Wednesday – 8 August 2018

Another Day, another World Heritage Site!

As our guest Teresa had visited Lisbon a number of times before, there was no urgency to go there today, we plan to accompany her to Lisbon tomorrow before she flies home, and Tricia and I will spend the rest of the day there.

So today we went to Sintra, a picturesque Portuguese town that is set amidst the pine-covered hills of the Serra de Sintra and part of a National Park. This hilly and slightly cooler climate enticed the nobility and elite of Portugal, who constructed exquisite palaces, extravagant mansions and decorative gardens. We walked through both the modern and the historic areas of the town and could see the various mansions and villas that had been built there.  The town is very full of tourists, and seems much more commercially savvy than Batalha was. As several of the major sites are located well away from the centre of the historic town and at the top of significant hills, there are two separate “Hop on, hop off” bus services run to different areas of the sites.  We took the one which visited the Moorish castle and the Palácio da Pena.  This wound up a tortuous single-track road which had parked cars lining one side. The bus driver must know the dimensions of the bus pretty well, because he was only a couple of inches from the sides at times.

The Castelo dos Mouros was constructed by the North African Moors who ruled over the region between the 8th to 11th century. The castle had a dual purpose, primarily as a stronghold to guard the fertile lands of Sintra, and secondary as a fortified lookout, with views over the ocean and to the north (where the early Christian Portugal was establishing itself). The castle had little strategic importance after the Christian crusaders drove the Moors out of Portugal, and was left to collapse, being severely damaged by fire and earthquake. It was only restored with the construction of the Pena Palace (19h century), as a decorative feature for the grounds of the palace, intertwined with the ancient forests, and hidden paths leading to wonderful vantage points. The spectacular views from the battlements justify the steep climb even after the bus has dropped you off. I am glad that they have not sanitised the castle by adding modern day safety features, this would destroy the authenticity.

We reached Sintra by taking the bus from Cascais and had very different journeys in each direction.  On the way there we had a kind and helpful driver, who was prompting people as to where they should get off and where they needed to go for the next leg of their journey.  The guy on the way back seemed intent on doing the journey as fast as possible.  He would accelerate aggressively and brake very late for junctions and pedestrian crossings, which we had noted are treated most courteously by all other drivers.  At one stage a lady who had stood up to move to the door was catapulted across the bus and ended up in my lap, fortunately with no damage to either of us. 

En route to and from Sintra we passed through another of Lisbon’s well to do outlying towns, Estoril, the home of the Portuguese Grand Prix until the mid 1990s when Portugal was dropped from the schedule.  It is still used for other forms of motor racing and motorbike racing now, and the circuit could clearly be seen from the road. No wonder they could not get enough paying spectators in to make the Grand Prix viable.  It looks a little shabby now, but I was glad to add it to the list of motor racing venues I have seen, we went past Zandvoort, the home of the Dutch Grand Prix earlier in the year.

After arriving back at the marina, we went to the office to check on the arrival of a parcel, which fortunately had arrived today.  This contains replacement zips to allow us to erect our bimini, a sunshade that covers the helming position.  We expect this to be increasingly necessary over the coming weeks.  The zips had been ordered long before we left for this leg of the trip, but had not arrived in time, so we had asked friends to post them on to us.  During the walk to the office, I noticed a sailing boat that was quite a bit bigger than even the biggest other boats. Duly photographed I looked it up on the internet, and it proved to be a 100ft Wally.  For those of you not familiar with this sort of thing, this is not a joke,  there is a very stylish Italian brand of super yacht, called Wally.  You do not see them very often, but they are mega cool. I found pictures of this one competing at the Maxi Yacht World Cup.  I can only dream of these, as they are way, way, way, beyond anything we could reasonable aspire to (although I did see that the Euro millions jackpot was 88 EUR million this week, so….)

Spot the Wally

When we got back to the boat we struck up conversations with the owners of two other boats parked close by, one French and one Swedish.  Both are heading in broadly the same direction as we are, so we will share some stories and experiences, and keep our eyes open for each other as we move forward. None of us plan to move for the next couple of days, the wind has been howling viciously for 36 hours and shows no sign of lightening until the weekend.

Distance covered today	0	nautical miles
Trip distance covered	1083	nautical miles
Distance covered 2018	1803	nautical miles
Steve (and Tricia)