Visiting the Park of Pena Palace

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This summer has been ever so busy! We have had works in the property and I have had nearly no time to write the blog! Therefor I have asked some special people and guests to write about their Sintra experiences and share some interesting hints of what to do - that is not the most obvious to all the visitors. The first people are Siiri and Elena - two students on a budget visiting Sintra. Here is their experience up in the mountain, more specifically, visiting the Park of Pena Palace.

My friend Elena and I had the most magical time in the Sintra mountain. One beautiful day, we went to the town center and bought freshly made bread from a pastry shop and decided to have a picnic in the Pena Palace gardens, which apparently most people tend to ignore, only visiting the palace itself. We found a deal in the local shop for the entry tickets to palaces and gardens in Sintra which was 20 euros for each of us to get into practically all of the major sightseeing spots, saving us 18 euros. This was fantastic because we were on a student budget. We had the option to take public transportation up to the Pena Palace, which, we realized, would have resulted in a long wait, as August is the peak season. So, we opted to take the horse carriage up the mountain giving us the opportunity to enjoy a refreshing ride and better views. Sharing the carriage meant we paid 15 euros a person to get this different experience, rather than taking the over expensive bus or hiking up the mountain, thus keeping us within the daily budget as we had already paid a few euros for our picnic.

The horse carriage left us at the bottom of the garden. We cannot stress enough how we were completely surprised with the beauty and the complexity of the gardens: beautiful vegetation from across the globe and intricately designed gardens with lakes and romantic spots, like arabic fountains. It was a perfect landscape for our picnic (and cheaper than eating at a restaurant). There was a recently opened, restored chalet, which was built by King Fernando the 2nd for his lover, Countess of Edla, a famous opera singer (who later became the king's official wife). This Chalet looks like it was designed for a Disney movie. Also, one can see the garden had different influences, and this was because different zones of the gardens were constructed by Kings from different eras and thus different styles developed. After seeing both the gardens and the palace we were surprised that people opt only to see the Palace and not the gardens, because we found the gardens absolutely amazing!


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