Welcome To The Very Colorful Pena Palace!

Have you been to Portugal? Well, if you have then you would have gone to one of the country’s most popular – and colorful – palaces!

Pena Palace is located in Sintra, the mountainous town just a half hour from Lisbon – worth a day trip or two!

Sintra is actually home to multiple castles, palaces and more!

As this map shows, you can spend days visiting here, and since it is so close to Lisbon, you can just hop on a train here as often as you like – amazingly easy!

The train drops you off in town, and yes, it’s a strenuous walk to the entrance of Pena Palace…we took a car from Lisbon and it dropped us off at the official entrance – and yes, from there it’s still another 15 minute hike up to the palace, but no big deal at all!

The Palace begins to reveal it self as you walk – it was originally built in the Middle Ages, when a chapel dedicated to “Our Lady of Pena” was built on the top of the hill above Sintra, less than 30 miles from Lisbon.

There are STRICT arrival times for your tickets, and you can see the entry lines outside – but that keeps the passage into the Palace orderly. Here’s a view from above the line:

Once inside, the ticket says that you can stay as long as you want and roam at will – which we did!

Here’s more history from wikipedia:

In 1493, King John II – along with his wife Queen Leonor made a pilgrimage to the site and it began to expand from there.

For centuries Pena was a small, quiet place for meditation, housing a maximum of eighteen monks.

Today, it is a vibrant and popular destination for locals and tourists alike! So, we did what everyone did and we captured all of the colorful backdrops!

The palace’s unique architecture gave us a lot of opportunities to explore – and to climb atop some of the towers and pose like this:

We each willingly took turn guarding the fortress:

There were also many interior courtyards to explore – this place just seemed to go on and on and on:

Of course, that led to many great photo ops as well:

Here is the entrance to one of the towers, where royalty would gather to eat:

Further inside, you can tour all of the palace rooms: including one that housed this colorful green telephone switchboard:

That led us into a small bedroom where the chambermaid lived, and that opened into the bedroom of the Princess herself:

Room after room revealed great furniture and architecture as well – and stairways went up and down, all revealing new rooms to explore and photograph:

After exiting the interior of the palace, we marveled again at just how far you could see from the towers:

While a car took us up to the Palace gate, we chose to walk all the way back into Sintra, about 2+ miles below us…the walk down was refreshing and fun!

Oh, and a fairly short walk down takes you to a Moorish castle, which we popped into as well:

I will be sharing many more of our Lisbon adventures, like this Moorish castle….that’s still to come, and I also have a tour of Lisbon itself, including the incredible mosaic tiles that are everywhere in town:

There is beauty like this all around you – and as for the food:

I already shared our incredible meal at Cervejaria Ramiro, with an incredible Scarlett Shrimp dish:

You can see all of the feast by clicking on my story here:

Exploring the world is our favorite thing t0o do – where you can arrive at just the right moment to see the beginning of sunset at the “Bridge Of Sighs” in Venice:

This is just one of the photos I captured of this incredible city – see more of them here:

When we were in Beaune France last summer, we got to see this unique Hospice:

So much history to explore – find out all about it here:

That was our first trip to the Burgundy region of France, and we followed it up with our first visit to Sardinia:

I also shared this fun story about our first time on the island of Sardinia, where we ran into a classic James Bond 007 set!

Click here for that story:

We also were greeted in Sardinia by a flaming welcome:

It was wild table side cooking and you can see what the flames were all about by clicking on my story here:

If you enjoy these posts, why not subscribe and never miss out? It’s easy, and there are NO ads of any kind, just stuff I like…click on the main page and “follow” me on the upper right…

https://johnrieber.com

If you enjoy these moments, please share on social media – and get ready for more European adventures….let me know if you’ve been to Sintra!

Categories: Art, Exotic Travel, Memoirs, nature, Pop Culture, Real Estate, Travel, Travel Adventures, Travel Memoir

Tags: Adventure Travel, adventure travel France, all James Bond movies, Beaune Hospice, BEST BOND THEMES, best Burgundy France tourist sites, best James Bond films, Best James Bond movies, best James Bond theme songs, Best James Bond themes, best Lisbon restaurants, best Lisbon seafood restaurants, best Portugal palaces, best recipes, best sicilian recipes, best sicilian wineries, best tart recipes, best tourist sites Burgundy France, best tourist sites in Sintra Portugal, best wineries, Bond theme, Burgundy tourisam, Burgundy wine region of France, Cala di Volpe hotel, Cala di Volpe hotel sardinia, cassatedde recipe, cassatedde recipes, Ceervejharia Ramiro Lisbon, Cervejaria Ramiro restaurant Lisbon, entertainment, Etna wine sicily, European travel adventures, exotic travel, Food, food travel, French tourism, George Lazenby as James Bond, hiking mt. etna, James Bond, James Bond 007, James Bond 007 movie locations, James Bond theme songs, james bond trivia, Lisbon Portugal tourist attractions, Lisbon restaurant with steak sandwich dessert, Lisbon seafood, Lisbon sightseeing, Lisbon tourism, Lisbon travel adventures, movies, Pena Palace Sintra Portugal, Portugal tourism, Sardinia, Sardinia travel, Sintra palaces, Sintra Pena Palace, Sintra Pena Palace Portugal, Sintra Portugal palaces, the hospice de beaune, the hospice of Beaune France, The Spy Who Loved Me, the spy who loved me Sardinia locations, the worst James Bond 007, travel, travel adventures, travel memoirs