Today we departed Lisbon and hopped a train 45 minutes west to Sintra, a town described as "right out of a fairy tale." Back in the day (the day being the 15th century), the kings of Portugal built summer homes here, where the high altitude and mountain breezes were a relief from steamy Lisbon. However, this is February, so given that Lisbon was cool and rainy, we were a bit worried that in Sintra we'd be in for a chill. Hey guess what! We were right. It's f**king cold here.

We checked into our little room in a hostel near Old Town, and immediately headed to see some of Sintra's many castles. There is a hulking Moorish castle ruin looming over the town on the highest hill, and several other castles dotting the landscape. However, as we entered Old Town, said landscape became a downpour of sleet and freezing rain, so we stood in the entryway of the National Palace and watched the deluge. We didn't actually go into the National Palace- with so many castles to choose from, its blocky ugliness didn't make my cut- but it did make a nice umbrella for thirty minutes or so.

When the storm ended, it became suddenly sunny and lovely, so we took off for the Quinta da Regaleira right outside town. While Quinta da Regaleira is theoretically a castle, it's something different altogether. It was built not by Portuguese royalty, but by a guy with a big ego and a big wallet to match (his nickname was "Moneybags"). And the house-castle itself is actually the least interesting part of the entire site; what is fascinating and weirdly cool is that he had an Alice-in-Wonderland-style garden built, complete with turrets, ramparts, gardens, grottoes, chapels, bridges, fountains, and a wacky waterfall that should you choose to climb behind it, opens up into an entire secret cave passageway system that runs underneath the entire property. There is also another entrance to the caves- it's a "magic well," whereby you must descend 300 meters on a spiral staircase, and you find yourself at the bottom of the cave. It's nuts, and crazy fun, and we spend about two hours playing around despite the constant pouring rain-sunshine-more rain weather pattern.

We continued up the monstrous Sintra hills to Palacio Pena, described as the most fabulous castle in Portugal. The hike up is only two kilometers, but it is STRAIGHT up, so most visitors opted for the five euro bus hitch. However, given that five euro in Portugal buys an entire bottle of wine, we opted for the hike up, uttering famous last words "it's only two kilometers, why would you pay to ride?". Well. That was quite a staircase- two kilometers of a staircase, to be exact- and we had forgotten that the higher up you go, the colder it gets, and the fiercer the wind and rain become. At one point, I asked Matt "why are there soapsuds on the stairs?" to which he noted that was SNOW, not soapsuds. And then, the wind whipped my brand-new umbrella I had JUST BOUGHT IN LISBON YESTERDAY (given that Lisbon killed my first umbrella) out of my hands, split the metal shaft open, and snapped all the metal joints. Did I mention that this hike was hillside, on stairs, with no handrail? Fun times. (really, the Joneses only hike when we can possibly suffer a fatality while saving ten euro)

When we finally got to the top, fifty minutes later (but score! Our guidebook told us it takes "most people" an hour. Take THAT, umbrella killers.), it was truly worth the hike. This castle is like no other I've ever seen, and as a bona fide castle junkie, I've seen a lot. This castle can best be described by saying it appears to have been built using Duplo building blocks, together with a generous helping of architectural ADD. It is yellow and red and blue, and Moorish and Romantic and Manueline, and tiled and stucco and marble and sculptured. It is crazy and gorgeous and I loved it. What I didn't love was the icy, piercing wind that blew through that hilltop unbidden, and froze our already damp clothes and shoes. So at 5pm, we decided to give up on the weather and head indoors- so obviously it suddenly became a sunny afternoon. We figured that hiking down is the EASY part, so we started on down. However, halfway down the mountain, we came to a padlocked gate across our hiking trail, which clearly stated that it was shut at 5pm each day (signs we failed to note on the way up). There was no way on god's green earth we were going to turn around, and hike all the way back up, so we found a side trail that led us all the way down to the park entrance...and it too was padlocked at 5pm. So we did the only thing two tired, frustrated hikers would do in this situation: We scaled the fencing. We literally ended our day by having to break out of a castle. I'd say that was a day well spent.

We had dinner at a small tavern near our hostel, with lots of wine to reward us for our day of walking and scaling an obstacle course (Matt's pedometer noted we walked eleven miles today). We also helped ourselves to several of Sintra's famous pastries, a rolled marzipan confection loved by royalty. Tomorrow we bus it farther north to Nazare by the sea, by way of the walled town of Obidos.