4-18-09

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Happy birthday Laura!!! Even though I couldn’t call her to talk on her actual birthday, at least I was in Portugal, one of her favorite places :) We woke up and there were two French people staying in our room but they were already down at breakfast. When we got there this sweet little lady asked, “pancakes or scrambled eggs with toast?” We also had cereal, orange juice, and ColaCao Turns out the pancakes were actually crepes served with nutella and everything was delicious! I think between the four of us we used a half bottle of honey.. whoops. Then we got ready and went to the train station that was gorgeous and right by our hostel. We hopped on the train/metro to Sintra which was super cheap, like €3.40 ida y vuelta for a 45 minute trip. When we got there we got on a touristy city bus that took us up to the castle first. I was sitting backwards which was absolutely sickening. Good thing the destination made it worth the trip! It was so lush and green with HUGE rocks. We hiked all around up and down the castle walls and took tons of pictures. Through the mist you could see the flags, the red tile roofs, and the other main sites of Sintra.
We were waiting for the bus and for one tiny second we heard nothing. It was my first encounter with silence since January and it was glorious! Then the birds started chirping, the wind rustled the leaves, and there was some water trickling down the mountain, but it was still wonderful. The bus zoomed up and this crazy man almost left without Taylor and Steph because they didn’t have their tickets out! We got off this ridiculous ride at the city center where we wandered around a little bit. I wanted some posters so we stopped in the tourism office and each of us got 5 awesome posters of Sintra! We went to a cute little restaurant so Taylor and Whitney could have some lunch and we watched guests arrive for what we assumed to be a wedding.
After that we walked to the Quinta de Regaleira aka the enchanted forest. Our first stop in this crazy place was the mansion, built around 1900. It was beautiful but the top floor was really scary! In the library room there was glass and a step down so I of course freaked out and thought I was going to fall. There was a creepy door, dark rooms, and all kinds of weird stuff so we got out of there and headed toward the chapel. It was tiny! Underneath there was a secret passageway that Stephanie and Taylor explored but didn’t make it all the way to the house (where we assume it eventually leads) because they heard some weird noises and zipped back up. The place was full of wells, fountains, tunnels, and all kinds of outrageous things. There was an alley of Roman Gods and even some broken glass cases that used to be fish tanks in some sort of zoo. We just wandered around exploring the place taking lots of pictures and being silly. There were huge green trees, castle lookouts, and the mist just added to the mysteriousness of the whole place. I really can’t explain it or give it justice with the pictures but this was one peculiar quinta!
On our way back to the train we ate at Pizza Hut and it was so worth it! I tried to take it easy with my stomach and all so I only had two pieces but I would’ve liked an entire pizza. We had a good time making fun of the group of Americans that were there in miniskirts and we even spotted a shiny J-Lo style jumpsuit.. out of control. They got some dessert that I also would’ve liked to indulge in, being as it was a fudge-filled chocolate cake topped with ice cream, but I resisted.
So we finally got back on the train after a long but awesome day in Sintra. I really think you could spend at least two whole days there. We took showers then hung out with Marco and Daniel, the two guys working at the hostel. They were really funny and interesting.. They set up the Wii on this huge projector screen and we played a few games before I called it a night.