vampyresheep

Our last day! After another lovely breakfast we checked out and they were happy to hold our luggage until we left for our flight that afternoon. We set out early because we had two palaces to visit!

The full gallery of pics for this final day can be seen here

Sunday, we set off early, saying goodbye to our lovely hotel and a sleepy Bairro Alto, to Rossio station for our train to Sintra.

All the photos for this day can be seen here

Friday

The full gallery link is here: pics!

Back in work, with blisters upon blisters, aching calves and incredibly sleep deprived after flight delay meant we didn’t get home until 1.30 this morning.  It was a rather fantastic long, long weekend in Lisbon.  A full trip report will follow, with photos of course – probably not going to upload the full albums to Facebook, so I hope people spend a few moments/mouse clicks to read my blog posts instead.

I’ve never been to Portugal before – the image of resorts on the Algarve was not somewhere top on my radar for holiday.  But after seeing friend’s post about Lisbon and Sintra, my interest was piqued.  We were not disappointed.

I’m not sure what I am going to miss more; the city of Lisbon itself, an adorably shabby sprawling mass of a place enhanced by surprise panoramic vistas; the incredible food (seriously, we did not have a bad meal even in the most touristy of places and Portuguese is now at the top of my list of preferred cuisine!); the touting of cheap but delicious booze on every corner; the touting of cheap but delicious pastries on every corner;  or the much needed winter sunshine. 20c for 5 days out of 6 was just blissful.

The second half of our stay was in nearby Sintra.  This was a more classically picturesque place, an Italianate village located in the hills and surrounded by higher hills topped with palaces. This part of the stay managed to somehow be more physically exhausting but mentally relaxing at the same time.  We walked miles and saw many beautiful things.

Overall however, our hearts were left in Lisbon.  Sintra, beautiful as it is, was for me one of those places where once you’ve ticked off all the attractions there was little else to be there for but Lisbon I felt we’d only scraped the surface.  The downsides, which in some way also form part of the positives, was all the damn hills and stairs, along with the dilemma of whether you wanted to do all the things or just find a pleasant place to sit with a beer watching the world go by – either way you felt you were missing out on the other.

I hope to return.