Tag: Portugal

One Day in Sintra

On August 28, 2023

Pena Palace

Sintra is a popular day trip from Lisbon and is known for its picturesque buildings and royal history. There are many private tour options that include round-trip transportation from Lisbon and there is also a train that runs to Sintra from Lisbon throughout the day. The train is included with the purchase of the Lisboa Card and the Lisboa Card offers discounts at several of Sintra’s monuments. Like many tourist destinations, Sintra gets busy during the day so it is important to get there early to avoid crowds. We decided to take an early train from Lisbon to Sintra. We used Bolt (Portugal’s version of Uber) to get around town.

Pena Palace is probably the most popular attraction in Sintra. As soon as we had our itinerary nailed down, I bought my tickets to Pena Palace online so I could get the earliest entry time and beat the crowds. For less than 3€ a person, I added a transfer from the gate to the palace to avoid a 30-minute uphill hike first thing in the morning. Lisboa Card offers a discount for entry to Pena Palace. I really enjoyed the view of the Palace from the terraces and exploring the surrounding Pena Park. If you are interested in historic furnishings and royal history, you may have appreciated the interior more than I did.

Pena Palace

Pena Palace started out as a monastery but was severely damaged by lightning and then destroyed during the Lisbon Earthquake in 1755. In 1838, King Consort Ferdinand II set out to acquire the old monastery and other nearby estates and turn it into a summer home for the royal family. Construction of the palace was completed in 1854 in the Romantic style and it includes Medieval and Islamic elements. The Portuguese State purchased the palace in the late 1880’s and it was converted into a museum. In 1995 the Palace and the Cultural Landscape of Sintra was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Quinta de Regaleira's Initiation Well From Pena Palace, we took another Bolt to Quinta de Regaleira. We did not pre-purchase tickets to the Quinta, but the line was short by the time we arrived and we were able to use our Lisboa Card for a discount. Quinta de Regaleira is famous for its Initiation Well (left). The Initiation Well is mysterious because it is a circular stairwell into the ground with no known purpose. It is recommended that if you want to walk down the Initiation Well you get there early because a line forms later in the day. We arrived around noon and had to wait a bit but it was worth it.

Quinta de Regaleira sits on more than nine acres so there is a lot to explore besides the Initiation Well. There are towers near the entrance that can be climbed, and a small chapel that be visited. Parts of the Romantic, five-floor Palace known as “The Palace of Monteiro the Millionaire” can be toured (below).

Quinta de Regaleira

After we got our fill of Quinta de Regaleira we found a little cafe for a late lunch before exploring some of the shops in Sintra. Then, we did the downhill walk to the train station for our return to Lisbon. There were so many more monuments we didn’t have time to explore. I really wished we had stayed one night in Sintra to really get a feel for the place when all the day visitors leave. As I always say, I guess we will have to go back another time!

Thanks for stopping by! Be sure to check back next week as we take the train from Lisbon to Porto! To read more about this trip, check out Cruising the Atlantic to Portugal and Spain trip report. To read about some of our previous trips, visit my Trips Page. If you like my photos be sure to “like” my Facebook Page and follow me on Instagram! For my list of gadgets to make your travels easier, click here. To see inside my camera bag, check out my updated Gear Page.

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Wordless Wednesday: Belém Tower View

By Ashleigh

On August 23, 2023

In Wordless Wednesday

View from Belém Tower

Lisbon: Day 2

By Ashleigh

On August 21, 2023

In Travel

Discoveries Monument

Some of the links below are affiliate links and as such, I earn a small commission from purchases that allow me to continue telling you my stories without costing you anything extra.

For our second day in Lisbon, we headed to Belém, a famous neighborhood in western Lisbon, on the banks of the Tagus River. We started our day at Belém Tower (below), a 16th Century fortress that is known as a ceremonial gateway to the city. Built in the Manueline style, the tower was built to protect the Lisbon Harbor and is now an icon of the city itself. Climbing to the top of the tower provides a beautiful view of the city.

Belem Tower

From the tower, we walked to the nearby discovery monument (top) that celebrates the Portuguese Age of Discoveries during the 15th and 16th centuries. The monument includes sculptures of famous navigators including Henry the Navigator, Vasco da Gama, and St. Francis Xavier among many others.

Pasteies de Belem After the tower, we headed to the most famous place in Belém, Pasteies de Belém, to try the world-famous pastry (left). We became obsessed with Pasteies while in Portugal and the ones in Belém were definitely the best that we tried.

Jeronimo's Monastery

Nourished, we headed to Jeronimo’s Monastery (right), the first of many religious buildings we visited on this trip and one of the most impressive. Like the tower, the monastery was built in the Manueline style in the early 16th century. I was surprised to learn that the tomb of Vasco da Gama (and that of the two kings that he served) is in the nave of the church for visitors to come and pay their respects. The architecture of the monastery was a lot to take in with all the ornate columns and arches.

Spinach Tours Lisbon After our time exploring Belém we decided to try a self-driving tour of Lisbon. We had seen these little Spinach tour cars around the city and we were curious to try it out for ourselves. They offer several different tours of Lisbon and we chose to tour Alfama, the oldest part of the city because that is where our Airbnb was but we hadn’t spent more time over there except to sleep.

The streets of Lisbon are narrow and mostly cobblestone so it is not a city I would want to have to drive in, but this tour gave us a little taste. It was fun to zip around in our little electric car while the car gave us directions and told us some history of the city. Of course, in such a silly vehicle, you get a lot of funny looks, but we enjoyed our tour and we wished we had chosen the longer tour that also went out to Belém. If you are interested in trying a self-driving tour of Lisbon, I recommend Spinach Tours on Viator!

Ponto Final

We ended our second day in Lisbon with what has to be the restaurant highlight of the trip. Ponto Final is a restaurant on the opposite side of the Tagus River from Lisbon that was featured on Netflix’s food travel show, Somebody Feed Phil, and is incredibly popular. I made reservations as soon as our plans for this trip were finalized, but the wait without a reservation can be up to two hours. The seafood dishes were delicious but the location is the star of this restaurant and being able to watch the sunset over the bridge was magical. It was probably one of the best views I’ve experienced from any restaurant in my life and I highly recommend a stop if you’re in Lisbon, but take the ferry, traffic getting across the bridge can take a long time! Reservations can be made in advance by emailing pontofinalrest@gmail.com.

Sunset from Ponto Final

Thanks for stopping by! Be sure to stop back next week as I recap our day in Sintra! To read more about this trip, check out Cruising the Atlantic to Portugal and Spain trip report. To read about some of our previous trips, visit my Trips Page. If you like my photos be sure to “like” my Facebook Page and follow me on Instagram! For my list of gadgets to make your travels easier, click here. To see inside my camera bag, check out my updated Gear Page.

Wordless Wednesday: Lisbon Sunset

By Ashleigh

On August 16, 2023

In Wordless Wednesday

Lisbon Sunset

Our First Day in Lisbon

By Ashleigh

On August 14, 2023

In Cruise, Travel

Praça do Comércio

Some of the links below are affiliate links and as such, I earn a small commission from purchases that allow me to continue telling you my stories without costing you anything extra.

After 12 days at sea, we arrived in Lisbon early in the morning. Since we couldn’t get into our Airbnb until the afternoon, we waited as long as we could to disembark the ship. Once we were off the ship, we used Luggage Hero to find a place to store our luggage until our Airbnb was ready and then we began our exploration of Lisbon.

When the tourist office opened, we headed inside to buy the Lisboa Card which gave us access to many museums and attractions in the city as well as public transportation. Depending on how long you are planning on using the card, the price ranges from 21-44 Euros per person. We used our cards over the few days we were in the city to visit the Santa Justa Lift, The Lisboa Story Center, Belem Tower, Jeronimo’s Monastery, and the Lisbon Tile Museum. The card also allowed us to get around the city and covered our train ticket to Sintra where it also gave us a discount at Quinta de Regalara. It also would’ve given a discount at Pena Palace in Sintra, but I bought our tickets online in advance in order to get an early entry time, but more on that in another post.

View from the Santa Justa lift

To begin our sightseeing, we headed to Santa Justa Lift, which is an elevator that has turned into a tourist attraction. Lisbon is known as the city of 7 hills and walking up and down them can get tiring. Luckily, there are elevators in several parts of the city to make your walk a little easier. The Santa Justa Lift is the most famous in the city and it was built in 1902 by an apprentice of Gustav Eiffel. There is a long line to ride the elevator up and the observation tower at the top was closed so I can see why a lot of people suggest skipping it, but the view from the top is a great way to take in the scope of the city.

Exhibit in the Lisboa Story Center After our ride in the elevator, we headed to the Lisboa Story Center (left) which is a unique museum that tells the history of Lisbon and how the city played a part in the exploration of the world. The Story Center presents history in a multimedia experience where every visitor has a headset to hear the narration that accompanies the three-dimensional and video elements in each exhibit. Probably one of the most impactful parts of the museum is the earthquake room, where visitors are immersed in the 1755 earthquake and tsunami that destroyed the city.

Flaming Portuguese Sausage The highlight of our first day in Lisbon would have to be the food tour we took in the evening. The tour took us around the city center to try some authentic Portuguese food and drinks including Portuguese cheese and port wine, Bifana (delicious pork sandwiches) and beer, pasteis do bacalau (salt cod fritters) with Portuguese wine, Ginjinha (Lisbon’s famous cherry liquor), and a final stop for flaming sausage and more wine (right). The tour was surprisingly affordable and we got to try things that I may not have tried otherwise. If you are looking to get to know Lisbon, I highly recommend this small-group food tour from Viator!

Thanks for stopping by! Be sure to stop by next week to read about our second day in Lisbon! To read more about this trip, check out Cruising the Atlantic to Portugal and Spain trip report. To read about some of our previous trips, visit my Trips Page. If you like my photos be sure to “like” my Facebook Page and follow me on Instagram! For my list of gadgets to make your travels easier, click here. To see inside my camera bag, check out my updated Gear Page.

One Day on São Miguel Island – Azores

By Ashleigh

On July 25, 2023

In Cruise, Travel

Azorean Beach

After seven days at sea on the Norwegian Getaway, we arrived at Ponta Delgada on São Miguel Island in the Azores. The Azores are a group of islands in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean that are an autonomous region of Portugal. Because of its location in the middle of the Atlantic, Ponta Delgada is a common port of call on transatlantic cruises. I booked the Furnas Crater Lake Small Group Tour for the day on VentureAshore.com and I have to say, it was one of the best shore excursions I have ever taken. When they say small group, there were only six of us, and with such a small group, our guide was able to take us to spots where the big tour buses from the ship just couldn’t go.

Nossa Senhora da Paz

Our tour guide met us at the port with a sign with my name on it which is something I’ve seen in movies but have never experienced myself before. The two of us and one other family loaded into a van and we headed out to explore the island. Our first stop was at a black sand beach where we could feel the volcanic sand (top), although it was a little chilly for a swim. Our next stop was at Nossa Senhora da Paz, which is a chapel to Our Lady of Peace. According to the plaque on the wall of the chapel, a statue of Mary was found on the hill and it was given to a priest who put it in a church. The next day, the statue was found on the hill so they began to build a chapel to store it. Later that night the foundation of the chapel was moved to a place nearby, where the chapel is standing today. The chapel itself is beautiful and the view from the top is breathtaking.

Caldeira Das Furnas

Cozido das furnas

Our next stop was Caldeira Das Furnas which is a park with hot springs on Furnas Lake. The walkways with the bubbling hot springs and mud pots around them reminded us a lot of Yellowstone. The biggest difference between Furnas and Yellowstone is that in Furnas, they use these geothermal features to cook. One area of the park has big holes where local restaurants put a giant pot of Cozido das Furnas (a traditional Azorean dish) in the ground to cook for six hours. While we were there, we watched the chefs pull their pots out of the ground to take back to their restaurants for lunch. Of course, we wanted to try it so our tour guide made us a reservation at a local restaurant, Já Se Sabe, so we could try food cooked underground. We had a little bit of time to kill before our reservations so we drove to an area with more hot springs, some natural springs where we could drink bubbling water right out of the ground, and a snack bar that served corn on the cob.

Furnas Lake

After lunch, we hiked up a hill to see Furnas Lake from above and to burn off some of the calories from lunch. It was great being so high up and seeing where we were earlier in the day. From there we headed to Gorreana Tea Factory, an Azorean tea plantation where we saw how tea is processed and got to sample some of the teas they make. Their tea was delicious and we brought some home for ourselves and as gifts. This is the first time in the day that we encountered crowds. It was so full in the tasting room that there was no place to sit, so we sampled some tea and headed to our next stop.

Santa Iria Overlook

Next, we got to see the north coast of São Miguel to the Santa Iria overlook. This was a nice place to stand and watch the waves crash against the cliffs for a little while.

Lagoa do Fogo

Our final stop of the tour was at Lagoa do Fogo which is a crater lake in the center of São Miguel island. One of the people in our group said they booked this tour for this view because she saw a picture of it on her Windows login screen. Our tour guide took us to the top of a hill to get this viewpoint that the big tour buses couldn’t get. From where we were sitting we saw the buses down below and all the people walking around and we had this view practically to ourselves. It was a pretty awe-inspiring moment and I would say, one of the best of the whole trip.

We had a wonderful day seeing the sites on São Miguel, but we really only saw half of the island. I would love to go back and spend more time exploring this island and the rest of the Azores. One thing I hope you get from reading this is how amazing third-party shore excursions can be. I am so glad we chose this small group tour where we could escape the crowds and try typical Azorean food.

Thanks for stopping by! Be sure to check back next week when I recap our day in Madeira! To read more about this trip, check out Cruising the Atlantic to Portugal and Spain trip report. To read about some of our previous trips, visit my Trips Page. If you like my photos be sure to “like” my Facebook Page and follow me on Instagram! For my list of gadgets to make your travels easier, click here. To see inside my camera bag, check out my updated Gear Page.

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