Land of Castles
For the final planned day in Lisbon, we took a train from the main square to Sintra - the old stomping grounds of Portugese royalty. It is absolutely chock-full of castles. We walked from the train station, through the forest and up the hill. It ended up being a pretty significant stroll - about 3 miles to the Palace de Pena grounds and up 1100’, but there were awesome peek-a-boo moments whee you could see the town and its castles.
We got tickets on the phone before visiting the palace which turned out to be the right move. There were hordes of people waiting to get tickets from a window. The palace is perched at the top of a hill and the grounds are absolutely gorgeous:
Everyone and their mother also thought that it was a good day to come visit the palace and the lines were quite long. It was a bit too much people wise and we did not linger inside the palace proper. We walked down through the gardens, and got a late lunch in Sintra. There was another castle that we visited - built in a very different style, but still quite pretty.
Then we took the train back to Rossio and had dinner. I’m heading north of Porto to a town called Povoa de Varzim as I somewhat frantically come up with an approach that will allow me to actually begin the project part of my project - focusing more on healthcare equity across the globe. I’ve been sending out rapid bursts of cold emails to countries that I can visit- but have not gotten any affirmative responses, so I guess that I will just show up somewhere in a few days. In some ways, I suppose it is good to get the everything is going to the dogs and the original plan is no longer viable part of Watson out of the way, was going to happen at some point.