museum of Portuguese tiles). While we were on the train I took a couple of pictures of what I thought was pretty neat graffiti. We arrived in Sintra around 9:45 am as did many other people ready for a fun day of sightseeing. Upon departing the train, we walked up the hill past the Municipal building along with the National Palace which is the oldest surviving royal palace in Portugal that is still used for official receptions. We did not tour the National Palace as we were more interested in getting to the Palace of Pena and Moorish Castle. After passing the National Palace we came across some pretty unique statues. When we finally reached the center of town we caught a bus that took us to the top of the Sintra hills where we toured the Pena Palace along with walking through the park. One of the areas we walked to in the park was up to the High Cross which stands at the highest point
in the Sintra Hills some 528m above sea level.
Our next stop was a short walk down the hill to the Moorish Castle which was once the site of a military fortification and quite interesting. After having climbed up and down for who knows how many steps we decided we would grabbed some lunch at the little café there. We ended up sharing a table with a couple from Washington, DC who had traveled to Portugal for a friend’s wedding and were now traveling around Portugal touring various placed before they had to fly home on Friday.
After having a good lunch, we decided we had better do something to burn some of it off so we hiked the trail from the Moorish Castle down to the city. Once back to the city we caught the train back to Lisbon hopping off at the Rossio train station. From here we made our way over to the ferry station so we could take the ferry across the Rio Tijo to Cacilhasso to see the Cristo Rei (Christ of Majesty). Once we arrived in Cacilhas we walked and we walked and we walked until we finally got to the 330-foot
concrete Cristo Rei statute. After taking some pictures of the statue we then went inside and took the elevator up to the base of the statute where we got some good pictures of Lisbon and the surrounding area.
As it’s now time for us to head back to the ferry station, we had three options to choose from on how to accomplish this – walk, catch the bus or take a tuk-tuk. We decided we definitely didn’t want to walk, didn’t know how much longer it would be before the bus arrived so we opted for the tuk-tuk which was fun and had a great time talking with the lady driving the vehicle.
After the ferry dropped us off in Lisbon, we proceeded to stop by our favorite little restaurant and picked up another rotisserie chicken along with salad and wine for dinner since it was late and we needed to get things organized to start our first official day on the Portugues El Camino in the morning.
Have had a great time touring Lisbon and know there is a lot more to see that we just did not have time to do!
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