248.5 - Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra
it's a reference to a board game rather than seeing any stained glass - on another note, Portugal seems to have so many board games named after their cities! Azul/Sintra, Lisboa, Coimbra...
The weather was tryna kill me , I swear.
It was a balmy THIRTY-SIX degrees celsius on the day that I decided to take a day-trip out to Sintra, a 40ish minute train ride out of Lisbon, that is essentially a bunch of palaces that were built on mountains.
I am not good with such heat even on good days, so I made sure that I was being sun-smart; I hydrated, I slipped, I slopped and don't you know it, I slapped.
Look, it was a great daytrip, genuinely. I got to see the UNESCO World Heritage site Quinta da Regaleira (a quirky place where a rich dude wanted to collect stuff and build cool things), Pena Palace (the iconic painted spires and palace) and The Moorish Castle (with no moors* in sight). They were bloody BEAUTIFUL as you can see below.
Here's the main story of the trip though - long, but hopefully entertaining, so enjoy:
So, to go to each of these places, you book a timed entry ticket. I booked Quinta da Regaleira at 10:30am, and Pena Palace at 1:30pm thinking that there would be enough time for me to go to Quinta, walk over to the Moorish Castle to hang for a bit, and then go to Pena Palace in the afternoon (cos it's the iconic Palace to be at).
In the morning while I was still fresh as a daisy and enjoying life, I decided to enjoy the walk up to Quinta da Regaleira, and it was beautiful. There was a nice little breeze, the sun wasn't TOO bad in the morning, and I had bought some pastries so I was feeling okay. The climb was nice in the way nature is designed to shade you from the oppressively violent sun, and the palace was nice in the way that only copious amounts of money can build.
However, when I got to Quinta I wasn't able to fully immerse myself in the beauty of grottoes and freaky architecture and meticulously designed rooms; the whole time I was doing the sums in my head (I did a STEM degree guys) of how long it would take me to get to the Moorish Castle and Pena, and whether I was gonna have enough time to make the entry time. They stress on the website that 'YOU WON'T GET A REFUND IF YOU'RE LATE AND WE WON'T LET YOU IN'. I was waiting in lines for things like the 'Inheritance Well' which, okay, it was worth it, but at the same time preoccupied with 'how long do people NEED at this WELL? like can we get this line moving please???' (see: my hatred of lines in Lisbon). The nice breeze from the morning had been replaced by a scorching sun that was threatening to dehydrate me from vibes alone, and I was frantically looking at Maps, calculating elevations and using their 'typically, people spend 2 to 3 hours at this place' to try and work out what I had to hit before leaving. I'm sure I missed some stuff, but that's okay - you win some, you lose some - and I solved the logistical problem (I did a STEM degree guys).
After rushing through Quinta, I left at around 12pm, and started trying to work out which buses I needed to take up and down. There were tourist buses, local buses, tuktuks, Uber (apparently) or I could just walk. I thought 'hmm maybe I could walk, stop off at the Moorish Castle, and get to Pena Palace in time'.
After mapping it on Google, and looking around at the slopes, I just rejected it instantly - NOPE not enough time, and also, it's fucking HOT. As much as I like to hike (not at all), my linen shirt can only absorb so much sweat (yuck but true). I'll have to go straight to Pena Palace, and I'm going to have to take a bus.
Okay so when do the buses come? Well, from what I could see online, there are two main lines - one which goes towards Quinta (current location), and the other which goes to Pena Palace (desired location). OKAY SO THAT MEANS I'd have to take the bus down the bottom, and then get on the other line, and then get to the Palace. That sounded silly, so I thought 'maybe I can just walk down and find a bus stop that is on the other line'.
Absolute genius move, Vince - call him a Beautiful Mind the way he solved this extremely simple logistical problem.
So I saunter (read: stressed) down the hill, staying on the lookout for a bus stop that said it was going to Pena Palace, navigating down some steps through the forests of Sintra, and wouldn't you know it, I found one just outside of one of the township areas. Great, I thought, I just saved a bunch of time through my extremely good logistical skills.
However, to my horror after waiting in the sweltering sun for another 10 minutes, when the bus did arrive it was FULL. I tried getting on to this hella full bus and the driver just pushed me out going 'sorry, we are completed' as if the bus was a jigsaw that he'd already got the last piece to and had then found a pesky other piece which COULD have fit but the jigsaw was already completed. Metaphors are tricky.
So now it's about 12:40pm, and sure, I've got time (Mr. Incredible voice), but I was still thinking like 'okay, it's the middle of the day, and it's probably peak tourist time from what I saw on the online ordering (Vince's note: all of the timed entries before 1pm were booked out which was why I took 1:30pm), so it's likely that all these buses are going to be FULL to the brim'. So now I'm thinking 'okay I should just walk', dreading it in anticipation.
After resigning myself to the arduous task of climbing a damn mountain for the second time in the day, I overheard a group of three Spanish girls who had been approached by a kinda shady-looking but also earnest-ish tuktuk guy - I don't speak Spanish, but I heard snatches of 'Pena' and decided to just go 'hey are you guys going to Pena Palace' and relieved that they could speak English and said 'yes! this guy's gonna take us for 5 euro each!'
Delight! Lady Luck is shining on Vince on his Quest for Pena Palace.
Now, to give you a sense of the tuktuk, I gotta say that in the city, they also have tuktuks, and they are usually blinged out with music speakers, a cover / tarp on top, some comfortable(-looking) seats, seatbelts and fun interesting decorations that make you want to ride the tuktuk!
This one decided they would go a different way.
It was a shoddy red tuktuk, with some barely functional seatbelts, no sun covering on a majorly hot day, and an engine that helped me understand the definition of "coughed to life" as he turned it on. Throwing my normal caution to the wind as I compared it to the extreme mountainous terrain that I would have to walk, I thought 'well, how bad could it be?'
Like I said before, the palaces are all built on the mountains, which means there would be roads that go...uphill for most of the way. When I tell you that this tuktuk was going as fast as a bike, I'm probably overstating it. We were passed by bikes, other tuktuks (which held about the same amount of people as us), cars, buses, the bus that WE COULD HAVE GOT ON (twice) and in 2 memorable cases, someone running up the same slope.
The Spanish girls who I had joined in with were shouting good-naturedly at our tuktuk driver Andre to 'Vamos! Vamos!' because they had tickets for the 1pm entry, and the speed was...less than ideal. Andre would good-naturedly throw back some lines about enjoying the journey, and going slow is fun etc. Since I couldn't speak any of the languages they were using (Portu-gana they called it, as it was a mix between Portugese and Espana), I was just along for the ride (though I did catch 'despacito' once and knew what it meant so thanks Luis Fonsi ft. Daddy Yankee).
I hate rollercoasters, and I always have. The sense of speed, the butterflies in the stomach, the nausea, the sense that YOU COULD DIE AT ANY TIME IF THIS GOES WRONG. Andre or the tuktuk must have telepathically caught my vibe, because just before we got to the top of this big hill, the engine comically conked out with a bunch of cars, and a bus behind us. We were paused just before the top, knowing there was a downhill to come, and the honking and honking and honking just kept coming behind us as Andre tried to coax this coughing engine back online.
If this had been filmed, it would slowly zoom in on my face as the sounds around become more and more overwhelming, and I would be barely keeping it together as the internal turmoil and stress starts to literally eat away at my organs...and as the engine sputtered and coughed and came back to life, the camera would zoom back out, I would jolt back to reality, and scream.
Andre crawled to the top, let go of the brakes, and roared downhill. As we gathered and built speed with the wind rushing past, I clung on to the frame of this tuktuk for dear life and screwed my eyes shut waiting for it to be over. The feeling of weightlessness that comes with the speed is something that other people love but I definitely did not, because the only thought ringing in my head was 'hey if he doesn't brake in time would I be crushed by the front of the tuktuk or would I be thrown out from behind 20m in the air since this seatbelt is so flimsy?'. Somehow, a little prideful part of me still let out a 'WOOOoooooooOOOoooo' as we went down the slope (highly deserving of an Oscar), so that the girls wouldn't think I was too much of a scaredy-cat.
Anyway, we survived. We got to Pena Palace on time and it was all okay. The girls got to their entry, and I got to sit down and let the adrenaline run out of my system for a bit in the shade while cursing Andre and tuktuks.
I finally got back to the hotel at the end of the day, collapsed, had a quick nap, and woke up again, I decided 'hey I should probably finish the day off better after that harrowing experience' so I went out to listen to some fado music (traditional Portugese music that relates to 'saudade' - a term which kinda means nostalgia) at this random place recommended by Google - it was a really lovely live music experience (they rotated singers, and I love that the owner sung as well - absolute #goals to own a little bar/restaurant with nice little snacks and sing little songs every night).
Chat soon :)
Let me know if you have any feedback for the newsletter!
* this is both a reference to moorland as well as the titular Moors, both of which were not present