Palace of Pena

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After visiting the Castelo dos Mouros, we headed to the Palace of Pena.  

 As I look back on this trip, we should have considered flopping these...potentially.  While we were able to get on the bus right away up to the palace, we ended up in a 30 minute line to get inside the palace.  We had bought tickets in advance -- through the same site we bought the Castelo dos Mouros tickets.  I am not sure if we had gotten there earlier, would we have been able to avoid the line.

 To get up to the palace, we ended up purchasing the bus ticket.  It was about 2-3 EUR each and included a round trip up to the palace and back.  The buses seemed to be coming rather frequently.  After just climbing up to the Mouros, it was nice to sit on the bus for the fairly steep climb up to the Palace of Pena.  We did not use the bus on the way back, opting to walk down instead.  I was pretty pleased with that decision.



Jason waited in line and let me get out of the sun and rest my ankles for some of it.  That being said, it was also a good opportunity to look at the outside of the buildings, which are pretty spectacular.  The building had undergone a massive renovation fairly recently restoring the buildings to their original colors.


We saw this beautiful grotto while waiting in line. 

We finally got inside.  They were limiting the number of people inside, but seriously was still pretty busy.  I could tell why they were limiting the number of people in - you could really only peek into rooms from the hallway, so it was hard to get a lot of people through.
Gorgeous courtyard within the palace -- look at that ornate fountain







 About halfway through the tour of the house, we got to go out on a balcony for some new views of the palace.  


I could go on and on about the tile within the building.  It was really well worth the wait.  The combination of Moorish and baroque styles was impressively over the top.


We ended up walking down the hill to the exit.  The park was really pretty.  Jason had to see the duck pond!  We ended up leaving the park not where we came in...so I did not get a chance to investigate the gift shop, unfortunately.    

 Times visited: 1
Time in castle: 2 hrs
Overall: A
Location: Estrada da Pena, 2710-609 Sintra, Portugal

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