Sintra's Misty Palaces: A Romantic's Daydream

Sintra wears its fog like a costume. Even in summer, the hills above the village seem to invent their own weather, and you can leave Lisbon under a hard blue sky and arrive forty minutes later inside something that looks halfway between a forest and a dream. Locals will tell you that this is exactly why the kings of Portugal kept building palaces here.

The obvious target is Pena Palace, with its yellow and red towers visible from the train. Go early. By eleven it is uncomfortably crowded, and the magic dissolves under a sea of selfie sticks. The first bus up the hill at opening time is worth setting an alarm for. Inside, the rooms are kept exactly as the royal family left them when they fled in 1910, with breakfast still half set on the table in one of the parlours, which is one of the strangest small details in any palace in Europe.

After Pena, walk or drive down to the Quinta da Regaleira. This is the place that turns even the most cynical visitor quiet. The gardens are full of hidden tunnels, fake ruins and a deep spiral well meant for symbolic initiation, where you descend nine floors into the earth by torchlight and come out through a grotto by a small lake. It feels less like a tourist site and more like a story that someone started building in stone and never finished telling.

For lunch, skip the cafés right next to the palaces and walk into the old village. Tascantiga does small plates and good local wine, and the queijadas, those tiny cinnamon and cheese pastries Sintra is famous for, are best bought warm from Piriquita on Rua das Padarias. End the afternoon with a tea at Lawrence's, said to be the oldest hotel on the Iberian Peninsula, and watch the light change on the green hills outside the window.