We arrived in Lisbon for our 8:00 am disembarkation. We took a taxi to the Rossio train Station, and took a 40 minute train ride to Sintra. Sintra is a mountain town where royalty had castles in the early and late 1800’s. There is also a mountain top Moorish Castle dating from about 1000 years ago.
The walls remained and we were able to climb along the ramparts. It was very scenic because the clouds were blowing in over the mountain top and walls while were we were at this castle. It gave it an air of mystique.
We then visited Pena Palace, which was built by German born Prince Ferdinand. It was built out of the ruins of a 16th century monastery. It was brightly colored on the outside, and had original furniture and decorations inside, which unfortunately, we could not photograph.
We spent a little time walking around the town of Sintra, during which time the cloudiness burned off to a bright sunny day. Then we trained back to Lisbon and took the Metro (subway) to Rossio Square and Baixa, which was a large area full of shops and pedestrian only streets running down to the waterfront.
We took an electric streetcar back to the station near the ship, and were back on at about 4:00 pm, for our 5:00 sailing.
We were docked right next to the 25th of April Bridge (named for the day of liberation in 1974), which was the first bridge across the Tejo river, and was designed and built in 1966 , and is just like the San Francisco Bridge (but slightly smaller), even built by the same company. It carries cars on the top and trains on the lower deck. It was a beautiful sail away, as we passed under the bridge and out to sea.
We will be at sea for the next day (Tuesday), and then make our final stop in the Azores on Wednesday. As the sun was setting, we passed through a large pod of dolphins; they were jumping around the ship. The water was calm, and it was a wonderful sight from our balcony.
We gain another hour tonight and will only be 4 hours different than Eastern Time tomorrow.
Note: We sometimes add pictures and additional information to older posts if we get a good internet connection, so please check them to see if we have made any changes.