🙋🏻‍♂️ travel guide to SINTRA, the perfect day-trip from LISBON 🇵🇹 #123

Today we visit the village of Sintra to talk about a magical place that it is at the same time the most beautiful day trip you can do from Lisbon. Hello, I am Tony Galvez from Roadtrip Spain and Portugal where we help you plan the perfect trip with practical information and insider tips. Sintra is the must-see excursion for anyone visiting Lisbon and there is no shortage of reasons for this. It is a nearby destination, it is easy to get to and it is a place full of magic. While it would be wonderful to sleep in Sintra, the reality is that a vast majority of those who visit the town do so on a same-day round trip from Lisbon. So today we're going to tell you how to make the most of this same-day round trip. First we will talk about the location of Sintra and how to get there. Then we will understand how to get around Sintra's different attractions and finally we will talk about each of these must-see attractions in Sintra. Let's start by explaining how to get to Sintra. Sintra is a town located about 30 kilometers from Lisbon. Among the different ways to get to Sintra, the one we have chosen and the one we suggest you take advantage of is the train or to use the term used in Portugal, the convoy. Trains to Sintra depart from Rocio station in the center of Lisbon. The metro stations Restauradores on the blue line and Rocio on the green line are close to the train station. Trains also run from other parts of Lisbon but Rocio is the most convenient station for most visitors. Trains are operated by Convoyos de Portugal, the Portuguese public company and if you check the CPE website, we'll leave the link in the video description, you'll see that there are many departures throughout the day between two and three trains per hour. On the same page you can also see the value of the ticket. You do not need to buy the ticket in advance. It is a train without reserved seats and you can buy the ticket on the day of the visit as we will explain next. As you enter Rocio station, check the screen to see when the next train to Sintra is leaving. Now take the escalators up to the top level of the station where the ticket offices and the trains are located. There are several ways to pay for this train. The cheapest and easiest would be to use your Lisbon transport card loaded with credits in Zapping format to pay for the journey. We have a video on the channel where we explain how to use the Lisbon transport cards. Don't miss it. We also talk about the Zapping credit. The cost today of the trip from Lisbon to Sintra paying with Zapping credits is €1.90 each way. As well as being cheaper, you won't have to pay for the card, which you already have. To validate your journey, just swipe your card at the barrier. If you don't have a transport card and there is not much of a queue, you can buy your ticket from the ticket office. If there is a long queue, you can buy your ticket at the ticket machines as explained next. On the home screen, first select the English language at the bottom of the screen. Select buy ticket and card. Next, choose a whole ticket valid for four zones, which is what you need to get to Sintra. As you will want to buy the return ticket as well, choose two units now and you will see the total amount you will have to pay. You will have to repeat the operation for as many people traveling with you. Each passenger must have a card. You will pay €2.80 for each journey and €0.50 for the card. Now find the platform your train is leaving from and get on it. There is no seat reservation. Just sit wherever you want. The journey to Sintra will take between 40 and 50 minutes depending on the train and the many stops along the way. Don't worry, Sintra is the final station of the line. Now that we've arrived in Sintra, let's see how to get around the different points of interest in the town. Sintra train station is a bit far from the town center and some of the attractions, so you will now have to make a decision about the transport you want to use. Actually, the distance to the center is not that far. It is a very pleasant 20-minute walk, but as time in Sintra is limited, we suggest that you leave this walk for the end of the day when you go back to the station after you have finished all the sightseeing. Let's now turn to the map to see the location of the attractions we are going to visit today and to understand the logistics of the visit. We have already seen the location of the train station and the center of Sintra. In the morning, we will first visit the Pena Palace and then the Moorish Castle. We will stroll throughout the center at lunchtime and visit the Quinta da Regalera in the afternoon before returning to the train station on foot. The distance between the train station and the Pena Palace is too long and steep to walk. If you are spending a night or even several days in Sintra, it may be possible to walk there, but for a round trip in the same day, there is no way you will find time to do that. The most popular option for getting up the hill is a Scott Herb circular bus, which is what we took. It seemed like a good transport proposition and we saw several YouTubers recommending the service, but it turned out to be a big scam that we would not recommend to anyone. It all started because when I got on the bus and I asked the driver for a return ticket, despite being on the company's website, he refused to sell it to me, saying he only had a more expensive 24-hour ticket. Not wanting to argue, and I speak Portuguese, I accepted this more expensive ticket, thinking that it would be a good investment after all, but it was not. We don't know exactly what the problem is, but it seems that the company has few vehicles and the promised frequency of one bus every 15 minutes simply does not exist. To get back from the top of the hill, we spent an hour waiting for the bus, which arrived crowded at the stop and when the bus passed the next stop, next to Pena Palace, it simply did not open its doors to the despair of those who had probably also been waiting for more than an hour. In addition, the second bus line we should have used was not running and no one informed us when we bought the ticket. Was it a bad day for the company? It could have been, but it seems to us that this is not the case. When we went to the tourist office to report what had happened to us, we were told that they received similar complaints from frustrated tourists on a daily basis. Tourists who pay for a 24-hour unlimited bus service and are unable to use it because of the poor service. One only has to look at the comments on the internet to understand that this deception of consumers by the company goes back a long way. It is difficult to understand how the central authorities do nothing to stop a company that causes so much damage to the image of the town. Here is our advice, don't even consider using the services of the bus company. Without the bus service, visitor mobility is compromised. The options for getting up the hill are the tuk-tuk, which is expensive, a taxi or a Bolt Uber. If we had taken a Bolt or Uber on the day of our visit, we would have paid €4 to go up the Palacio de Apenas, €8 in total to go up and come down. For the bus ticket, we paid €25. It may be that in high season, Bolt and Uber fares are more expensive, but it is still much quicker, cheaper and more convenient than the armed robbery of the bus. And having talked about the most unpleasant part of the day trip, let's get on to the beautiful things in Sintra, of which fortunately there are many. The first place we visited was the incredible Palacio de Apenas, Pena Palace, one of the residences of the Portuguese royal family in the 19th century and declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995. The palace, built on top of a mountain, deliberately mixes architectural styles that give the building a very exotic and picturesque character. We visited the castle in low season, early in the morning, and bought tickets from the ticket machines at the entrance on the day of the visit. But in high season, it is highly recommended to buy tickets in advance. It is an incredibly busy attraction. You can buy the tickets on the Civitatis website, which sells the basic ticket to visit the interior of the palace. When you make the purchase, you will have to set the time of entry to the palace. You will find the links in the description of the video. Make sure you arrive half an hour before the palace entrance, because it is a nice steep walk through the woods to get to the palace from the ticket office. There is a small bus for a fee for those who want to avoid this walk. You will only be able to enter the palace at the time marked on your ticket. From then on, it's just a matter of enjoying the incredible interior of the building, full of fascinating corners. Beyond the palace, with plenty of content, as you have just seen, are the gardens. But on a day trip to Sintra, you won't have time to wander through the gardens. Leaving the palace, we headed for the second visit of the day. For this, leaving through the main gate, we turned left and followed a mostly downhill path until we reached the next attraction. Castello Dos Mouros, the Moorish Castle, is a fortress built on the rocks in an incredible location overlooking Sintra from above. The first recorded castle is believed to have been built by the Muslims who occupied the Iberian Peninsula. The castle is also on the UNESCO World Heritage List. There is a ticket office at the lower entrance to the castle, or if you visit in high season, you can buy your tickets on the Civitatis website without having to set the time of your visit. You can enter the castle at any time. The castle is a fantastic visit, with incredible views and the opportunity to walk the walls of a fortress. However, it is not recommended for people with mobility issues as there are constant ups and downs. After the visit, we took the bus to the center of Sintra. As mentioned earlier, we wasted a valuable hour waiting for the bus to pass. Others weren't so lucky. With the exception of the Sintra National Palace, with its unmistakable huge chimneys, which we did not visit due to lack of time, there is no essential program in the center. Just wander around discovering wonderful corners. It is time for lunch. We had lunch at the Bacalhau Navilla restaurant, which specializes in cod recipes. We had some pataniscas de bacalhau as a starter, and a main course each, a bacalhau al agarero and a bacalhau al braise. And we take this opportunity to mention the video of the channel, where we talk about typical Lisbon food. A video that will make your trip even more delicious, and in which we talk about the dishes, we just mentioned the dishes we ate in Sintra. After lunch, it's time to try two of Sintra's most famous sweets at the Piriquita Confectionary. A travesero, which is the Portuguese for pillow, which is a puff pastry made with almonds, egg yolks and sugar. And a queixada, a small cake made with fresh cheese, sugar, eggs, flour and cinnamon. With the bus line that was to take us to the next point of interest out of service, a line we remember for which we paid an expensive fare, we took a pleasant stroll to our afternoon visit. In the early 20th century, Antonio Carvalho Monteiro, Portuguese millionaire, bought the land where he had a palace built, surrounded by gardens, lakes and grottoes, mixing architectural styles. The Quinta is full of references to the Templars and Freemasonry, and one of its most famous faces, the Well of Initiation, reflects its owners' interest in astrology, esotericism and the occult sciences. The visit to the Quinta is paid and the tickets are purchased at the door. Once the lengthy visit to the Quinta was over, there's plenty to see, we started our way back to the train station. As mentioned at the beginning of the video, it is a very nice and pleasant walk. We still had time to make a quick stop at the Queixadas da Sapa pastry shop, where, by the way, the queixada we ate was tastier than the one at Piriquita. Back to the station, don't forget to take a look inside the station building, it's very nice. And soon we were sitting on the train and a little later, back in Lisbon. So that was our journey there and back. You may have noticed that the weather was quite bad, with rainfall part of the day still, it was a very nice trip. We had been to Sintra before, in better weather, and needless to say, when the sun shines, everything shines more splendidly. As we did the tour in winter, when it gets dark early, it was not possible to include anything else in our day trip. The visits to the Pena Palace, the Muris Castle and the Quinta da Regalera take time. In summer, with more time, with more daytime, it would be possible to visit the Monserrati Palace, a beautiful 19th century romantic palace built by a wealthy English businessman, which is farther away from the center of Sintra. Or you could also visit the aforementioned Sintra National Palace, which is in the town center. But we believe that, having visited the Pena Palace, the Muris Castle and the Quinta da Regalera, and strolled through the center of Sintra, you will feel very happy when you return to Lisbon. If you have any questions about Sintra, please use the commentary box to ask. If you are planning a visit to Lisbon, you probably have a lot of questions in your head, and in the video you will see now on the screen, we have tried to answer the most important ones. Don't miss it! We look forward to seeing you in that video!