I can't believe it is June already...wow, where has time gone?!
Anyways, a new month shall commence the first of many travel posts.
Be aware these posts will be super long and picture filled!
So my Iberian Peninsula story starts when we left Toronto on an overnight flight to Lisbon.
Some of my airplane essentials :D
(Not pictured: wine.)
We drank half a bottle each on the plane and passed out until the morning when we arrived in Lisbon!! I can't explain to you how excited we were lol we literally ran out the doors of the airport into the city. ...And then realized we had to go back inside to take the metro downtown where our hostel was located. I couldn't get over how nice it was outside!
After dropping off our things, we grabbed breakfast (coffee and a pastry, of course).
(I'm happily holding up my pastry in this picture btw)
We were ready to head to Sintra in our hiking gear and runners!
We took a 40 minute train ride to Sintra and started hiking up towards Castelo dos Mouros.
I can't explain how tired and exhausted we were. The fact that the weather was also bipolar didn't help. We were constantly taking off our sweaters and putting them back on. Also, we somehow hiked up the scenic route and took about 2.5 hours to get to the Castle. Was it worth it? I'm not sure I can say yes to that, even with these views from Castelo dos Mouros.
After walking around the castle (more like running because there were HUGE black bugs flying around everywhere - we were terrified), we were on our way to hike to the next attraction:
Palácio Nacional da Pena
I'm not sure what this castle was for or what it did. We were too tired to read anything about this place lol oops! We just took pictures and left.
We found a bus to take us back down to the city centre (best 5 euros spent!!!!). I honestly can't imagine hiking back down. Anyways, since we had not eaten all day (did not expect to be up there in the mountains for that long), we settled down quickly and ordered a salad and their seafood specialty for lunch.
The best post-hiking meal we could have had.
And that was it! Goodbye Sintra :) you have been conquered.
After passing out on the train ride back, we had some more energy and headed back out into the city for a walk. Something you must know about Lisbon is that the maps you use to navigate around the city do not tell you that the two itty bitty roads you have to go through to get to your destination are actually huge hills you have to hike up.
At least we got this view?
Being exhausted again, we decided to just sit on the patio of the next bar we saw, and that we did.
After a while, we decided to go have dinner.
I searched up what was a good place to eat nearby us with the help of Zomato, and found 100 Montaditos. Click here if you'd like to see what I ate there!
My favorite dish at 100 Montaditos was this amazing charcutier and cheese board with our obvious choice of beverage in Europe. (y)
After dinner, we walked back to the hostel and passed out in our cute little bunks.
5am wake up call to go to Madrid tomorrow!
Stay tuned :)
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