Sintra

There is a small town west of Lisbon near the Atlantic coast that is filled with castles that were built at varying times over the last 1,000 years.

About a 45 minute train ride from Lisbon’s main train station, Rossio, it’s a fairytale town that is known for the confectionary castles at the top of a mountain.

We had full intentions of seeing four castles today but were stymied by the sheer difficulty of getting there and moving around between the castles.

To get the primary tourist site, the Pena Palace, you must take the train from Lisbon, queue up upon arrival for a public bus that makes the castle circuit, be driven on a very curvey road that climbs the mountain up to the palace entry, then switch to a smaller bus that carries you up the final 1/2 mile to the summit. At that point you queue up by time to enter the palace. Time is pre-determined when you buy your tickets and it is just a 30 minute window.

Once inside it turns into a mini-Versailles experience where long lines of people shuffle through room after room of period furniture that one king/queen or another used when they stayed there. We weren’t fans.

However the views were fantastic and honestly the Pena Palace is very photogenic. But it’s so overcome with tourists (in the shoulder season!) that we had to scramble out in a hurry.

That meant reversing our steps. Small bus at top down to public bus stop where we sat in the mad chaos of everyone trying to go somewhere. So we grabbed a cab to take us to the only other castle we decided we wanted to see, the Quinta da Regaleira.

The most interesting sight to see at this castle was the Initiation Well.

It contains a 27 meter spiral staircase with several small landings. The spacing of these landings, combined with the number of steps in the stairs, are linked to Tarot mysticism. Other references may be to Knights Templar rituals.

We called it “The Pit of Despair” for obvious reasons.

We returned to Lisbon after this because, well, after you’ve been in the pit of despair what else is there to see?