Rebecca, Paul, Michelle, and I were picked up at 0815 by a small shuttle bus for the 30-minute drive to Sintra west of Lisbon. We were on the bus with a Russian couple who recently emigrated to Israel, and two ladies from Haiti who live in Connecticut.
Sintra sits up in the Sintra mountains on the outskirts of the Sintra-Cascais Natural Park. It is a picturesque municipality surrounded by lush-green forest. The key touristic sites are the Castle of the Moors, the Pena National Palace, and the Portuguese Renaissance Sintra National Palace. Due to our schedule, we could only visit the Pena National Palace.
Long before the Pena Palace existed there is a legend that an apparition of the Virgin Mary occurred at the site. Sometime between 1385 and 1433, King John I of Portugal ordered the construction of a small chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Pena. The priors of the Church of Santa Maria in Sintra held Mass in the chapel every Saturday.
In 1511, King Manual I replaced the small wooden chapel with a stone structure dedicated to the Order of Saint Jerome, known as the Monastery of Nossa Senhora da Pena. It was a religious site for 18 monks, complete with a chapel, sacristy, cloister, dormitory, workshops, and a bell tower.
In 1755, the Great Lisbon Earthquake significantly damaged the monastery. The five remaining monks used the monastery for a time until it became uninhabitable beyond repair.
In 1834, the Portuguese Minister and Secretary of State ordered that all convents, monasteries, colleges, and religious houses of all orders be abolished. In 1836, Queen Maria II married Ferdinand II of Germany. Shortly after his arrival in Portugal, he fell in love with beautiful Sintra and purchased the ruined Monastery of Saint Jerome and the surrounding property.
Initially, Ferdinand II wanted to restore the building as a summer residence for the royal family. But later opted for the construction of a palace.
King Carlos I and Queen Amelie of Orleans occupied the palace during the summers until 1910. The Portuguese revolution in October 1910 put the anti-Catholic Republicans in power. Queen Amelie fled the palace to Gibraltar. The Pena Palace became a National Monument and was classified by UNESCO as World Heritage Site in 1995.
We had a nice tour around the Palace with commentary from our guide Diogo. The view from up high in the palace was gorgeous. The line to get inside the palace was extremely long. We did not pay the extra 20 Euros per person. Rebecca had read previously that the tour inside the palace was overpriced because all you would see was old furniture in rooms without explanation.
However, the four other people in our shuttle paid the extra money. Unfortunately, our guide gave them bad advice to avoid the line. Seems their tickets gave them a 30-minute window of time to get into the palace. Our guide told them to wait until 10 minutes before their time window expired, then the line monitors would let them in ahead of the line (because they were nearing the end of their window). Our four shuttle companions tried that, but the line monitor told them to go to the back of the line anyway. They gave up.
We stopped in Cascais for lunch. Our guide suggested we eat at a restaurant that had the best Piri Piri chicken. He was right. The chicken was roasted and then you poured spicy Piri Piri sauce over it. We looked it up. There is a restaurant in Dallas that serves it.
At the restaurant we met a group of friendly Portuguese-Americans. Seems they were born in Portugal but live in the U.S. One of them was born in the mountains of northern Portugal. They come back to Portugal for extended periods of time. They told us that our guide was right. We were in the best Piri Piri Chicken restaurant in Cascais.