Situated on the pine covered hills of Serra de Sintra is the beautiful town of Sintra that is designated UNESCO World Heritage Site. Sintra is just a short train ride of 40-50 mins from Lisbon and there is literally a train every 30 mins from the Rossio station. You can easily do a day trip if you choose a few attractions based on your interest rather than visiting everything. Sintra should definitely be on your itinerary and is worth the trip, whether it is a day trip from Lisbon or a couple of days in Sintra. The train is a quicker option instead of traveling by bus. Upon reaching Sintra, there are various options to explore the town, hop-on hop-off tours, local taxi, bus rides, Uber and you can rely on walking as well. We chose to walk around and use the local taxis as Uber was a little less reliable here.
We started with making our way to The Palácio Nacional de Sintra, the medieval palace of Sintra located at the center of the town. There is an entrance fee to the palace but having seen a lot of palaces we chose to give it a pass as we could walk around and see most of the palace from the outside. The palace is surrounded by many good cafes and eateries.
Next we made our way to Quinta da Regaleira, which was featured in the Johnny Depp supernatural thriller The Ninth Gate. Be ready to walk a lot and explore the beautiful gardens, trails, walkways and the palace. A must visit spot on the property is the Poço Iniciático - The Initiation Well, where the spiral staircase will lead you to the bottom of the well where you will see the symbol of Carvalho Monteiro, the owner of the Regaleira. The bottom of the well surprisingly leads you to several underground tunnels and caves. One of these tunnels opens up to Poço Imperfeito - The Unfinished Well and another trail takes you to a waterfall. We had a great time walking, hiking and taking pictures and would highly recommend a visit to Quinta da Regaleira, specially if you are traveling with children who will have a blast at this place. There is an entrance fee to visit Quinta da Regaleira and you can buy the tickets in advance online as well.
Finally, we reached the highlight of our Sintra trip - Palácio da Pena that is situated at the highest peak of the Serra de Sintra. The beautiful, red, yellow and blue facades of this palace seem like a picture from a fairytale book. Every inch of this palace is worth exploring as Palácio da Pena is considered to be one of Europe's finest palaces. The interior of the palace was restored to its look and feel of 1910 when the Portuguese nobility fled the country. In hindsight, we should have reversed our itinerary for Sintra and visited the Palácio da Pena first followed by Quinta da Regaleira as these two palaces deserve more time for exploration to do justice to the beauty they offer.
All in all a wonderful day, spent well at this UNESCO World Heritage Site!
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