Castles and market
Some new friends brought me to the Cascais Saturday market to stock up on fresh fruit, vegetables, and bread. Strawberries are in season. The market had a good fish section (like a smaller version of the Mercado Centrale in Santiago without the restaurants). Cascais is west of Lisbon, out where the coast turns north and the nearby Cabo da Roca is the westernmost point of mainland Europe.
Then we went up to Sintra, is a magical little town in the coastal mountains with lots of castles and palaces and pretty woods and walking paths. It’s where the kings from Lisbon spent the summer staying cool up in the forested mountains with a good breeze off the Atlantic. The old Moorish Castle, which was built on top of rocks and looms on a mountain over town, is a great place to do some exploring: lots of nooks and crannies in the rocks, sort of like Mohonk, with some good bouldering possibilities. One awesome, perfect-width chimney about 40 feet up. The castle has secret passages and “traitor’s gates”. These are either for (1) people who want to let the enemy in or (2) people who decide they’ve had enough fighting and want to bail out.
Some new friends brought me to the Cascais Saturday market to stock up on fresh fruit, vegetables, and bread. Strawberries are in season. The market had a good fish section (like a smaller version of the Mercado Centrale in Santiago without the restaurants). Cascais is west of Lisbon, out where the coast turns north and the nearby Cabo da Roca is the westernmost point of mainland Europe.
Then we went up to Sintra, is a magical little town in the coastal mountains with lots of castles and palaces and pretty woods and walking paths. It’s where the kings from Lisbon spent the summer staying cool up in the forested mountains with a good breeze off the Atlantic. The old Moorish Castle, which was built on top of rocks and looms on a mountain over town, is a great place to do some exploring: lots of nooks and crannies in the rocks, sort of like Mohonk, with some good bouldering possibilities. One awesome, perfect-width chimney about 40 feet up. The castle has secret passages and “traitor’s gates”. These are either for (1) people who want to let the enemy in or (2) people who decide they’ve had enough fighting and want to bail out.
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