Nov 5 Visit to Sintra, Portugal

On this day, we took a short ride up a mountain  just east of Lisbon.

We went to Sintra, which was the summer palace (at about 500' above sea level) of the Portugal Kings for several centuries.  It gets a pretty good breeze in the summer from off the Atlantic Ocean and thus feels cooler than in Lisbon. 

The first image is of the palace as seen from a taller mountain just to the east. The image is from planetware.com which has an excellent write up of this site as well as excellent pictures.The two tall conical towers are chimneys that vent the two kitchens. 

Another view of the palace is in image 2 from sintra-portugal.com. If I understood the guide, the chimneys were extra high because the fires had to get very hot to cook animals killed during the hunt. The chimney towers were over 100' high. I guess they didn't want the kitchen heat to make the summer uncomfortable.

The third image is taken from the palace looking at the moorish fortresses on the taller mountain (from where picture 1 was taken). We didn't have time to visit those fortresses but, as noted earlier, we did get some nice trips to other castles.

Perhaps the most impressive room of the palace is the room with a ceiling painted with many swans. It was used as the 'great room' for receptions and banquets (fourth image from same place as #1 - a much better picture than I was able to make since, for one thing, I wasn't allowed to use flash). 



On the street there was an actor dressed as an evil knight (beth took this image).

If you gave him some money, he would pretend to kill you. The image of George being threatened was also image taken by Beth). 

That was fun.



The last image (which I got from parquesdesintra, link is here, is from an interesting but sad story. 

King Alfonso VI was a problem. At the age of three, he was incapacitated, either from a genetic condition or childhood disease or both. He became King at the age of 13 in 1656. He was King when Portugal won important battles against Spain in 1659, 1663 and 1666, and, as a consequence, was called Alfonso the Victorious.  Eventually Alfonso VI was deposed in 1668 (his mother was the prime mover in this action) in favor of his brother Pedro II. He was imprisoned in this room in the palace for 15 years before dying at age 40 (1683).