Sintra 
Had an absolutely marvelous time Sintra. We left on Friday morning and it's
Sunday now, we just got home a few hours ago. Sintra is a VERY tourist-y town.
If Portugal gets 20% of its national income from touris, Sintra must be 
getting about 50% of its income from the business.

We stayed in an AirBnB near the train station, one of a row of houses that
all face the mountain atop which Pena Palace sits, with a grand view of
Sintra's old town across a valley full of lush plantation. At night a
crescent moon rose over the ring of lit castle walls on the mountaintop.

All of our transportation was using the same metropolitan transit card that
we use to get around Setubal, the Navegante card. We reached Sintra via
a bus and then a train, and in Sintra we took the local circular route bus
to reach the palace atop the mountain. Incredible!

Right now it's an "off" season for tourism. According to a local waiter
the tourism picks up again in November for Christmas, and again next April
for the summer. Despite it being an off season the place was crawwling with
tourists. Lines weren't bad, but they definitely existed. LOTS of Americans,
LOTS of Boomers. But we also saw Icelanders, French, Norwegian, and many
others. 

Pena Palace was the first day, and the line for that was pretty long because
the day was sunny and bright. We got in line at the entrance to a long
tunnel that switchbacked up the front of the palace, then climbed some stairs
before being admitted in batches.

Inside the palace was your usual billionaire-carcass: lots of gaudy,
uncomfortable-looking furnture, but truly incredible wood- and stonework that
must have employed crafstpeople for years. The views were INCREDIBLE. From
atop the mountain you can see the ocean to the west, and miles to the east. 

The second day we went to the Quinta da Regaleira to see the Initiation Well,
an "inverted tower" that descends 27 meters into the ground in some kind of
billionaire's fantasty of Templar knights and Rosicrucian rituals. I've been
eager to see both of these for a very long time, having watched innumerable
YouTube videos and travel documentaries. They were not disappointing, they
were a lot of fun.

Oh and we learned the hard way to order our tickets in advance - we got to
the Quinta at noon, but the only tickets left for our entrance were at
4:30 pm., so we spent much of the afternoon wandering about passing the time.
It wasn't bad, but it was educational - if this had been tourist season we
probably would not have gotten tickets that day. As it was we showed up at 
the gate to the Quinta at 4:00 for our 4:30 admission, and by the time they
let us in the line was disappearing down the road and around the curve.

The first night in Sintra we had a delightful Indian dinner, easily the best
Indian we've had since we left the States. The butter chicken was exceptional.
For lunch the second day we stopped at a pizzeria in the Sintra old town that
was also very good, the cheese on the pizza was noticably fresh. 

Oh, and last night when we returned, exhausted, from our day on the streets,
we watched "Gattaca" on somebody's Amazon Prime that they'd left logged in
to the room TV. Holy crap that movie aged like WINE. It's as stylish and
watchable now as it was before Maya Hawke was conceived. I was glad to see
it again.  

I was punchy for a trip before we left and Sintra was very satisfying. Our 
next trip is in two weeks when we're headed into Lisbon to see Joseph
Gonzalez. Wo0T!