PALACIO DA PENA

I went to Portugal with no expectations at all really. Just wanted to be in the heat. Came back home with a new favorite place and already hoping to go back again and see even more.

Our host Catarina lives in Lissabon, so we had to drive there to get the key to her house in Albufeira. Sooo happy about that. Otherwise we would have missed out on two of the coolest places I´ve seen: Lissabon and Sintra.

Even the 2.5 hour drive from Faro to Lissabon was amazing, with the sun setting over the many hills and valleys. It got more beautiful the further we drove, as we went towards the sunset, making it seem like it lasted forever.

The center of Lissabon is not somewhere you ideally want to be the driver. Imagine the narrow streets of Old Town, Stockholm, with San Fransisco´s hills. Finding a parking spot was also a tough sport. Think we saw every street of Bairro Alto while trying to find something close to the airbnb we had rented for the first night. We didn´t mind though, it was all so pretty.

Eventually found both a spot and our airbnb. Super sketchy entrance but the rest was fine. To be fair though, we just wanted to eat and sleep.

But then food turned into six euro half liter mojitos and before we knew it it was 6am.

Thanks to Sebastian and Joao who showed us this really cool club called Urban Beach, right on the water.

Slept for 2 hours and woke up super awake and ready to head over to Sintra and Palacio da Pena - a palace up in the clouds. And wow. You can´t really see it on the pictures how cool and breathtaking the Palacio da Pena is, but anyway, here are some: