Sintra to the coast
I had thought of going out to the river-side suburb of Belem today, but over breakfast with the guide book in hand, I found out the maritime museum (the main reason for my intended visit) was closed on Mondays, so instead I took an impromptu ride out to the hill-side village of Sintra, which was once called "a glorious Eden" by the ever-poetic Lord Byron. This journey was hampered somewhat by my arrival at the Rossio train station, which was walled off, covered with scaffolding, and quite clearly not open. I finally stumbled across a sign in English saying that one could detour via the nearby metro station to a train station further north and catch the line from there. I did manage this maneuver with only minimal trouble, and hopped off the train at Sintra, the end of the line.
The only guide I could find to the Lisbon are before I left London was a Time Out guide, which was more oriented toward nightlife and expensive eateries than getting out and about - which left me a little lost in trying to figure out which way I should be going (and left me wishing that Lonely Planet hadn't discontinued its Lisbon edition, since that series does a much better job at logistic information than this one). Not having a good map or directions, I randomly picked one of two possible directions to walk and started out downhill; since everyone else was coming off the train was just about as disoriented as me, about half of them went the same way I did while the other half wandered off in the other direction. This first try sent me toward a pleasant but entirely nondescript tourist strip full of overpriced cafes and trinket shops. I was about to be very unimpressed with the whole affair - what exactly was so special about this place that poets would compare it to Eden on earth. I walked back to the train station, and with a heavy flow of tourists now arriving with the late morning, it did seem as if more were headed off in the opposite direction, so I followed them in a last-ditch effort to discover what exactly the hidden treasure of Sintra might be.
It didn't take a long walk, just a few curves along a snaking road cut into the hillside, to see what the fuss was all about. In the distance, set against a background of nearly tropical lushness, was the twin chunky white spires of the National Palace. And high in the forested peaks beyond that, the fairy-tale Moorish castle. Like Monserrat just outside of Barcelona which I visited several springs ago now, the people who built the monumental edifices at Sintra chose a place as imposing for its spirit-soaring monastic beauty as it is for its strategic military position.
I wandered around the wide square at the foot of the hills, perusing through town for the various eatery options and fingering lengths of lace and embroidered cloth before I decided to wander uphill toward the tantalizing palace above. I should not be allowed to travel with other people, as most would not tolerate my version of an afternoon stroll. Or maybe I should only be allowed to travel with other people, other people who have more sense than to let me start off on several mile-long uphill treks when my feet are already torn up and bleeding from blisters, and who have the gumption to tell me to cut it out before the looping journey back is shorter than the journey out, obligating one to forward movement only when retracing one's steps is really the only reasonable thing to do. In any case, half a dozen busloads of tourists riding the easy way up passed me as I journeyed the steep incline toward a peeks and flashes of Moorish colors slipping out between slopes, usually at about the interval I was about to turn back.
The views were spectacular, the blisters epic, somehow I survived the walk back down and the train ride back to Lisbon - detoured by the notion that I might as well triangulate back toward the city via a lengthy bus ride out of the mountains and down toward the beach. Cooled my toes in the white sand and gentle Atlantic swells, and hopped the surface train system home from there. Well worth the trek.
The only guide I could find to the Lisbon are before I left London was a Time Out guide, which was more oriented toward nightlife and expensive eateries than getting out and about - which left me a little lost in trying to figure out which way I should be going (and left me wishing that Lonely Planet hadn't discontinued its Lisbon edition, since that series does a much better job at logistic information than this one). Not having a good map or directions, I randomly picked one of two possible directions to walk and started out downhill; since everyone else was coming off the train was just about as disoriented as me, about half of them went the same way I did while the other half wandered off in the other direction. This first try sent me toward a pleasant but entirely nondescript tourist strip full of overpriced cafes and trinket shops. I was about to be very unimpressed with the whole affair - what exactly was so special about this place that poets would compare it to Eden on earth. I walked back to the train station, and with a heavy flow of tourists now arriving with the late morning, it did seem as if more were headed off in the opposite direction, so I followed them in a last-ditch effort to discover what exactly the hidden treasure of Sintra might be.
It didn't take a long walk, just a few curves along a snaking road cut into the hillside, to see what the fuss was all about. In the distance, set against a background of nearly tropical lushness, was the twin chunky white spires of the National Palace. And high in the forested peaks beyond that, the fairy-tale Moorish castle. Like Monserrat just outside of Barcelona which I visited several springs ago now, the people who built the monumental edifices at Sintra chose a place as imposing for its spirit-soaring monastic beauty as it is for its strategic military position.
I wandered around the wide square at the foot of the hills, perusing through town for the various eatery options and fingering lengths of lace and embroidered cloth before I decided to wander uphill toward the tantalizing palace above. I should not be allowed to travel with other people, as most would not tolerate my version of an afternoon stroll. Or maybe I should only be allowed to travel with other people, other people who have more sense than to let me start off on several mile-long uphill treks when my feet are already torn up and bleeding from blisters, and who have the gumption to tell me to cut it out before the looping journey back is shorter than the journey out, obligating one to forward movement only when retracing one's steps is really the only reasonable thing to do. In any case, half a dozen busloads of tourists riding the easy way up passed me as I journeyed the steep incline toward a peeks and flashes of Moorish colors slipping out between slopes, usually at about the interval I was about to turn back.
The views were spectacular, the blisters epic, somehow I survived the walk back down and the train ride back to Lisbon - detoured by the notion that I might as well triangulate back toward the city via a lengthy bus ride out of the mountains and down toward the beach. Cooled my toes in the white sand and gentle Atlantic swells, and hopped the surface train system home from there. Well worth the trek.
posted by skylanda at 6:32 PM
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