Author Archives: Steve Walker

About Steve Walker

Once a tech in-house PR type, now professional photo/videographer and recreational drone pilot. Violinist. Flautist. Occasional conductor. Oenophile.

Sintra’s interesting

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Tuesday 25 August 2026 et seq – Long Post Alert!

Sintra is a bonkers place, you can tell as soon as you step off the train and walk past the ticket office in the station.

I began to get a sense of artistic overload as we made the short journey from the station to our hotel, which has a bonkers sort of name – the Bliss Hotel. However, despite the rather fey name, it’s actually a modern, well-organised place and the friendly receptionist had us booked in and into our room in short order. It’s a comfortable room and, being modern, is rather better laid out than the room we had in Lisbon, albeit without a fridge for the milk.

It was late afternoon and the weather was good (which was more than could be said for the morrow’s prospects), which meant that it was time to go for a walk. Obviously. So we set out for a look around and to find a bite to eat, and the full force of Sintra’s bonkersness became clear as we walked around. Here, for example, are the buildings next to our hotel.

and opposite them we see this.

The Town Hall is simply wonderful, with overtones of Gaudi (and it’s very own rollo*),

and looking up across the strikingly unusual buildings to the Moorish Castle on the far hillside

gave me powerful sense of déjà vu – the perspective reminded me strongly of the forced perspective one sees in Portmeirion. It’s a delight for the senses. The constant sense of something unusual going on comes, I think, from its very unusual background. Sintra’s history spans from Neolithic times via Moorish rule in the 8th century through the 1147 Christian conquest, after which it became a royal retreat. In the 19th century, King Ferdinand II transformed Sintra into Europe’s first center of Romantic architecture, blending Gothic, Egyptian, and Moorish styles into UNESCO-listed palaces. It’s this mish-mash of architecture, combined with the Portuguese flair for colourful decoration, that makes the place so striking, I think. And this is before we’ve seen even one palace!

Jane’s instinct for finding a decent place for a bite to eat led us unerringly to the Sintra Terrace restaurant,

which gave us a very fine meal with a very fine view.

Actually, it wasn’t quite unerring, as the map of Sintra gives one absolutely no idea about how complicated the village is, because it’s steeply arrayed up the side of a hill (the one with the Moorish Castle at the top). But we found it eventually, and then, refreshed, went for a potter around. I suppose Sintra is officially a town, but the locals refer to it as a village, and it has a lot of little villagey nooks and crannies as you walk around,

and lots of narrow streets,

with, it has to be said, lots of tourists.

The walk from the hotel to the centre of the village takes one past what I roguishly labelled a Moorish bus shelter

but which is actually a fountain, and a very striking one at that. One also passes a bewildering array of occasionally bizarre sculptures, which apparently get changed quite frequently;

there’s a sculpture park in the depths of the greenery you can see behind these examples. The village, even on a Tuesday evening, is a buzzy place,

and we got a first glimpse of one of the three (bonkers) palaces for which Sintra is well known.

This is the National Palace, and Carlos was to be on hand to take us around it the next day. It was good to have had the chance for a wander around the village in nice weather, because we were by no means sure what we’d be faced with the next day.

Accordingly, we met Carlos at 10am and went out – into lashing rain. We walked along to the village and when Carlos suggested that we stop for a coffee and a traditional Sintra take on the pastel de nata, called a queijada, we acceded easily. There are a few places in the village which speciaise in these local pastries,

and so we had some delicious bites to eat with a coffee,

whilst Carlos gave us some background to Sintra and the things we could expect to see.

Our first stop was the National Palace. Carlos managed to get us in in front of a queue of several dozen in a tour group, and we wandered through the palace, which is a very palacey sort of palace,

with palacey rooms a-plenty.

To quote from its website, “The current Palace of Sintra emerges out of many royal palaces. This is a set of buildings that were constructed, added and adapted over the course of many centuries with the actual date of the founding of the country’s oldest palace a question that still remains to be resolved. In all likelihood, the first building was constructed in around the 10th or 11th century when Sintra was under Moorish rule. At the end of the Middle Ages, the Palace of Sintra was at the heart of a large territory under the care of the Queens of Portugal while also one of the preferred destinations for Portuguese monarchs. The abundance of hunting in the region, the freshness of the climate during the summer months and the need to take refuge during periods of plague in the capital all contributed to turning the Palace of Sintra into a regular destination.”

The walk through the rooms features some panels where actors interpret the monarchs – particularly the queens, who were often very powerful and forceful people – and other key people involved in the history of the palace and the country. It’s an interesting tour, and there are several arresting sights, such as the Swan Room.

with its wonderful hand-painted ceiling.

It was used as a Great Hall of the Palace from the time of King João I and Queen Philippa of Lancaster. Its name derives, you’ll be surprised to learn, from the decoration on the ceiling panels with their date of execution unknown but believed to have been in the 14th century when Sintra, as part of the Queens’ Lands, was under the direct administration of Queen Philippa; the swan with a crown was an emblem deployed by Henry IV of England, her brother.

Another striking ceiling can be found in the antechamber of King João l; this second room of the king’s apartments, next to his bedchamber, was used for royal audiences.

This room, again you’ll be staggered to learn, is called the Magpie Room – the magpie and the motto “Por Bem” (for Good) being emblems used by King João.

Generally speaking, the Palace gives good ceiling. This is another example, the Galley Room.

Commissioned by King John Il (1502-1557), this room, possibly a gallery, connected his apartments with the north-west wing of the Palace. The ceiling, featuring ships from Portugal, the Ottoman Empire, and the Netherlands, dates back to the 17th century.

The best ceiling, though, can be found in the most striking room in the Palace, the Heraldic Hall.

Here’s as much of the ceiling as I could fit into a shot.

The Heraldic Hall is the ultimate expression of the monarchical ideal of King Manuel 1 (1469-1521). By placing his coat of arms at the top of the dome King Manuel I positioned himself as the centre and pinnacle of a society that was hierarchical yet interdependent: his authority relied on the nobility – represented here by 72 coats of arms of the most prominent families – who, in turn, received their social distinction from the king. King Manuel highlights his own lineage by displaying his descendants through the coats of arms of his eight sons and daughters (the latter with half a shield, awaiting marriage to complete it).

We passed evidence of restoration work being carried out in the palace

and our final port of call was the kitchen, the part of the building sporting the Palace’s two bonkers chimneys.

If you’re going to do a chicken brick, do it properly; that’s the way!

We exited through the shop, with its wonderful retail offerings,

and Carlos took us to another of those bakeries for some more queijadas. This was one of the original bakeries in the village – Piriquita means little canary, which was the nickname of the founder whose family still run the business today.

It’s dead popular.

We sampled a further variety of typical Sintra pastries and then Carlos took his leave of us, having made sure we knew how to find our next destination – a mansion house and its grounds called Quinta da Regaleira. Unsurprisingly, this being Sintra, it’s bonkers.

The estate was bought in the late 1800s by António Augusto de Carvalho Monteiro, an eccentric and wealthy Portuguese businessman who had amassed a fortune in Brazil. He worked with the Italian architect and theatrical stage designer Luigi Manini. To quote the website, “The culture and creativity of these two personalities resulted in an eclectic-revivalist architectural ensemble, with a particular focus on the Manueline, Renaissance, Medieval and Classical styles.” To quote the BBC, “Quinta da Regaleira is a postcard-perfect mix of Gothic, Egyptian, Moorish and Renaissance architecture.” Between 1904 and 1910 the two of them created a property brimming with pagan and Christian symbolism. Bonkers, in other words.

Carvalho Monteiro had a deep interest in – and was quite possibly an initiate of – the Knights Templar, a Catholic military order with roots dating to the early 12th Century. And one of the features in the gardens of the manor house was something that Jane knew about and particularly wanted to see – the Initiation Well. This was what we first headed for – or we would have, had the map they gave us at the ticket office been any use. But it was spectacularly useless. Fortunately there were occasional signposts and we got there in the end. There are actually two such structures, but one of them is unfinished.

We could see people at the bottom, and wondered how to get there, but in the interim headed for the main one, which was detectable because there was a queue. One walks down a spiral of stone stairs;

it gets darker and darker towards the bottom, and a tunnel leads away from it, branching into other tunnels – there is some modern lighting to relieve utter darkness. And one of the branching tunnels leads to the bottom the unfinished well,

so now we know how the people got there. The exit from the tunnels is by a waterfall.

The purpose of this bizarre construction? Again according to the BBC, it is believed that Templar initiations at Quinta da Regaleira began with candidates entering the Initiation Well blindfolded. Holding a sword close to their heart, they would descend nine flights of stairs – a number that represents the nine founders of the Templar order. Once reaching the bottom of the well, the candidate would walk into a dark labyrinth where they would symbolically and literally have to find their way up towards the light. If they were able to make it back (without straying into the incomplete Well) to emerge into the sunlight by the waterfall, initiates would walk across stones in the water to reach the chapel, where they would then be welcomed into the brotherhood.

Bonkers.

Here are a few photos of some of the other corners of the gardens, to give you an idea of its architectural range.

The last building there is the chapel, and I took a peek inside.

Both its inside and outside feature the extreme detailing that is typical of the Manueline style, named for King Manuel I, in whose reign the style was developed.

The chapel is a neighbour to the manor house itself.

We looked in, and there were several more Manueline flourishes

but there wasn’t much else to detain us; and anyway we had another place we needed to be, so we headed out.

That other place was the Moorish Castle, dating from the 8th and 9th Centuries, which, as I’ve said before, is at the top of the hill. So we started up

and up

and, long story short, got to the top of the ramparts.

En route (apart from having to buy tickets to get in), we passed great views over Sintra

of the castle itself,

and even of Lisbon in the distance,

but the prize we were after was a view of another Palace, the Pena Palace, whose architecture is, you’ve guessed it, bonkers.

The Moorish castle itself held little of interest – it was badly damaged during the 1755 earthquake, so, having got the photo we’d come all this way to capture, we headed back down towards the village. The signage we encountered was exceedingly confusing, and pointed us in several different directions, but we managed to get back to Sintra by the fairly simple expedient of simply heading downhill. We got back to the village in fair need of a G&T and providence stepped in for us; no sooner had we been served our drinks than the heavens opened. If we’d been five minutes later getting down from the castle we’d have been drenched.

All in all, it has been an excellent 24 Hours in Sintra. We are due back in Lisbon on the morrow, but plan A says we might have a go at visiting the Pena Palace first. So come back soon to find out whether that particular plan came together.

* Actually not a rollo, which is a Spanish thing we saw a lot of on our Camino Francés, but a pelhourinho, a pillory – a a stone column, or less frequently a wooden one, erected in a public place, next to which criminals were exposed and punished. So similar in principle to a rollo, then.

The last of Lisbon…for now

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Tuesday 25 August 2026 – We weren’t due to meet Carlos until midday, so we had a relaxed schedule for the morning. On checkout, we discovered that the hotel’s “finance people”, despite having agreed that the prepayment for our room had, in fact, been made, had still not sent their approval for the reception staff to process a refund for us, so I’m still £400 down on the deal so far. But I’m sanguine that things will get sorted before the credit card bill becomes payable. Yes, really.

Carlos’s wife had enforced a change of plan by requiring use of their car for the day, so we weren’t going to get our lift over to Sintra, not that it mattered. It takes pretty much the same time to get there by car or by train, and Carlos had developed a plan that took us round some parts of the city we hadn’t yet explored, ending up at the station where we needed to catch the train. Street art was very much still a theme in what we saw, but in the posher parts of town. We headed up Rua Augusta but veered off to the left, into the Chiado area of the city, where a lot of the buildings were very ritzy

and smartly decorated, both outside

and in

This was a pie shop. Well, a rather nice pastelaria, which featured top notch pastel de natas and perfectly decent coffee, so we partook whilst Carlos expanded somewhat on the fire of Chiado, a tragedy which happened exactly 38 years ago – August 25 1988. The fire started at a department store in Rua do Carmo and quickly spread, affecting a total of 18 buildings, of which 11 were full losses with structure collapse. The wooden furnishings in the buildings, and the contents, which included fabrics and gas bottles, contributed to the swift spread of the fire. In 1989 the Portuguese architect Álvaro Siza Vieira was invited by the mayor of Lisbon to oversee the reconstruction project for the area, which was mostly completed by 1999. The exterior look of the buildings was restored, while the interiors needed, of course, to be completely rebuilt according to modern construction techniques and safety regulations. Some original frontages were saved,

and interiors are in some cases still being restored to their former finery;

overall the area still has a grand feel to it.

One particularly striking building is the Casa do Ferreira dos Tabuletas.

It was originally built in 1865 on part of the land once occupied by the 13th-century monastery of Convento da Trindade, by Manuel Moreira Garcia, a wealthy Gilician businessman and Freemason, after religious orders were dissolved in Portugal and the Convent building fell into disuse. The façade is famous for its 19th-century azulejo (ceramic tile) panels created by painter and azulejo artist Luis Ferreira (known as “O Ferreira das Tabuletas“- Ferreira of the panels), featuring allegorical figures representing Earth, Water, Science, and Industry, as well as mythological themes and ornate floral borders. Originally designed for mixed residential and commercial use, it remains one of the most celebrated examples of tile architecture in Lisbon.

Garcia converted another part of the Convent into a cervejaria (pub) which also has a very flamboyant display of azulejas.

Nearby is the Teatro da Trindade – whose name is again a reference to the Convento da Trindade.

A little further along the way was the church of São Roque, which was handsome enough without being distinctive on the outside but ridiculously opulent inside.

There are areas of very lavish tiling,

and the ceiling is remarkable.

What really stands out, though, is the opulence of the nine chapels surrounding the nave. One of them, the Chapel of St. John the Baptist, was mandated by King John V, who ruled as an absolute monarch, riding roughshod over normal political protocols, styled himself after Louis XIV and spent vast amounts of money on architectural projects and specifically this chapel,

which included 20% of the entire gold holdings of the country. He wanted the Pope to come and bless the chapel, but that was never going to happen, so he had it built in Rome, blessed there by the Pope, and then disassembled and reassembled here in Lisbon. No wonder he was unpopular.

Carlos then led us around the streets of Chiado and neighbouring Barrio Alto, showing us some of the street artwork to be found there, some larger scale

and some smaller.

Lisbon has a powerful reputation for its “tagging” (graffiti, to you and me) as well as its artworks, and there’s one slightly amusing point where a brand new building was erected with a sign forbidding graffiti

and right next door to it is the entrance to a theatre – who were happy to allow the artists full rein!

Chiado features a famous café, A Brasileira, one of the three oldest cafés in Lisbon.

Outside it there’s a statue of Fernando Pessoa, a well-known poet who was also a philosopher, playwright, essayist, translator, advertising executive, astrologer, inventor, businessman, commercial correspondent, literary critic, and political commentator – though poetry remained his first love. He was a frequent visitor to A Brasileira under his many heteronyms: Ricardo Reis, Álvaro de Campos, and Alberto Caeiro. The mosaic in the pavement is supposed to represent his long face, and the establishment, like many in this posh area, has its name in the pavement outside.

Inside, it reminds me very much of the Julien Restaurant in Paris – very belle epoque.

Another belle epoque frontage can be found down the street from A Brasileira.

It’s a gelateria now, but has retained the frontage that proclaimed its original purpose – ladies fashion. The whole area was crowded and buzzing, despite it being a Monday; you could tell how busy it was from the number of the taxi-cum-tour buggies parked up awaiting customers.

There are extraordinary numbers of these vehicles roaming the streets of Lisbon, most of them in golf buggy style, some built as replicas of old automobiles, some more like tuktuks. They have all cropped up in the last fifteen years or so, and have become so ubiquitous that the authorities stepped in to regulate them; they are all now electric and restricted to certain parking zones. There must be huge competition between them for business and some owners clearly try to mark theirs out from the norm.

We saw a few more artworks before we finished our time in Lisbon with Carlos.

One was particularly striking, being somewhat three-dimensional.

Even the station is a work of art,

and the artwork didn’t stop at the façade. Even the stairs were decorated

as were the walls by the platforms.

Mind you, the place has its prosaic moments, too.

And so we bade a (temporary) farewell to Lisbon and headed to Sintra on the train. We will be back, and may be able to fit in some more tourism, depending on schedules and weather. But I’ll end this post here and the next one will take up the thread as we arrived in Sintra for our short stay there.

More looking around Lisbon

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Monday 24 August 2026 – The weather forecast for the morning was not one that encouraged tourism in any way at all, so we treated ourselves to a lie-in and a late breakfast. The Plan A for the day was to take the 15E tram to Belém, admire the monastery, tower and statue dedicated to Henry the Navigator before retiring to Belém’s famous Pie Shop to have one of their pastel de natas, which are world famous in Belem. We’re very fortunate that Jane checked out this plan in some detail in the morning, at which point we discovered that Belém is shut on a Monday. This gave us a fair chunk of the day back, and we decided that a visit to the castle was likely to be a decent thing to do. We relaxed for the rest of the morning whilst comparing the Met Office and Accuweather versions of the forecast to see when we could venture out.

In the end, the Met Office was more sanguine about the rain clearing so we decided to believe its version of the truth and headed out towards the castle via a coffee stop, which was educational in its way, both for us and the café staff. Our serving of choice for coffee is a flat white, which we thought translated into Portuguese as a meia de leite. The waitress insisted that a galão was what we were after, so we trusted her. Not that it’s a huge issue, but future coffee-drinking travellers might like to to note that a galão is effectively a latte, so if you want a flat white, don’t ask for one of them. We pointed out the similarity between galão and caffe latte to the waitress and hope that future visitors to that coffee shop will benefit from our experience.

We also passed some nice tile work,

particularly fine examples being at the viewpoint the Miradouro de Santa Luzia

which rather flattered to deceive, since the view it gave one was mainly of cruise ships in the harbour. I read that it’s at the head of an elevador, and indeed followed a sign pointing me at it. But I couldn’t find it and further research (thank you to my editor) informs us that it’s well disguised and looks like part of an apartment block, so it’s one of those things that IYKYK; Google Maps won’t help you find it.

The online map that Walk The Camino had sent us as part of our preparation was of the opinion that the Caminho actually started at Santa Luzia, rather than at the Cathedral, which would on the face of it seem to be a more intuitive place to start on your 610km journey. We cast around for a bit to see if we could find any evidence of this; Jane had noted that there was a Rua de Santiago, so that seemed a promising avenue, sorry, Rua of investigation,

and Jane eventually spotted this, on a building nearby, which turned out to be – wait for it – the church of Santiago de Lisboa!

So our online map was accurate, but I’m buggered if I saw any other signposts for a Caminho in the area, or, indeed anywhere else we’d been in the city.

We’d made a fair uphill journey (sans elevador,if you’ll pardon me mixing my languages) to get to Santa Luzia. The castle was further uphill. Everything in Lisbon is further uphill. This is a typical profile of a wander round Lisbon.

We made our way to the castle, for which Jane had bought tickets in advance – which is just as well, as the ticket office and entry were small-to-medium sized bundles of chaos in an otherwise relatively ordered world. We’d hoped to get on a 1pm English language guided tour, but long story short there wasn’t one, so we just wandered round to see what we could see. And what we could see mainly was some very fine views across the city.

Across the water is the Santuário de Cristo Rei, with its (slightly) junior version of the Rio de Janeiro Christ statue,

and we got a lovely panorama of the city

as well as a view of things we’d seen in passing yesterday with Carlos: the ruins of the Carmo Convent;

the “under maintenance” Elevador Santa Justa;

and the Graça church (if you look carefully, you can see the funicular carriage in transit).

We could also make out about half of the Star of David fountain in Praça Martim Moniz, the gateway to the Jewish quarter.

Lisbon was under Moorish rule for almost 450 years from 711. The fortress was built in the 10th century and was captured by King Afonso Henriques during the Siege of Lisbon in 1147, part of the great Reconquest of the Iberian peninsula from the Moors. Because we didn’t manage to get on to a guided tour, we didn’t learn much more about the castle, but it was pleasant to wander around. Entry to the main part is over a moat

which Carlos had told us (with, I think, a certain ghoulish relish) was filled with human excrement as a way of discouraging invaders. This was in its day, you understand. Modern health and safety would have something to say about it these days.

The walls and parapets are extremely well-preserved and accessible.

There are several items of interest, such as this sundial

and arrow slits constructed so that bows could be shot in multiple directions.

All in all it was an enjoyable hour or so we spent wandering around. There are peacocks in the grounds and we saw two peahens, each with their chicks of differing ages, which were rather cute.

We had a very engaging encounter just outside the exit of the castle. A sign invited us to look inside the Castle’s church, the Church of Santa Cruz, labelled “Lisbon’s birthplace”*, and so, on a whim, we did. It’s nothing particularly spectacular inside,

although the altar piece is lavishly decorated.

What marked it out was a chance conversation with a young lady who was busy doing detailed conservation work on some of the elaborate curlicues.

She explained to us what she was doing: applying a white base to smooth out the outlines of the feature; then she would apply some red colour (which you can see in places already set); and finally she would apply gold leaf

which would be burnished in once it was well and truly stuck down. She was delightful to talk to and very patient with our dumb questions.

The walk back to the hotel led past a few other sights of note: some street art;

a shop with a bizarre range of artefacts on display

including, delightfully, Christ on a bicycle,

an image which will stay with me whever I need to swear; some more lovely azulejas,

and the excavation site of a Roman theatre.

which once would have looked like this.

There was a wall with a lovely demonstration of anti-aliasing (Google that, if necessary)

a café which actually had flat white on the menu,

and the church of St.Anthony

with its vivid floral display,

which Jane managed to get a picture of between the hordes of people using it as the backdrop for fucking selfies.

For our dinner, we went to an area we’d first noted in our search for Earl Grey (we’d thought that an Auchan, even a little local one, might have some, but no….). It’s a cross road to the Rua Augusta, which has any number of touristy eateries along it, but one restaurant among all the others called to us

mainly because it was the only one not to have pictures of its food on display. It was called Em Alta Na Baixa, and it was very good – a fitting note on which to (pretty much) end our stay in Lisbon.

We will meet Carlos tomorrow and he has, he tells us, plans for about an hour more of showing us around Lisbon before he takes us off to Sintra – where he will be our guide the day after. Sintra appears to have all manner of strange and wonderful Things To See, and we’ve never been there before, so we’re rather looking forward to it and hope that you now are, also, and will stay in touch with these pages to see how we got on.

* The Igreja Paroquial do Castelo, also known as the Church of Santa Cruz, is an 18th century building within the castle walls, occupying the site of the old fortress mosque (which itself was on the site of a Roman temple). Since the mosque was purified and consecrated as a Christian church immediately upon the reconquest of Lisbon on 25 October 1147, and the church holds the city’s oldest administrative parish records, it merits the title “Lisbon’s birthplace”.