Another spectacular meal at a local restaurant. Last night it was a multi course degustation with wine matching at a Michelin starred restaurant. Extraordinary anda bit Emperors New Clothes to be honest, with a price to match. Ah well, it wasn’t as if I had any firm plans to retire anytime soon.
Today we had a very full day organised, a private day trip to Sintra for the four of us. If you, like me, have never heard of it, it’s basically a bunch of palaces built in the 19th century by men with more money than sense. Two of them went bankrupt competing with each other, and the last didn’t only because he was the King (or consort, anyway.) They reminded me of both Schloss Neuschwanstein in Germany and Hearst Castle in San Simeon. You might argue that amassing huge amounts of money is obscene when so many people are suffering in poverty (now as then), but they’ve certainly left behind some very pretty buildings.
These are the three we saw today:
The last Palace was Montserrate, which had the most extensive gardens of all and the least tourists.
It was all very pretty and we were lucky with the weather, apparently everything was closed a couple of weeks ago with local wildfires. We had lunch in the township of Sintra itself which was also very beautiful but seething with tourists and associated traffic. It must be hell for the locals.
We did around 14,000 steps in total according to our phones. Our guide was excellent, very knowledgeable, experienced, and friendly. He works very long hours and six days a week, it’s hard to know how long he’ll be able to keep it up though as he smokes a packet a day and looks to be nearing seventy.