Lisbon Part 3: Day trip to Sintra

I. Love. Sintra.

Saturday
We woke up groggy and ready for free hostel breakfast.  Clearly we needed more sleep after breakfast, so we went back to bed.  But not for long, because today was our day to visit Sintra.  It's a small city west of Lisbon, easily reachable by train.
Sintra is FUCKING AWESOME.

We might be nearing Hogwarts

Fact: it is more magical than Disney World.  I can't even describe it in words, which is extremely unfortunate, because Sintra is just astounding.  It is full of palaces, gardens, and a Moorish castle from the 9th century.  We didn't have enough time or money to visit everything, but we damn well tried.  We started off going to Quinta da Regaleira, which was the summer house of some promenant Portuguese families throughout history.

Is this real life?

The house itself was impressive, but even more so was the labyrinth garden.  It was more like a beautiful adult playgrand.  That was an accidental typo, but I'M KEEPING IT BECAUSE IT IS COMPLETELY TRUE.  Castle-structures, amazing flowers, secret gardens, and ACTUAL UNDERGROUND CAVES.  I just can't describe it well enough to do it justice.  So fucking magical.

Mini castles are all over the place

Unnecessary underground passageway

T-rex stompin a fountain.  Nothing wrong with that.

wat

The guy next to Sarah laughed as she took this picture

We were going to take a bus to our next stop, the Moorish castle, but it was 10 euros.  Fuck that.  So we hiked up the mountain instead.  We weren't planning on going inside, but it looked amazing, so we didn't really have a choice.  It was the exact castle that you visualize when you think of the word "castle."  It was unbelievably gorgeous.

The U.S. doesn't have many of these

This is absolutely Disney World

Honestly, I don't know what impressed me more: the Moorish castle, the Quinta, or the Alhambra.  All were so awesome.
Getting some pastries back in town was an essential next step.  I can't remember what they're called, but they are Sintra's famous pastry and are baller.  Man, we were starving.  Haha, we also saw a couple sets of pigeons having bird sex.
Apparently I was tired, because I slept through the entire train ride back.  For dinner, we were in the mood for a dish we had heard about in Portugal, kind of a mixed seafood stew with a tomato base.  Somewhat expensive, but delicious.  And we finished just in time to catch sunset on top of the central elevator.  It was pretty stupendous.  And there is a crazy mega-moon tonight, so it was a great way to end the trip

We can finally see the sky in Portugal!

Bye Europe!