We continued our tour to the town of Sintra, Portugal. The bus driver dropped us off in the town centre. We were given sometime for lunch n to explore this quaint little town on our own.
Clustered around a very steep street , there were many restaurants.
Our tour guide gave us a lot of interesting stories and she highly recommended Piriquita, a very old fashioned pastry café. We were supposed to have a coffee break but all the pastries looked so sumptuous that we decided to indulge ourselves and haD a dessert lunch instead.
The highlight of our lunch was the delicious pastries offered by Piriquita Bakery Cafe on that nerrow steep street. We sampled the famous Portuguese pastry, Pastel de Nata, also known as Portuguese custard tart and some other ones.
After lunch, we went back to the tour bus and it climbed uphill for 15 minutes until it reached a large brightly coloured palace, Palace of Pena.
There are a few palaces in Sintra. "The Palace of Pena was like a sacred gem that crowns the hills of Sintra". Pena Palace is a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1995. It was a 16th century monastery. It was acquired, renovated and later with buildings added by King Ferdinand II, one of the most cultured men of the 19th cenutry, also known as the King Artist.
We toured the palace and saw many beautiful furnished rooms durng that period. Walking through these regal rooms, we felt as if we had gone through a time tunnel.
It was raining quite a bit therefore we couldn't enjoy the nice patio on top of the castle but we did enjoy some refreshments in the dining room.
It was an educational and informative one day tour and we enjoyed it tremendously. Highly recommend it to visitors to Lisbon!
RT, Sintra, Portugal
03032024
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