This entire trip has essentially been me hearing about a place from the people that I meet and heading there. This is the case with my most recent endeavor, Sintra, Portugal.
This place was epic and I never would have went there if it were for the recommendations, from my parents as well as my man Santiago. I had never even heard of the place or even bothered to google it. It was only a 46 minute train ride from Lisbon (Oriente) to Sintra.
I jump on the train to Sintra thinking that it is like any other train that I get on. As I go to exit the station in Sintra I notice that you have to have a ticket to exit the turn styles. I just had my rail pass, there is no scanning feature of my rail pass it is just a piece of paper and there was nobody around to explain this to… So I wandered the station and eventually found a low wall that I could climb over and jump down. Thank god I had a backpack and that I didn’t get caught, I am sure it would have been difficult to explain via translation.

Once outside of the train stations gates I found the 435 bus that would take me near to my hostel. On the ride to the hostel I realized something, Sintra is bad ass! Who knew that 45 minutes away from Lisbon could be so different.

The streets were narrow and had horse drawn carriages.

The entrance to my hostel was a dead end road that had huge gates that you had to open to get in. The hostel was surrounded by 130 acres of gardens. Pretty epic place to lie my head

It was mostly candle lit and smelled of incents. I am sure they smoked mounds of hash in there. Haha run by some good loving hippies. Enjoyed my stay, but only had a day to squeeze all of the shit in before I am on my way to Lagos.

I met my hostel mate and he tells me that he had his ticket for the two castles that overlook the entire city and that they were good for an entire day. I took them and hoped that they would get me in. I set off down the road and this was the first place I stumbled upon.

They are these amazing grounds that were originally built in the 1500’s and later some rich dude remodeled and put his estate on the property. It really boggled my mind, this place did.

That is his pad

Not a bad view from the pad, can see the Moores castle on the left peak if you zoom in

Patio

Stairs to the chapel

There was an underground cave and tunnel system that traversed all of the grounds.

This tunnel popped me out into a waterfall

This one led me to the pits of inferno

Climbed my stairway to heaven

“Oh mama!!” Haha the caves were full of those nasty looking bitches. I was horrified that I was going to get bit and die. But here I am typing away. Ha

I wandered around a bit more went into some other caves and what not. Then I decided it was time to try and find my way up to the castles that overlooked the city. I talked to two girls on the way out they were heading that way and taking a tuk-tuk to get there…It was 5 euros and I had already bought a bus ticket that would get me there. I bailed on the tuk-tuk and caught a bus, I soon realized that the bus didn’t take me to the castles, so I bailed out and started walking…huge mistake on my part it was an hour and a half walk up to the castles…So I put out the old thumb and…

I was there in no time.

Then I booked it over to the other castle.

You can see the first castle I visited to the left in this photo. All in all it was a solid day, took 33,000 steps…

And of course finished this mighty fine day with a bottle of wine…

-Con-Style