Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Sintra (by Luke)


    People say that Sintra, Portugal is a must see when visiting Lisbon, so we decided to go. The first thing that we did was go to the tourist booth and get tickets for two places, Castle of the Moors and Pena Palace. We hiked up to the Moorish Castle because we hike to everything, plus we had already parked. The walk was uphill which was a good workout. We all agreed that no sane army in their time period would ever attack them because the trek up was hard. This explained why they were never attacked. This has been a recurring theme of what ancient people wanted as their land. This is because there were no air raids during those times, so they could see the enemy attacking from the land.





    The Castle was really cool. At one point we saw a storm cloud coming and one second we could see 500 feet and then the next we could only see 5! We saw Lisbon and Monte Estoril where we stayed for our time in Portugal. We then climbed up to one point where we saw a glimpse of Palace of Pena where the Royal family used to live. We then climbed down and took a peak at their cistern. I wish we could have seen moor but we had to see the Palace of Pena.* We ate lunch and then hiked up to the Palace.

    The first thing we saw was a Buttress which Maggie and Mommy especially liked. The colors there were amazing. There were a ton of blues and oranges that mixed very well. We then went inside the Royal Palace. We saw the King's bedroom, the Queen's bedroom, the lounge room which they used to talk privately with royalty only, and an enormous ballroom. I noticed that their floors were very squeaky. This is because in case of somebody trying to come in and rob them the guards would know where the person is and then kill them. I also noticed that a lot of Royal families own very fancy china. 





    We then almost got lost coming down the hill. I really liked how the Moorish Castle was not like any of the other castles that we saw in Japan, Jordan, and other places. This one had a more European feel to it even though it was built by Northern Africans. I also liked the Pena Palace because it was more like the Hagia Sofia because it looked like a Mosque but had a ton of golden colors like the Hagia Sofia. It was really fun in Sintra except for the part about a few bug bites.

* Did you catch the pun in that sentence?

1 comment:

  1. I did catch the pun. I thought you had made a mistake so I laughed out loud when I saw your comment about the pun. I love puns so give me moor of them.
    When we were in Sintra, Papa had blistered his feet horribly from hiking in shoes that had not been worn in sufficiently, so we spent a lot of time and money buying every type of foot bandage imaginable.

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