Sintra, Portugal

Just a quick train ride away from Lisbon, Portugal (more on Lisbon here) is a fairytale land. Sure, royal families don’t live there any longer, but the city still exudes lavish vibes and insane infrastructure. Unfortunately, we didn’t know how lovely this place was until we were there – so if there’s one piece of advice to give – spend AT LEAST an entire day in Sintra. If you can stay over, even better!

If you’re short on time, like we were – there are at least two things you MUST do. Pick one of the palaces to tour, and try the travesseiro at Piriquita II. More on that below!

How to get there:

As with any tourist-y city, there will be plenty of tours you can book out of Lisbon that will provide transportation. (When we feel confident that we can navigate a location alone – we tend to go for it, and it’s typically much cheaper, but it’s all personal preference!) If you plan to go out alone – you’ll take the train from either Rossio or Oriente Station, based on which you’re closer to. Our line from the apartment in Lisbon was closest to Oriente, so we took that one. We had purchased unlimited day passes that included the standard metro around Lisbon, and the train on this line (highly recommend this route; only 10.55 Euro).

If you don’t have a pass already, the fare is about 3 Euros for a one way ticket. There are trains leaving every half hour or so, depending on the day, so you’ll want to time it up appropriately. This is a local line that heads out into the country side of Lisbon – if not a great way to get out to Sintra cheaply, it was also a cool way to see what’s outside of the city!
It will take roughly 45 minutes to get to Sintra. Later that night, we unfortunately JUST missed the line heading back to Lisbon and didn’t want to wait 30 minutes, so we took an Uber back to the city. There were plenty of car services, as well as Ubers, and it cost us around $20, so no concerns about being stranded out there!

What to do:

Once you arrive (Sintra is the last stop on this line, so you can’t miss it), you’ll want to rent a small vehicle. And when I say small, I mean small. We rented this tiny electric car through LAS Tours Sintra (there are plenty of others that offer similar vehicles), and most of the guides stand near the train stop waiting for business. You feel so silly, but they’re super affordable and fun! For reference, I’m 5’8 and fit into the back just fine with my purse! The best part is they program your car with directions, so you can simply follow their navigation to your chosen destinations. After driving up to Pena Palace, I’m fairly confident you would not want to walk to the castles, unless you are very fit, and have plenty of time to explore!

Short on time, we asked the employee programming our car which was the most necessary palace to visit. He recommended Pena Palace, so we headed there! The entry was 14 Euro per person, which includes access to all of the staterooms and terraces of the Palace, as well as the breathtaking forest leading up to it. We took the long way up, through the amazing park. Though hilly, it was incredible!

Now let’s talk about this Palace! Holy moly, we’ve never seen something so large, intricate and beautiful! The palace is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the Seven Wonders of Portugal – and you can clearly see why when visiting. The sheer size of Pena Palace is something to marvel at, but the intricacies of the entire place are just incredible. It feels like we sat staring at each terrace for a half hour. They’re dreamy.

The staterooms are immaculate and stunning – and almost equally as impressive as the outside – something we feel is hard to find in sites that we typically tour similar to this!

We expected to quickly tour a couple major palaces, but ended up staying around 2 hours on the Pena Palace grounds (we probably could have shortened this by skipping the hike through the forest). Something to note: the road leading to the palaces is a one way, only so you have to loop all the way back around to get to the next stop. We ran out of time to loop around to another location before the last entry time. Guess that just means we have to head back in the future 🙂

Once returning the car we headed to the elusive Piriquita II for travesseiro. Travesseiro translates to pillow, so they’re literally called pillow pastries. And to say the biggest regret of this trip is not getting more, would be a gross understatement. Dreams will be had about these pastries. Get two per person, at the very least, we promise you will not regret it.

If you stay longer than an afternoon, you can choose from many other majestic locations: Castelo dos Mouros, Quinta da Regaleira, Sintra National Palace and various beaches! And when you go – please feel free to reach out for our address to send us some pillow pastries 🙂