Day 59, Ups and Downs

No sooner had we gotten settled into our Lisbon hostel than Ashlee informed me of her many plans for the area.  We are here, by golly, and we will see sights!  She didn't say that, but we are here because she wanted to come and I thought it'd be fun.  Really, I know next to nothing about Portuguese history, unless you count a bit that is related to Spanish history.  In other words, I am here, along for a ride, and Ashlee clearly has some plans (which I somewhat expected, but it did surprise me how much more planned out our time here would be, as opposed to showing up in a place and picking what looked interesting on a map).  But hey, at least she knows what's going down!

As a result of Ashlee's planning and inquiring, we agreed upon going to the neighboring town of Sintra for the day while Ben would be in class, meeting him later for dinner.  Our round-trip train ticket was a reasonable few euros--once we finally found the train station, but only after wandering around trying to remember a map we'd seen so we could find the station and its nearby tourist information center, where we could procure a map of our own of the city.  After going steeply uphill and then realizing we needed to come back down, we finally had success and made it onto our train, maps and tickets in hand.

Forty minutes-ish after leaving central Lisbon, we arrived in Sintra, where we found out that the bus to take us up the mountain would provide a round-trip ticket in exchange for just under 5 euros.  At the end of our bus ride, we discovered just how much a peek at the Palacio de Pena's interior cost: 12 euros!  To further taunt us, there was a trolley car inside the entrance gates to take tourists the rest of the way up--but at a fee, of course.  Disgusted at how much we'd already spent, we opted to do the final leg a pie, without the trolley car, while hoping to get our money's worth.  We decided that a roller coaster to bring us back down would be the only thing to make it worth all of our money spent.  :D

The Pena Palace was certainly a unique structure.  Finally, after a couple of glimpses from the train and at the ticket entrance, and after short jaunt up the mountain, we saw it with our own eyes!  It was originally some sort of Moorish monastery, later converted into some sort of palace.  Its exterior is divided into three main parts, as can be seen in the distinct color themes of each segment.

Next, we headed back down to catch a bus, skipping on the Moorish castle in favor of the Quinta da Regaleira.  In the process, we went up and down and up and down...and up again.  And yes, we made the bus into our own roller coaster ride, complete with throwing our hands in the air!  The vistas, gardens, and hidden doors and tunnels additionally helped make it all worthwhile.

Moorish Castle from a tower in the Quinta da Regaleira gardens

The Quinta da Regaleira itself (a fancy, custom-designed house)

Then "tenebrous" and "phantasmagorical" Initiatic Well, where "Heaven and Earth meet".

Hidden tunnel, anyone?

 Having had our fill of the mountainous landscape and costly monuments, we came back into the city, eventually meeting up with Ben.  I had just mentioned how sick and tired I was of stairs and hills, commenting that our uphill-downhill misadventure to find the train station was a foreshadowing (adumbration, if you will) of the rest of my day, when he informed us that FHE would be an down-up walk.  Oh, Heavenly Father has quite the sense of humor.  But just liken it to life and you can see that every day is filled with its ups and downs, its highs and lows, its rewards and losses.  And yet, somehow all the struggles and hard work do pay off, allowing us to rise above to a higher level, stunning us with marvelous vistas.