We headed to the Rossio train station to catch a train to Sintra approximately a 40 min train journey. We went to the metro station only to learn that the Sintra train goes from the main station across the square & that we’d walked straight past the station (it was covered in scaffolding & wasn’t clearly signed). We joined a queue to purchase tickets & watched the minutes ticking by, we ran & just caught the train (they run 1/2 hourly). The train was really busy, we initially had buskers in our carriage who weren’t really good but they moved on after going around the carriage collecting tips. We were initially standing but luckily a couple exited the train & we grabbed their seats. The couple sat opposite us were from Brazil, the man was trying to chat but didn’t speak English & his google translate didn’t seem to be working on the train. We arrived & exited the train with a couple of hundred other people!! We decided not to queue for the 434 bus, but to walk. We stopped for coffee & a piece of Trevesseiros de Sintra, a pastry unique to Sintra filled with an almond cream, it was quite nice. We decided to walk up to the Castelo dos Mouros, it was a winding & at times a steep path with quite a lot of steps but gave us a lovely view of Sintra towards the sea. It was a lovely walk & took us about an hour to climb to the castle walls, we decided not to pay to go into the castle as there didn’t seem to be much left & so we headed back down a different way. Their were lots of tuk tuk drivers who were trying to get us to hire them, one even offered us a free ride down, this driver passed us when we were almost at the bottom & called out hello I see you again, he’d made a complete circuit!!
Sintra was lovely & reminded us of Portmeirion. We had a lovely wander around & then found a cafe for lunch, Garage M, we shared 1/2 of a smoked salmon bagel & prosciutto, parmesan & rocket on toast, yum.
We headed back to the station & caught a not so full train back & walked back to our apartment. We headed out for dinner to the burger restaurant at the bottom of our road (we had wanted pizza but that restaurant didn’t re-open until 7.30pm & we were really hungry) we both had a burger with Gorgonzola cheese which was quite nice & headed back up the hill to our apartment.