Cascais and Sintra 🇵🇹

Cascais had been recommended to us by some friends who had recently been, so we headed there next.

The weather wasn’t great on arrival but we took a walk out to the Guincho beach which is famous for the Bond movie, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, being filmed there. The ocean was wild with huge waves rolling in!

The next morning we cycled along the beach hugging ‘ocean road’, to the centre of Cascais. An absolutely stunning cycle all the way in.

Cascais is a lovely town, inhabited by some of the rich and famous (Ronaldo has property here), and there are lots of nice bars, restaurants and a marina.

We met a couple from the campsite on our way in who are retiring in Cascais and house hunting. The area is a coveted one so houses are few and far between and expensive by Portuguese standards.

We had a couple of pints of Guinness, (thoroughly enjoyed as our first for 6 weeks) and found out a little about the area before taking a recommendation to head out to the market for lunch.

After a cycle back and a rest, we spent a lovely evening with our new acquaintances, Mike and Jin back at the site.

Sintra is heralded as ‘the most beautiful place in Portugal’, so we took the bus there the next day.

Unfortunately we didn’t pick our day wisely to visit. The town and the majority of its attractions sit on a hilltop. The cloud and mist was so low we really didn’t get to appreciate most of the sights.

We hiked uphill for about 45 mins to Castelo dos Mouros, and as we couldn’t see anything from there we continued to Peña Palace. Below are stock photos of what we should have been able to see!

Our views from the Palace were non existent, but the building and its interior were stunning.

Time for an Uber back to site after not the most successful of days.

Maybe we will do a return visit one day when the sun is shining.