Sea beneath the bridge
An arm of the ocean enters the grounds and runs under a small bridge.
Diego Delso — CC BY-SA 4.0 · prilfish from Vienna, Austria — CC BY 2.0 · prilfish from Vienna, Austria — CC BY 2.0 · Jorge Franganillo — CC BY 2.0
They are entirely different. Sintra is palaces on a mountain inside forest — Pena and Quinta da Regaleira — very crowded and needing booking and planning. Cascais is a relatively quiet coastal town with beaches and fish restaurants. With two days take both; with one, Sintra is the more spectacular and Cascais the more restful.
Boca do Inferno, a rock chasm where the surf breaks, a short walk west of town; the marina and the old streets; and the beaches inside the bay. The coast road west towards Guincho is fine by bicycle or car.
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An early twentieth-century palace on the rocky shore at Cascais, built as a summer house and turned into a museum after its owner left it to the town. The building is the first reason to come: a style mixing romantic, oriental and Gothic elements, with a tower, balconies looking straight onto the Atlantic, and an arm of the sea running beneath a small bridge in the grounds. It was designed to look like a fantasy castle and it succeeds. Inside it keeps its furniture and library: books, manuscripts, paintings, carpets and objects the owner gathered, including rare volumes going back to the sixteenth century. It matters to know this is in Cascais rather than Sintra: a coastal town about thirty kilometres west of Lisbon, reached by direct train from the city in around forty minutes along the shore, a fine journey in itself. Around the museum are a free public park, the rocky front and the ocean, so the area makes a comfortable half day.
An arm of the ocean enters the grounds and runs under a small bridge.
Romantic, oriental and Gothic mixed, with a tower and Atlantic balconies.
Books and manuscripts going back to the sixteenth century among the holdings.
Cascais, on the coast west of Lisbon