Wednesday, May 6- train ride from Lisbon to Sintra, 35 minutes. Sunny day once again so Rémi and I are wearing shorts. We get up around 7:15, Rémi earlier as usual and Ron a bit later as usual. We shower, have breakfast and are on the road by 8:35 and at the train station by 9:00. The next train leaves at 9:06 and the lady in front of us is taking a long time. Finally our turn, we get the tickets and hussle to get on. We were not the last ones, but pretty close. It took about 35 minutes to get there. We walk out and decide to walk in a direction. Turns out it was the direction of the tourism office and the castle. We see the Sintra right in front of us but decide to do the uphill climb and visit the Moors castle dating back to the 11-12th centuries.

View from downtown Sintra.

Rémi walking around the interior walls.

Ron in one of the arches.

One of the many towers.

Rèmi and I sat out this climb, but Ron went up to take pictures and catch the views.

The scenery from the castle was amazing. Very cool town as there are many castle like homes (smaller versions of course).

I think this was a church seen from the castle above. 

This palace was a 550m climb above the castle. It is called Palacia de Pena. As you can see it was multicoloured and very interesting. 

The yellow view of the Palace. 

A different view. 

We were walking the walls surrounding the palace and Rémi was in the courtyard below. 

Stained glass in the chapel. Very beautiful. 

The palace is still full of furniture mostly fron the 18-19th centuries. 

This doesn't show the real  size of this thing. We could crush mint leaves for a year in one shot.

Half of the kitchen with it's copper pots and pans.

We missed the real path down and had a bit of a challenge managing broken tree branches, mud and narrow, steep hills. 

Lots of statues around town.

Another example. 

These cops are ready to take to the hills. 

The Sintra palace. We had lunch once we came down the hill and went for our last visit. Well by mid-afternoon all of the bus tours have arrived and we always seemed to be behind a large group. It wasn't very pleasant  and I think we were tired out. Here are a few pictures from the Sintra palace.

Don't they look like royalty? Where are the tea and crumpets? Oops, that's England. Here it's cappuccino and Nata.(the local pastry. It was in a blog a few days ago).

The ceilings are always very unique.

Another ceiling. 

Tiled murals were in found in a lot of different rooms. 

Tomorrow is our last full day in Lisbon. We decided to stay put rather than do another day trip which we originally thought of doing. Rémi will visit the museum of modern art and Ron and I will visit the aquarium, one of the largest in the world. They have habitats that are very close to the real ecosystem of the fish, mammals, etc. should be interesting.