Royal Palace in Sintra, 12th century.

This was one of the most enjoyable palaces that I have visited, what was entertaining about this palace was the painted ceilings in each room. The ceilings painted in the royal palace depicted scenes that was synonymous with events or what that particular room was used for.

Sintra streets.

Royal Palace

Ornate passageways

Intricately carved wooden pieces of furniture

This painted room was the swan room, photos do not do it justice, this is a formal area of the palace that is used for dignitaries.

A larger perspective of this grand room in the palace

Tile influence from the moors.

Ornately carved bed with wood and silver, more tiles on the walls.

Gorgeous tapestries, note the fish tureens,early 18th century Chinese pottery, very valuable.

Cow

Pig or wild boar.

Hen and duck

More tureens, a duck

The above tureen's really appealed to my quirky nature, 18th century chineseware.

This ceiling in the waiting room, depicted 126 magpies, apparently the number of maids employed in the royal palace that gossiped about the king having an affair.

The ship room, this ceiling was painted with many different ships at sea and the overall ceiling looked like a bow from a ship, so hard to capture how amazing these painted ceilings were.

More intricate furniture,

Intricate embroidered hangings.

Antique artworks hung throughout the palace.

Another intricatly painted ceiling, this had the coat of arms of the royal family.

The walls were lined with tiles, depicting scenes of different battles, that the royal family may have been involved in.

Tiles over archways of doors.

It is hard to describe how wonderful the artistry of these painted ceilings are.

The next room we visited was the prayer room, this room had doves painted all over the walls.

Doves on the walls

This was an engraved inlaid table.

An Italian murano glass chandelier.

This royal kitchen has a rotisserie, this is how the meat was cooked in the early days. I could imagine suckling pigs being roasted on this spit.

A very large royal kitchen.

What is amazing about this palace is the two huge chimneys in the kitchen, this is to allow the smoke to escape, they are domed shaped and on the outside of the palace, they look quite impressive.

A murano glass mirror

The gardens attached to the palace.

Inlaid marble fountain in the middle of a room.

This concludes my tour of the palace, not overly palatial but lots of interesting features.

Portugal, culture, meet and greet.

Our overnight stay in Coimbra was settling into our hotel, dinner buffet style, then to bed, arriving so late into our hotels does not allow for much sight seeing. Next morning we did our city tour, we visited the university and walked down the cobbled pathways to the bottom of the hill, not a great deal to see in Coimbra.

University  Coimbra

What is wonderful about Portugal, is all the amazing tiles featured on buildings.

University steps

Statues throughout the streets of Coimbra.

Cathederal in Batalha

More wonderful tile pictures.

We departed for  Lisbon, stopped at Batalha for wine tasting. We sampled two ports and two dessert wines. I really enjoyed the almond liquor.

 After our wine sampling we travelled to Fatima for lunch and to visit the Cathederal. Most of the Cathederal was closed due to restoration works.

Fatima

Resting place of the three shepherds in Fatima

There were amazing amount of people in the is holy place, a lot of people were seen doing penance by crawling on their knees, a very long distance to Fatima, for repentice of their sins.

Candles could be purchased and just thrown into a fire pit, there was a long line of people waiting to place their candles.

People doing penance had quite a distance to crawl, must have sinned badly.

After Our Fatima visit, we continued onto Lisbon, arriving at 5.30 pm, after 1 hours rest we all got ready to go to our Fado night.

Fado is traditional in portugese, very sad poems that are sung, short and hard to understand when you do not speak portugese. An enjoyable night was had by all.

Luso,the restaurant where the Fado show was held.

The next day we did an optional tour to Cascais, a seaside resort town where we had lunch and sampled the sardines....delicious.

After lunch onto Sintra, what a gorgeous spot, on top of a mountain, which reminded me of Sorrento without the sea. We visited the royal palace, what an amazing place. I need to do a separate blog about the royal palace due to the most amazing painted ceilings and 18th century Chinese tureens.

In love with the tiled street signs.

That evening we met Teresa, a friend that we met 2 years ago in South America, we spent an enjoyable few hours together, so wonderful to explore the city of Lisbon with a local.

Lisbon has seven hills and to get to the top of these hills, elevators and funiculars are used.

View over looking Lisbon.

Gorgeous tiled buildings in Lisbon 

A tour of the city revealed lots of monuments, Lisbon is a great city to visit.

This monument of discovery and Christopher Columbus travels.

This bronze statue is of a famous  portugese writer.

The fort on the Tagus river.

We also visited the Cathederal in Lison,,starting to become ABC (another bloody church).

Lison or Lisboa as the portugese like to call it has the most amazing aqueduct going over the city, no longer in use, last used in 1963.

This concludes our visit to Portugual, we stopped at a small village called Beja for lunch and then renters Spain, more to come with our Spain adventures.