We were up at 7:30 am and got ready for our guided tour. We had the Pasteis de Belem custard tarts from yesterday for breakfast with in-room coffee. When we went down to the lobby at 9 am, our guide Felipe (Portuguese version of Philip) was waiting.
He is an interesting guy. He worked at Accenture as an IT consultant for 9 years before starting his tourism company that is now ranked first in Portugal on the travel website TripAdvisor (the most widely used website around the world for travel reviews). He has recently opened a second business - a cooking school - since he loves cooking.
He told us about himself and the area while we drove for an hour to Sintra, a city neighboring Lisbon. We went straight to the top of the mountain to the Pena palace. It is truly a fairy tale castle and was built by the German prince Ferdinand when he became the King of Portugal through marriage. Ferdinand designed the palace himself and included in the design all things medieval and from fairy tales that he loved. There are walls and towers around the castle's various wings, there is the statue of a sea dragon protecting the entrance, there is a medieval Moorish fort that you can see in the distance and there are forest-like gardens around the palace. All this was built by Ferdinand over his lifetime in the 19th century at the location of a 16th century monastery that he bought when it was in ruins. He preserved the original structure of the monastery so the rooms of the palace are small for a royal residence although still quite grand. The palace was used by three generations of the Portuguese royal family as their summer residence since Sintra is cooler than Lisbon during summer. When the royal family's line discontinued in 1910 and Portugal became a republic, the palace was turned into a tourist attraction. It started raining as soon as we finished our tour of the palace so we boarded the hop on hop off golf cart that drove us through the gardens and showed us various landmarks. We were dropped off at the entrance where Felipe was waiting for us.
He took us to a bakery that has been run by the same family for 4 generations and is famous for their desserts so we tried two of their famous desserts on his recommendation and cappuccino. Then we stopped at a store where we tried different varieties of cheese, definitely the best we've ever had. The food in Portugal continues to amaze us with its high quality.
Our next stop was a maze of a palace called Quinta Da Regaleira that was built by a millionaire in the 20th century. The palace itself was relatively simple but the gardens are marvelous. They reminded us of the enchanted forest we saw in British Columbia, Canada. It had tunnels and grottoes (caves) and winding cobblestone pathways and all of this was in a thick forest. Secret passageways and shortcuts and towers and a well with a spiral staircase. We loved traversing the structure to the top and then went to see the palace on our way down.
Then we drove for a while and stopped for lunch at a restaurant that is another family owned venture for a few generations. We had fish there - grilled codfish for me and grilled sea bass for Samia - and keeping with the tradition of high quality food, the fish was fresh and delicious. Felipe also talked to us about with culture of football in Portugal and about arguably the world's best player Cristiano Ronaldo and the best coach Jose Mourinho both of whom are from Portugal. He also told us about his Lisbon based club SL Benfica that has a huge fan following in the country and is the 5th best club in the world, according to what he told us. Quite impressive football portfolio for a country of only 10 million. His club won the Portuguese championship last week and according to him around a million people gathered to celebrate it in Lisbon! We also tried an interesting dessert on Felipe's recommendation - something called a cloud dessert that actually looked like a cloud in shape and texture and had milk, sugar, egg and cinnamon as its main ingredients - quite tasty.
After lunch, we stopped at the Western most point in Europe, the Cabo da Roca. It was windy although Felipe told us that it wasn't as bad as it usually gets. We took some pictures and enjoyed the scenery for a few minutes before continuing on our drive.
We drove along the sea back towards Lisbon and stopped at the city of Cascais. Beautiful city full of character with a lovely coast and impressive houses. We drove through Estoril that was similar to Cascais and then headed back to our hotel. Felipe showed us the stadium of SL Benfica from the outside that was a giant structure that can hold 65,000 people and is usually full for all games.
We reached back our hotel around 6:30 pm. After freshening up, we walked in the neighborhood to sample some Pastel de Nata pastries along with a chicken patty. This was our dinner. Then we walked back and were back at our hotel at 8 pm. We asked our hotel to book us a taxi for 2:45 am since the drive from our hotel to the Lisbon airport is 15 minutes and we have to reach at 3 am (2 hours before our 5 am flight to Amsterdam). We had already checked-in online this morning. In fact, that was the first thing I did this morning after waking up. We'll have a 3.5 hours layover in Amsterdam followed by a 9 hour flight to Calgary.
We have packed our bags and are going to take a nap now for a few hours before waking up at 2 am. Thanks for reading all the updates! Hope you enjoyed the stories we shared. The final one will be from our home in Calgary tomorrow :)
Till then, take care and good night!
He is an interesting guy. He worked at Accenture as an IT consultant for 9 years before starting his tourism company that is now ranked first in Portugal on the travel website TripAdvisor (the most widely used website around the world for travel reviews). He has recently opened a second business - a cooking school - since he loves cooking.
He told us about himself and the area while we drove for an hour to Sintra, a city neighboring Lisbon. We went straight to the top of the mountain to the Pena palace. It is truly a fairy tale castle and was built by the German prince Ferdinand when he became the King of Portugal through marriage. Ferdinand designed the palace himself and included in the design all things medieval and from fairy tales that he loved. There are walls and towers around the castle's various wings, there is the statue of a sea dragon protecting the entrance, there is a medieval Moorish fort that you can see in the distance and there are forest-like gardens around the palace. All this was built by Ferdinand over his lifetime in the 19th century at the location of a 16th century monastery that he bought when it was in ruins. He preserved the original structure of the monastery so the rooms of the palace are small for a royal residence although still quite grand. The palace was used by three generations of the Portuguese royal family as their summer residence since Sintra is cooler than Lisbon during summer. When the royal family's line discontinued in 1910 and Portugal became a republic, the palace was turned into a tourist attraction. It started raining as soon as we finished our tour of the palace so we boarded the hop on hop off golf cart that drove us through the gardens and showed us various landmarks. We were dropped off at the entrance where Felipe was waiting for us.
He took us to a bakery that has been run by the same family for 4 generations and is famous for their desserts so we tried two of their famous desserts on his recommendation and cappuccino. Then we stopped at a store where we tried different varieties of cheese, definitely the best we've ever had. The food in Portugal continues to amaze us with its high quality.
Our next stop was a maze of a palace called Quinta Da Regaleira that was built by a millionaire in the 20th century. The palace itself was relatively simple but the gardens are marvelous. They reminded us of the enchanted forest we saw in British Columbia, Canada. It had tunnels and grottoes (caves) and winding cobblestone pathways and all of this was in a thick forest. Secret passageways and shortcuts and towers and a well with a spiral staircase. We loved traversing the structure to the top and then went to see the palace on our way down.
Then we drove for a while and stopped for lunch at a restaurant that is another family owned venture for a few generations. We had fish there - grilled codfish for me and grilled sea bass for Samia - and keeping with the tradition of high quality food, the fish was fresh and delicious. Felipe also talked to us about with culture of football in Portugal and about arguably the world's best player Cristiano Ronaldo and the best coach Jose Mourinho both of whom are from Portugal. He also told us about his Lisbon based club SL Benfica that has a huge fan following in the country and is the 5th best club in the world, according to what he told us. Quite impressive football portfolio for a country of only 10 million. His club won the Portuguese championship last week and according to him around a million people gathered to celebrate it in Lisbon! We also tried an interesting dessert on Felipe's recommendation - something called a cloud dessert that actually looked like a cloud in shape and texture and had milk, sugar, egg and cinnamon as its main ingredients - quite tasty.
After lunch, we stopped at the Western most point in Europe, the Cabo da Roca. It was windy although Felipe told us that it wasn't as bad as it usually gets. We took some pictures and enjoyed the scenery for a few minutes before continuing on our drive.
We drove along the sea back towards Lisbon and stopped at the city of Cascais. Beautiful city full of character with a lovely coast and impressive houses. We drove through Estoril that was similar to Cascais and then headed back to our hotel. Felipe showed us the stadium of SL Benfica from the outside that was a giant structure that can hold 65,000 people and is usually full for all games.
We reached back our hotel around 6:30 pm. After freshening up, we walked in the neighborhood to sample some Pastel de Nata pastries along with a chicken patty. This was our dinner. Then we walked back and were back at our hotel at 8 pm. We asked our hotel to book us a taxi for 2:45 am since the drive from our hotel to the Lisbon airport is 15 minutes and we have to reach at 3 am (2 hours before our 5 am flight to Amsterdam). We had already checked-in online this morning. In fact, that was the first thing I did this morning after waking up. We'll have a 3.5 hours layover in Amsterdam followed by a 9 hour flight to Calgary.
We have packed our bags and are going to take a nap now for a few hours before waking up at 2 am. Thanks for reading all the updates! Hope you enjoyed the stories we shared. The final one will be from our home in Calgary tomorrow :)
Till then, take care and good night!
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