Sintra: a lesson in Murphy's Law

Today we woke up nice and early to start our journey to Sintra for the day. Made our way to the main station (Oriente) and packed our bags in the train station storage. After missing one train by 30 seconds, and having the next get cancelled, we should have known we were in for a long day. Once we finally made it to Sintra, we paid quite a bit for the tourist bus up to Pena Palace... only to find out that it was closed until the afternoon despite us having tickets for 10:30AM! We attempted to go to the Castle of the Moors but again, closed for the morning. We then made our way to Quinta da Regaleira, which was insanely busy because everything else was closed. Throughout all of this, we walked everywhere even though we had an all day ticket for the buses. The bus for the line to Quinta da Regaleira just never seemed to come despite us following the schedule and waiting 15-20 minutes. We had a bus to our next destination at 4:15 and didn't have time to spare. We ended up heading back to Lisbon early and walking to the mall from the train station. On the plus side of all of this I got some new shoes! After a few hours here, we caught the bus to Nazare and got to take in the cute little beach town. The day ended on a good note but we were definitely exhausted from a long day of disappointing adventures.Read more