Sintra and Cabo da Roca

Radio stations here played a lot of disco, but I once heard some Gal Costa. The day started cool, but looked like it would warm up. On the way out I passed the luxury Hotel Avenida where birds perching on the neon signs were adding spurious accents to the letters. I wondered how the tracks emanated from Rossio Station, whose entrance looks like any of the other establishments on the Praça. I came to the conclusion that the only possibility was that the tracks burrow into the hillside.


The fare from Rossio to Sintra was a ridiculously cheap 185 escudos. 45 minutes later I was at Sintra. From there it was a short walk to the Sintra National Palace. It was crowded with tourists.

More interesting to me was Pena National Palace, a short bus ride away. It has Moorish architecture and is garishly painted in parts.


It was tricky to find a lunch place, they were all full. Finally I settled for a place next to the town hall. Even so I did not get served until about 1430 when the crowd dwindled. There seemed to be an election on, judging from the posters with candidates.

From Sintra, I caught a bus to Cabo da Roca which is the westernmost point of continental Europe, beating the next contender, Cabo Fisterra (Cape Finisterre), in Galicia, by about 16 km. A stone plaque on the spot proclaims its status. I thought it interesting that people, including myself, would visit a place with nothing much to see but high cliffs just to know they had reached the limit of Europe.

It was a windy day. I must have been in a chatty mood that day, as I noted talking to some Canadian girls in the bus, and Japanese girls, Austrian guys and a Belgian couple elsewhere during this sector.


After Cabo I caught another bus to Cascais where I had been yesterday, to complete the third arm of the quadrangle. From Cascais I walked to Estoril.

At the beach, cabanas serving drinks gave me a foretaste of South America. It was a pleasant evening with families out on the beach.


The restaurant I picked that night was not up to standard. It was noisy, the service was slow, the food was salty, they tried to stick me with extras, and the change was slow coming. I was beginning to look forward to going to the Algarve the next day to get away from the bustle of Lisboa.