Day 9: to Sintra

So we get up and cruise slowly out of Porto, with the thought that we will stop and grab some Brunch on the way out of town. We missed all the cafes due to rather heavy traffic and lack of parking, as we were cruising out of town and so thought that we would find something on the way. It took about 50 km's till we found the signs for Aveiro. We clunked off the highway through and over swamps, and then we saw a big football stadium, built for the Last Euro Championships. It was quite a nice looking stadium too. The city is known for its salt production, seaweed harvest but probably more commonly known as "The Venice of Portugal". It has canals running through it, but certainly not to the extent of Venice.

The city, in my eyes, was the find of the holiday. It was a really beautiful city, full of mosaics, Azulejos
This was bigger than it looks and was about 1.5m tall. It was a pretty cool way to brighten up a retaining wall. Traditional tiles, these ones are pretty old!
Mosaics are common and these are on a bridge over the main canal.
More Mosaics along the retaining wall in town.

and quaint little streets with picturesque and cute houses.
Not sure about their numbering skills below though! 7, 3A, 11?!?


Checked out a variety of stencil graffiti


We pottered around a little and just fell in love with it. Grabbed a little pastry snack,and then were back on the road again. Heading for our one "unplanned", by this I mean "not organised" stop. Every other place we had booked in advance, where as Sintra, the Kings' play ground just outside of the Capital Lisbon, was on the itinerary but we never got around to booking anything.

So we arrived in Sintra, and went straight to the tourist office where we tried to organise a place, we eventually got one of the few free rooms in town, it was a little more expensive than we had hoped but it also was in a nice grand old house, a little smelly, but had a lovely terrace and some of the coolest door handles around. Dropped the bags and headed for the town centre for a poke around.We looked at the old palace, from the outside only as we weren't so interested to tour the inside, as the day was nice and sunny.Then we decided through an indepth version of paper, scissors, rock, to go to Quinta De Regaleira on the way we saw these great old doors that weren't being used any more.
All cobwebby and dusty.
We also walked past an open church to see a simple highlighted Mary chilling out.
It is an estate that was built by a wealthy philanthropist known as Moneybags Monteiro. The place is pretty darned amazing, and was created by an Italian who used to be an opera set designer, weird I know, but he did bring this place to life and I would recommend it. It is full of all sorts of sculptures.



Yes I did say lots of sculptures, also there are some nice flowers and plants.
They also have a really nice cave system as well.
This is the front of the caves with a beautiful pond with fish swimming around in it.
From the inside, looking back out.If you continue further into the cave system, you get an eerie path leading through to....
A little doorway, which is......exposed to sunlight, because it is.......
A cistern! Pretty cool, when you think this was all man made in the 19th century.
Then we decided to duck into the actual manor house which had some very impressive furniture and fixtures all of which were designed by the same man, as was everything within the grounds form what plants should be planted through to which doors to have.
And he certainly came up with some great doors!! Don't you think?

From here we went up to the roof terrace to admire the view, there were even statues up here. These were mythical creatures, including on the left an eagle with boobs.
Some scary shadows crept in with the lowering sun.
This lowering sun gave us a bright but uneventful sunset.
Marty took in the view down to the town....
As seen here from the very pinnacle of the building.
At night we ate a pleasant meal of the day, sardines and also some pasta and enjoyed a nice vino verde. Off to bed for the early rising and trip into Lisbon in the morning where we traded the car in for our feet.