A Portuguese girl with an international heart: Portugal

Sintra Trip - The Way Up

11:22:00 pm

Hello again dear Internet strangers!

So as promised I'm here to tell you all about my trip to Sintra, however, being a school trip we had some problems regarding planning and time to spend so we decided to visit only the Sintra palace and enjoy the most of it instead of rushing it and visiting two places, like previously planned.

So here we go!

The Way Up

In the first of June, I started my day quite happy because, oh well we're going on a school trip right? "What's not to like?!" Eva thought to herself, but she soon found out that the answer to her question was not the one she expected...

Don't get me wrong, the day was great however there were some things that could have gone better.

The first of this things was the fact that the bus that was supposed to take us to Sintra arrived 30 minutes late...But we kind of forgot about that when we got in until some poor soul asked "Hey, do we know for sure that the palace is open today?" Remember the planning issues I was talking about earlier? Yeah, this one lead to 15 minutes waiting on the parking lot before the people at the palace answered our calls. Fortunately, it was open!

So we get to Sintra, late but we get there.

We get out of the bus and another planning problem immerges: the deal made with the bus company established that we had to walk the rest of the way to our destination since the bus is only going to drop us in the center of the village. Has you can guess, the idea was not well received by the 15 anxious teenagers who now had to walk several kilometers on foot, and oh did I mention it was uphill?

If you have read previous posts of mine, you may have noticed I have a problem with stairs. You may also be thinking that there are no stairs in the middle of the hills, but it´s the same to my legs who now had to walk 47 minutes or 2.5 kilometers...

Despite all of the facts mentioned above, I´m a firm believer that with a little bit of strong will and some Coldplay songs everything is possible. And I´m also very proud to say that I was one of the first ones to get there (don't ask me how). Even if it was super exhausting to walk for one hour straight, looking back it was one of the best experiences I had. There is no way to explain the relaxation you feel when you are surrounded by such a beautiful and green scenario. It's an experience I would no doubt recommend to anyone visiting Portugal, but take the advice from an internet stranger: Plan ahead.

As usual here are some pictures I took.

So, yeah that´s pretty much it. Feel free to join me on my next post where I´ll quit the whining about walking and will bless your day with some Sintra knowledge and random facts about the village.

Thank you so much if you made it this far on the post and I hope to see you in the next one, maybe?

Byyyee!