Sintra Portugal - Day 4

The weather was supposed to be beautiful on Saturday so we decided to save Sintra for last.  It is a small town about a 45 minute train ride away that we were told we had to see!

 

The day started out beautiful!!  This is the view from our window.

 

So we LOVED the apartment, but it was an old building.  I am not sure if you can tell here, but the stairs are slanted.  When we walked from one end of the bedrooms to the other we walked down hill then up.  It was quite amusing really!  Like I said it was a great apartment in a great location, just had some quirks.

 

This was a place where people used to come and play games or just sit and chat.

 

The views there were so pretty and even more so with the blue sky!!!

 

We walked down to the train station and we were lucky, the next one left in ten minutes!!  You can sure tell this is father and son!!!

 

Michael decided he would sit with me on the way there!!!

 

The first stop we decided to make was the Pena Palace.  It was built in the mid to late 18th century by a German-born Prince Ferdinand.

 

They have acres of gardens there and they are so beautiful!!!  It reminds me a little of the Northwest where David and I were born and raised.

 

I love his smile!!!!  He always makes me laugh and smile!!!!

 

This was our first sight of the palace after a good hike uphill.  Ferdinand hired a German architect to build a fantasy castle, mixing elements of German and Portuguese style.  He ended up with a crazy Neo-fortified casserole of Gothic towers, Renaissance domes, Moorish minarets, Manueline carving, Disney playfulness, and a tile toilet for his wife.

 

It was really well preserved and it felt like the day after the royal family fled Portugal in 1910.

 

This was a cross up on one of the hills surrounding the castle.

 

Michael decided to take a little rest on top of one of the walls.

 

I just really loved this cross!!  It was at one of the entrances of the castle.

 

Michael my ham!!  He sure makes me smile!!!!!

 

The boys were trying to figure out the best position to take on attackers.  They thought bow and arrows here would be great!

 

The sentries - don't mess with them.

 

My king and our two princes!!!!!

 

One thing about castles they almost always have a wonderful view!!

 

The key to the castle door - how would you like to carry that around with you.  It wouldn't quite fit into my purse very well.  :-)

 

This is a bust of King Ferdinand, the one who built the castle, from 1840-1855, when he died.

 

The rooms kept the monkish coziness - they were small and around the courtyard.

 

The great smile!!!  The palace was built on the site of a 16th century monastery, this courtyard was the former location of the cloister.  Like the monastery in Belem, this monastery housed followers of St. Jerome, the hermit monk.  The monks wanted to be isolated, and this was about as isolated as you could be around 500 years ago. 

 

This was the King's bedroom

 

He enjoyed cutting-edge comforts, including the shower/tub imported from England.

 

This was the chapel - so ornate for a little room.

 

King Ferdinand II amassed a great collection of stained glass panels.  He used them all over the Pena Palace.  He had one of the oldest stained glass in Portugal's history.  This one illustrates the history of the Monastery in four segments.

 

This was the royal secretary's chamber - I am thinking I would be good with the set up.

 

She even had her own bathroom there.

 

This is the queen's bedroom - the boys being silly.

 

The king even had a telephone to listen to the opera when he felt that the Lisbon commute was too much.

 

AJ really loved this chess set!!  He said he would have loved one like it!

 

I thought these were great - they were called torch-holders and held by statues of Turks of Gothic inspiration.  They were in the ballroom, which was seldom used for large receptions and dances.  Which I did find a little odd.

 

You can see how the furniture is pulled away from the wall.  This was done on purpose in all the rooms to make it feel more cozy and homey.  They really tried in this castle to make it a much smaller feel.

 

This was a very different kind of stained glass then we have seen before.

 

This was their kitchen - it was HUGE!!  Especially since the castle didn't seem to be that big.  I could get used to a kitchen like this though.

 

My boys in the onion shaped dome.

 

We were all a bit hungry after our hike so we decided to stop and eat at the little café up there.  The weather was perfect, the view fantastic and the company, priceless!!!!

 

I really liked this entrance, or exit, not sure which.  :-)  But either way it is very intricate and well done.

 

These were some of the tiles that were on the building.  It is amazing the detail and I wonder how long it took them to make each and every one of these tiles.

 

This is a view from Pena Palace down to the Moorish Castle.  It was built by the Moors, but it was taken by Christian forces in 1147.

 

We started hiking down from the palace and I just love the rocks, trees and view.

 

The boys are always happier when they are bouncing down the stairs, or jumping on anything and everything!

 

This was a military fortress built around the tenth century by the Muslim occupiers of the Iberian Peninsula.  It acted as a watchtower over the Atlantic Coast and the northern territories, functioning as an observation post of the city of Lisbon.

 

After that we grabbed a bus and headed back down to the main town of Sintra.  We wanted to go and check out one more thing and so we started walking (to my boys dismay) towards the Quinta da Regaleira.

 

This was the first thing that we saw - I was very excited to see what the rest of it would bring. This used to be an entrance and the one who designed this whole place marked them by monumental gateways that possessed a strong symbolic sense of passage between two worlds.

 

 In 1898 Luigi Manini was commissioned by the capitalist Carvalho Monteiro to design his country house, thereby beginning a process that was to last for twelve years involving architectural and landscape design, (including all fittings and interiors for the house).  Between 1902 and 1911 he detailed the designing, drew up doors, railings, coverings, paneling, ceilings and fireplaces.  He drew up over three hundred working drawings.

 

The boys had to have a picture with a lion, since they are lions!

 

Their lion faces, scary.

 

Within the Sintra landscape, the gardens and grounds are distinguished by their complex structure of mythico-magical and sacred spaces with dense symbolic content.

 

The mysteries that reside here are intensified by varied towers that rise within the gardens, and shafts that pierce the earth, (admitting to a network of tunnels and caves which Michael is standing at the opening of one), thereby appealing to a fantastic dream composed of unfathomable voyages to the center of the earth.  These characteristics define the gardens as one of the most interesting examples of an hermetic (or occult) landscape in all of Europe.

 

 

David the lion tamer, petting the lion.

 

Michael heading  into the cave.  The one problem is we didn't know about them before and we didn't bring a flashlight, so we used the flash on my camera to put light in every now and then because it was pitch black in there.  But it was fun!!!

 

One of the towers, so pretty in the fall with the leaves changing colors!

 

The boys looking over the tennis courts in the tower.  They were also able to climb to the top of it.  This really is a kids paradise.  David and I were talking about how cool it would have been to grow up here with all the tunnels, towers, climbing trees.  So much to do there.  We had a ton of fun exploring all the different caves, etc.

 

The subterranean Regaleira, with its caves, tunnels, wells and lakes constitutes the central theme of gardens.  According to a hermetic or alchemical interpretation, these spaces represent a journey through the elements crossing the darkness to liberate the light from the origins, a symbolic death to which succeeds a new birth.

 

This well marks the crossing between the Profane and the Sacred.  Here is the bridge between Earth and Heaven.  We were told by locals, you start at Hell, up to the middle which is Earth and then the top is Heaven.  We came to it from the tennis courts tunnel that is an exact East-West direction.  The first phase of the expansion of consciousness in the matter corresponds to the passage through the elements.  The motion passes through the Grotto of the Orient, corresponding to the element Earth, through the Cascade Lake, (a reference to water), and on to the Poco Imperfeito, (relative to Air). 

 

The boys in the middle at Earth.  There was an exit there but not at the top.  You had to go back down to "Earth" before you could leave the well.

 

Fire, the only element that rises, is considered by western doctrines at the top of the hierarchy of the elements.  In this sense, it can be associated with the ascending spiral represented by the serpentine stairway of the Initiatic Well.  The well is the place where movement passes from the horizontal to the vertical, in analogy with the passage from the Minor Arcana to Major Arcana, (22 cards of the Tarot), symbolized by a corresponding number of niches in the shaft.

 

You can see the height of the towers they build.  Behind Michael is just one of the many towers on the property.  There were at least seven different towers on this property.

 

This is the tower of the Terrace of the Celestial Worlds.  It is a romantic device designed to appear as vestiges of a construction more ancient than the house and the chapel.  The tower functions as belvederes that allow us to enjoy distant landscapes while also providing a vantage point over the scenic arrangement of the terraced space.

 

This is the view of the Moorish Castle above us now.

 

AJ wanted to take a picture of us in a Romeo/Juliet fashion.  :-)  This is the Tower of Regaleira, forms one of the fundamental elements in the articulation of the garden's structures.

You can just see the Pena Palace on the right and the Moorish Castle on the left.  It was quite a view from up here.

 

The boys from a birds eye view up on one of the many towers.

 

This is Leda's Cave, where a cascade appears to well up from the depths of the earth.  It is at the base of the Sala Rustica tower.

 

The chapel is independent from the main house in the architectural tradition of a hermitage or isolated shrine.  Set in the garden of the park, it distinguished from the more palatial type chapel common in Portuguese country houses in which the chapel forms an important part of the main façade, serving the needs of the family along.  This is another Manueline structure.

 

The inside of the Chapel - I was up on the balcony taking this picture.

 

This shows just some of his work.  This was the fireplace in the greeting room.

 

This is the music room's ceiling, it was designed for social and personal gatherings.  It was a more feminine style of elegant living.

 

David said in our forever home these are going to be our door knockers.

 

This is just showing another part of how intricate everything there was.  This was between the main house and the chapel.  Just beautiful!

 

Here is the front of the main house.

 

This is just one of the numerous paths throughout the gardens.  It was gorgeous and it would be very relaxing to just stroll the grounds if you owned the place.  David thought we should buy it.  I was all for it, but unfortunately it would be a little expensive, and oh it was not for sale.

 

We stopped at the restrooms before we left the area and we sat down on the steps.  This cat was determined to get into David's lap.  He didn't call it or anything and the cat just climbed up the backpack onto his lap.  It was hilarious!!

 

The boys thought it was great because then they were able to pet the cat.  My rule is you don't pet any animals that you can't ask the owner to pet, but this cat wanted some loving obviously so the boys were able to pet it.

 

David with the parting shot in front of the main house - such a cool place!!!

 

Where would we be without our ice cream stop.  The only problem was there was only one place in this small town and it wasn't the best ice cream, but it will do. 

 

After that we headed back to Lisbon.  It was dark when we arrived back and we saw this as we were getting off of the train, the castle all lit up at night, spectacular!!!

 

We started heading back to the apartment and we saw this HUGE group of people watching something and we weren't sure what it was.  We stopped to check it out and it was a bunch of people making their own music and dancing.  They were really good too!!!

 

I like the view of the cathedral at night!!

 

We decided to have dinner at the restaurant right down below our apartment.  It is their parents' restaurant.  They were very nice and sweet!  We had green wine with dinner, one that I have never had before and it wasn't bad.  Andre was there eating as well, so he came over to say hi when we were finishing up our dinner.

 

He asked us if we wanted a port for after dinner, we said of course because that is what they do here in Lisbon.  So David enjoyed his port, and I took a few sips (not my thing).  It was a wonderful end to a fantastic trip!!  We really enjoyed ourselves in Portugal and the time to spend as a family!!  We were flying out the next day back home.  The only problem was when we arrived at the airport we found out there was a delay.  It ended up being over fours hours because the fog was too thick to land in Germany.  We were just lucky to be able to land at all!  We were supposed to be home around 6 pm initially, but didn't end up getting there until after 10 pm.  This was a little later than expected and made for a longer day for work and school on Monday, but we all survived!