After leaving, the beauty that is Pena Palace, we headed over to our next sight in Sintra – the Moorish Castle (or The Castle of The Moors – depending on which version of the name you prefer).
The Moorish palace is actually a short walk from Pena Palace (or at least, from the entrance of it) and is a logical next stop after you’re done marvelling at Pena Palace.
The view from here is also pretty great as not only does this have a great view of Sintra, it’s also got Pena Palace and The Palace of Sintra in the backdrop.
Luckily, by the time we got here, the sun was kinda out and the castle grounds sprawled out right in front of us – waiting to be explored.
That’s the Palace of Sintra below… and you can even see the amazing Quinta da Regaleira from up here too!
Now I don’t know if it’s just me but from one end of the castle, it kinda looks like The Great Wall of China (do you see what I mean below?)
Unlike Pena Palace, there aren’t too many little rooms, nooks and crannies to run off into (there is climb to the highest point of the castle) and so, a visit here doesn’t take quite as much time as one to Pena Palace.
The next stop on our visit was to Pena Park. Now, this is technically still part of the Palace but the walk here ain’t no joke, especially if you’re short on time so it made so much more sense for us to walk down to the Moorish Castle before carrying on to the Park.
The park is something of an elaborate Portuguese affair, right now to the staggered ‘lakes’ running through the middle of the park down to the black swans you find swanning around the park. (Sorry, I couldn’t help myself! 🙂 I know how awful that attempt at a pun was…).
In retrospect, I would have loved a lot more time to explore the park slowly, perhaps even pack a picnic to chill out and relax here (not sure if that’s allowed but I can’t see why it wouldn’t be – there was anything saying otherwise).
By the time we’d wandered around the park for a bit, I very quickly realised with our flights back to London in just a few hours, there were just some places in Sintra that I would have to save for another time.
With that in mind, decided to skip some of the more obvious attractions (mostly because they would be closing soon anyway) and head over to a stunning but perhaps lesser-known attraction in Sintra.
Read more: Best things to do in Sintra
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