After our afternoon exploring Cascais, I’d definitely worked up quite the appetite so I pretty much hot-footed it to the car as fast as possible to the car when it was it time to leave.
Well, there’s that and the fact that we were already quite late for our appointment back at Penha Longa, our hotel in Sintra.
The appointment in question was all food-based and started off with us making sushi with the in-house chef (*the best kind of sushi in Europe tends to come from places like this Cascais and Sintra that are by the sea/ocean and hence know a thing or two about fish).
Chef Pedro Almeida is the big boss of the Japanese restaurant here – Midori and is so much fun to spend time with.
He’s rather impressive in the kitchen but genuinely just a funny guy and time with him fly by very quickly.
Before you know it, you’ve whipped up a storm (okay fine, he’s the one doing all the storm-whipping but you kinda helped so that counts too) and can look back in pride at your amazing work, before wolfing it down in seconds!
Once we were done in the kitchen, we went back to get ready for dinner (I snuck in a bit of Instagramming) before heading back down for dinner properly.
Dinner was pretty much a ‘surprise me’ kinda thing as the chef prepared us a rather elaborate tasting menu.
(FYI, if this kinda stuff takes your fancy, you should speak to the team at the Penha Longa Resort as they can organise this for you. You can also just opt for your traditional a-la-carte dining, of course).
We started off with some tuna, swiftly followed by salmon and then some maki rolls…
Then came out even more delicious Portuguese takes on sashimi and Japanese soups before making our way over to an amazing lamb dish (*the crayfish and eggs bit wasn’t actually part of our meal, we were sat at the preparation table so some other lucky bugger got those).
Dessert came in the form of a chocolate cube cake infused with green tea and bowl of what I now refer to a merry-berry-delight! Summer fruits, sorbets, crumble and wisps of fruit-infused creams. *licks lips* Absolute perfection.
Suffice to say, I was so grateful for the fact that we were dining in the resort as that meant that I could pretty much roll myself up to the bed, well and truly merry after all that wine and stuffed full to the brim with the delicious food!
A brilliant way to round off a fantastic day.
The next morning, we arose to even more of that amazing Portuguese sunshine and hurried finished off breakfast before hopping back into the car.
Today we would be exploring Sintra’s amazing sights so you can just about imagine how excited I was.
In the old part of Sintra, we decided to start off with what is arguable one of the most famous sights in Sintra, Pena Palace.
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