This was my third trip to Lisbon and how lucky am I to have great friends in the most beautiful places!?!
We got to our friend’s place in Lisbon late after our drive down and the next day was spent wandering around Sintra. For those of you that have been long time followers here on the blog you might remember I went to Sintra back in 2017. It was so fun to visit back then and see all of the beautiful castles and since Sintra is less than an hour from Lisbon it is an easy day trip and I wanted Ryan to go visit.
Wow, I think my thoughts are holy cow this is a prime example of over tourism and Instagram tourism and what it does to a community. Remember how I said it is an easy day trip? Well, I think everyone in the world must know that somehow. There were just gobs of people everywhere in the town and we were there on a Friday in September and not even peak season!! It truly is beautiful, but there are so many castles in Europe that are similarly beautiful with way less people. There was traffic backed up everywhere and so many lines- I really felt for the people that actually live there. A good reminder of how we should think about how our travel impacts local communities.
So please take all of these photos with a grain of salt as some do show the large volume of tourists and others were strategically taken to avoid the vast number of people.
We started the day at the Regalia and then we visited the Pena palace.
Alright, now for the main reason for our stop in Lisbon- to spend time with our friends! we spent lots of time wandering chatting, saw some sights and enjoyed the beautiful day! Some of the biggest highlights were the food. They took us to this place where you cook your piece of steak exactly how you want it on a hot stone. It was so yummy! They also took us to their favorite francesinha place, did a shot of the local liquor and ate a million yummy nata pastries!
So fun to explore with friends and Lisbon I will be back for another visit very soon!!
❤️Melanie
Smiles from Miles Away 