10-2 # Lisbon/Sintra Day 2

The streets of Portugal

To the left is a picture of the street from our hostel. I really wish I had pictures from the hostel to put here, but I forgot to get them until right after we had checked out. Anyway, I got up around 8 and relaxed for a bit in the morning while my fellow travelers got ready for the day. We ate food at the hostel (pretty awesome breakfast) and then talked to some fellow travelers. We ended up hooking up with 2 or 3 other groups of travelers to go to Sintra for the day (a little city of castles about 40 minutes from Lisbon).

Our group consisted of an Australian girl, four Irish guys, a Brazilian guy, an Arizonan girl, us five Iowans and one Nebraskan. It was a pretty diverse group!





So when we got to Sintra, we were a little worried about what we were going to do. The first thing you see getting into Sintra is a large hill. A very, very large hill. With a castle on the top that you just know is the one you're here to see :-) Luckily, we found a tour bus to take us up the mountain.

The tall mountain. On the very top is a castle, hard to see from here.

Anyway, we got up the mountain and went into the first castle/fortress/ruins thing that the bus stopped at (there were 2 main stops). We only ended up going into one of the two stops, but we were very with our choice of the first one as our stop. It was a castle wall that wound around the large hill and overlooked Portugal and the little town of Sintra.

This is where we got onto the wall and started our climb

The view from the very top of the castle. The ocean in the background

The cat that followed us from the bottom all the way up the castle wall

After Sintra we went back to Lisbon and hung out at the hostel with our group for a bit before boarding a train back to Cáceres. Writing about it makes it feel like we didn't really do a lot, but it was a pretty loaded and fun day!

More pictures here.