The starting point: Sintra, it's one beautiful little city with a lot of history and architecture, that i will largely present with other occasion, because it is so much to say about it.
So, from downtown Sintra we had to go up mountain to one of the castles (there are 6 or so in Sintra) where was the starting point of the journey. Needless to say that this road was a total adventure where we ended up trespassing some private gardens, run across the owners (who were kind enough to let us continue our walk through their gardens), had to climb on rocks to jump some very tall walls because the backdoor was closed and the owners gone....all of that just to get to the castle and find out that the road it's actually on the opposite direction. Duh!
After we finally found the right way we begun entering the forest....which is absolutely amazing as you can see from the photos. The vegetation is very strange from the one is Sintra ( where it's very tropical with palm trees and stuff like that)...the trees are only pines and eucalyptus (you can imagine the amazing smell????) and there is little to no grass...so you can actually see the brown earth and yellow rocks of the ground.
The first stop after God-knows-how-long-of-a-walk (around 3 hours, maybe more...) we got to our first stop: Convento dos Capuchos, a monastery built in the 1500 by the Capucin Order.
Great place.Great building.Great memories.
The building is made to be in communion with nature, and all the materials used are local stones and cork and wood...so from some points you can't actually see the little building.
Also, I was amazed about the poverty that these monks lived in. I mean, I know there were supposed to, but common, a room for one monk was about 1m square....how did he slept??!!
Anyway, the place is worth seeing, and the 6.50 euro ticket was totally worthed to see the complex and surroundings (after visiting the building, you can go up the mountain to see other points of interest of the monks, where if you are daring enough to climb the rocks you can have an amazing view of the cities on the ocean's coast - see the pictures- and that were actually our next stops on the way)
Our next stop was the Sanctuary of Peninhas...that it's 3 or 4 km away (on the map) but actually it was more like another 3 hour trip climbing up the mountain ( I honestly think there were 8-9-10 km)-anyhow,the road was amazing, and the nature again, mesmerizing.
We even found a really, really creepy place with some sort of abandoned swing that looked like a scene from a horror movie- I must tell you that there are a lot of stories about how the forests of Sintra are filled with ghosts- after seeing it for myself, I kinda believe them.
By the time we arrived to Peninhas a really think cloud entered/settled in the mountain (beacuse the church it's on the very top) so we were not able to see anything there - but I will definetly go back there another time to fulfill my mission and tell you guys about it!
After that disappointment, the darkness begun to take over the forest so we kinda left in a hurry and begun to search for the nearest village where to look for shelter....which was: Azoio.
And from there, I will tell you what happened next time, in part 2 of the story