Here’s the last installment of the Portugal series. After spending time in Lisbon and the Algarves, we spent our last day visiting Sintra and the Pena palace. Gorgeous place, and the perfect way to spend our the last moments in Portugal. I’ll let the photos do most of the talking.

We got up early in the morning and after some confusion, found the train station and got on the train to Sintra, which is about a 30 minute trip from Lisbon. After some major kerfuffles getting off the train (our tickets for the train are supposed to scan and let us leave the train – ours didn’t work and we had to pry open the turnstile door), we got on a bus that brings you waaaaay up the mountain to Pena palace. We took 10,000,000 photos of this fairytale castle:

We had a quick lunch at the palace after spending hours exploring and taking photos of the castle and the views it offered. I had a sausage roll, cod pie and coffee – perfect!

After leaving the castle, we went on a short hike out to a lookout that’s supposed to offer amazing views of Pena from afar. The hike itself had lots of pretty things along the way.

And the lookout was indeed an amazing view!

We took the bus back down, and bought a lot of queijadas, which is a Sintra-specific dessert. Awesome pastries, I brought a whole bunch home.

The rest of the time we spent exploring the village.

And had our last dinner in Portugal there, our last bites of the black pig pork that we had fallen in love with.

And thus concludes a trip to Portugal! Beautiful country with so so so much good food.

Here’s the other posts:

Portugal, Part 1 (Algarve)

Portugal, Part 2 (Algarve)

Portugal, Part 3 (Lisbon)

Along with the Algarve (Parts 1 and 2), we spent several days in Lisbon (including a daytrip to Sintra). I preferred Lisbon to the Algarve area – even though the beaches along the shore were amazing, there’s just something appealing about a bustling, pretty European city. The views from our hotel room was pretty nice!

When we first landed, we had the entire afternoon and evening to explore the area around the hotel, which was pretty much as central as one could get in Lisbon. Right outside of the hotel was a small pedestrian cobblestone street that led right into Rossio Square, which was surrounded by churches, bakeries and little restaurants with as much cod as one person could eat in all the windows.

Along with sampling some of the cheeses and the fish, we tried the ginjinha, a cherry liquour that was definitely quite potent. I thoroughly enjoyed the cod balls!

Between all the snacking, we wandered around and checked out the touristy sites/sights that were close by.

São Domingos Church:

The amazing Carmo convent, a gothic church in ruins:

Our first dinner in Portugal was at the renowned Bon Jardim, apparently one of the best places to go for piri piri chicken. It took us a while to find the restaurant, and we had to traverse a gauntlet of unrelenting restaurant greeters trying to pull us into their restaurants, but we made it there and enjoyed some fine piri piri chicken and red wine. The wine was cheap and so good. The piri piri sauce comes in a separate klittle jar that you briush on your chicken yourself – and it was SPICY! Very delicouys though!

We sleepily walked back to the hotel as the sun set and explored the rooftop bar for a bit before falling straight to sleep.