Back to Lisbon for Some Toodling in Sintra and One Last Night on The Town Portuguese Style

Me looking over our pancake feast before Alena and I hopped back on a train to visit the real life fairy land of Sintra.

A great tip from a fellow traveler prompted us to visit Sintra and led us to Magik Green Sintra Rent-a-Scooter. We originally had written off Sintra as a tourist trap, but this guy we met at our hostel in Lisbon a few weeks prior had convinced us otherwise. He said he felt the same way, but was still compelled to go see it. He ended up renting a little scooter and zipping around the various castles and villas and palaces. He said it was so beautiful and such a great experience that we had to do it. So there we were renting a motor scooter and getting all fitted for a two wheeled adventure!

Right from the get go I knew this was a great plan as I kept hearing giggles from Alena as we zipped up beautiful mountain roads through rich green forests. At one point Alena's excitement overcame her and she shouted out "its like I'm in Roman holiday!"

I was having a good time too. Even though you feel badass in a leather jacket, it's tough to actual look badass on a tiny scooter. I tried my best through.

We parked the scooter, bought a garden ticket and headed through the beautiful gardens to the famed Castles and Palaces.

We made our way up the garden trails to finally reach the brightly colored Palácio Nacional da Pena.

This was a huge multicolored castle/palace with amazing azulejos and intricate carvings decorating its facade. If you are going to visit one place in Sintra I'd make it the Pena Palace!

Every entranceway and wall had amazing artwork, including this crazy sea monster looking dude guarding over one of the courtyard entrances.

Alena looking badass with the view over Sintra in the background.

The palace was built right into the mountain. Luckily they painted it super bright colors so you could tell where the mountain ended and palace began.

We bought a ticket just to explore the gardens as going inside the palace itself was double the price. But as you can see we were able to walk around and get up close and personal with the palace exterior without paying the extra fees. We came here to see the magical castle and it's beautiful facade, we felt no need to wait in a long line and pay extra to see some more fancy plates and tapestries.

Hard to beat the view from the top.

Alena enjoying some of her own peaceful garden time.

A beautiful flower pic courtesy of Alena.

The garden surrounding the castle was huge and had so many interesting trees, plants and flowers from all over the world. Here was the old hot house that had been abandoned but was still full of interesting plants.

No garden is complete without a proper duck pond. It even had a small castle in the middle for the ducks to sleep in style!

We finished off Sintra by zipping around the town seeing the rest of the sights from the road before it started to rain a bit. We let the showers pass while we tried some local pastries and played a few hands of rummy with our new deck of cards Alena had picked up.

Sintra was definitely worth seeing and renting a scooter from Magik Green turned out so great. They were so kind and helpful, and made the whole experience really fun: lending us cool jackets for free and giving us some tips on how to get around.

We headed back to Lisbon to spend one of our last nights in Portugal, out on the town with our friend Anne who came out to visit us for the weekend from The Netherlands! While we were eating dinner she captured this rare non-selfy of Alena and me looking adorable.

While Alena has in Lisbon when I was in the North of Portugal, she went out with some of her local friends for drinks. They brought her to this cool (literal) hole in the wall Ginja bar. Ginja is a cherry liquor that is native to Lisbon and super popular as a cheap snack of a drink. Alena brought us to this sweet spot for a fun and tasty local experience. I thought is was so cool and the drink tasted amazing! Check out the video of the guy pouring some shots with little cherries included in each glass.

We really enjoyed our evening out on the town with Anne, getting to experience our last bit of Portugal with a good friend before we jetted off to Rome, Italy for the final leg of our trip!