Joining Stevenson's Timeless Thursdays.
Friday is my day off work, and as sat down to breakfast and checked my phone, I was reminded that exactly 3 years ago I was in Sintra (Portugal) and a few photos of our visit to this beautiful town popped up. I really felt nostalgic thinking about that trip and how I'm missing family and travelling.
This was the only time in about 20 years that we had managed to get together the whole immediate family from my side and from Jose's side for a double event - our daughter's engagement and grandson's Christening at the end of August.
I call it my United Nations Family, as they are spread around the world and in 2017 they came to Portugal from South Africa, Angola, The United States, Netherlands, Azores and Australia for the celebrations.
In the second week of September, two of the Doctors from the Clinic where I work, and the husband of the female Doctor, arrived on their first visit to Portugal, and I took them around Lisbon, Cascais and Sintra. They loved Portugal, the food, the friendly people and vowed to visit again.
And here are some photos of the day spent in Sintra with the Doctors and my daughter Karina - exactly on the 11th of September.
We started by visiting Sintra's National Palace, or Town Palace, as it is located in the village of Sintra, a very well preserved medieval royal residence, which was inhabited from the 15th to the 19th century by the various Portuguese royal families.
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The Drs and I (on left) at the National Palace
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View of Sintra from the entrance to the Palace - Moorish castle atop the hill
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The palace has exquisite themed ceilings and tiled walls.
After this visit we drove up the Sintra mountain to the Pena Palace , one of Portugal's most visited monuments, with it's distinctive red and yellow walls.
It's a fairytale palace and certainly worth a visit. It is surrounded by beautiful gardens, but we didn't have much time to visit those.
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Pena Palace seen from the road below
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Part of the Palace gardens seen when we walked from the car-park to the palace |
Ken, Jenny, Karina, Sami and Alexander
And there was so much more to see in Sintra... next time!
Hope you enjoyed visiting or revisiting some of Sintra's beautiful monuments.
You can read more about them by clicking on the links highlighted in pink.
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Castle of the Moors |
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Pena Palace, Sintra - in tiles
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Aerial view of the Pena Palace from above - taken from a photo
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