After the end of 10 day long Portugal trip, where we had explored South of Portugal such as Algarve and north of Portugal such as the famous Douro valley. I personally only had one day as I had to get back to States, while Yesha had 2, before her flight to India. In this post we will cover the common day we spent in the Portuguese capitol.
We arrived in the morning via train from Porto, which took about 2 hours. We quickly made our way into the hotel, and while our rooms weren’t ready yet, we were lucky to get 1 room a little ahead of time. This was important as we had to cover our photoshoots in a couple of spots in the city and outside. So we quickly got to it, and were joined by our local photographer and her friend who would record some videos for us, and also gave us a ride in his car.
Our first spot was a lighthouse in Roca Cape. This was a bit of a drive from the city, but the views were magnificent. We had seen a lighthouse earlier in the trip in Sagres, and this one was equally good looking. We walked around the rim, looking at the sea, and while there were lot of people here, what was challenging was the wind, which was really blowing fast. After a few captures, we started heading over to the next spot, which was Sintra.
On the way to Sintra though, there were couple of really nice roads with greenery all around, and we did step out for a bit to take a few more shots. We finally made it to Sintra , which is a municipality in the Grande Lisboa subregion at about 5 PM, just about the perfect time to explore the famous Pena palace. The Palace looked magnificent in the basking sun, and the walk to the top was also very rewarding, with views of the valley and the town with colored houses. The castle stands on the top of a hill in the Sintra Mountains above the town of Sintra, and on a clear day it can be easily seen from Lisbon and much of its metropolitan area. It is a national monument and constitutes one of the major expressions of 19th-century Romanticism in the world. The palace is a UNESCO World Heritage Site
Our next stop was in the city, and the stop we explored was Belem, which is the southwestern most civil parish of the municipality of Lisbon. Many of Portugal’s distinctive buildings and landmarks are located in this area, including the Jerónimos Monastery and the Tower of Belém. There is also a nice bridge, which we got a bit late to, but yet another to explore was the Praça do Comércio, which has been completely remodeled as the main square in the city.
By this time, it was already getting late, but we decided to head over to Alfama, which is actually the oldest district in the city, and offers some amazing views of the city all up. We went up to the Largo das Portas do Sol which offers a beautiful panorama of the city. We saw some magical colors in the sky, with sun setting slowly over the Mediterranean. It wasn’t our last thing of the day though, as we ran straight to catch a glimpse of the famous tram, specifically tram no 28. The tram driver was friendly enough to let us pose a pic in front of the tram 🙂
Tired but thrilled by the places we discovered in the day, we headed back to the main square for some timely dinner before calling it a day in this lovely historic yet modern city.
destinuts.com 