Outside of Lisbon is a small town called Sintra. It's about a 30 minute train from Lisbon to Sintra, so we headed that way to spend a day. We arrived close to lunchtime and were pretty hungry, so we stopped at a little cafe near the train station that I'd read about on TripAdvisor. The best part Bout our lunch was our server. Yuneski Is originally from Cuba, but moved to Portugal about 14 years ago. The minute we to,d him we were from Saint Louis, he started talking baseball. His favorite players are John Jay and Yasiel Puig and he knew a LOT about the Redbirds. He told us he was looking for a Cardinals hat, but it was very expensive to order one online since the taxes were so high. Fortunately, we had friends that were flying into Lisbon the next day and we were able to get in touch with them to get him a hat. A few days later, we made the trip back out to Sintra to deliver the goods. Cardinal Love all around the world!

Cards hat, direct from STL making the trip to Sintra!

After lunch, we hit up a fantastic park situated on a hillside that was absolutely stunning. We climbed all over its trails and wandered around, coming out down near the city center.

There are several things to see in Sintra: the Palace, an old Moorish castle and Quinta De Regalira.

We decided to spend most of our day at Quinta De Regalira. Imagine if Missouri Botanical Gardens and City Museum had a baby and that baby grew up to be really into Alice and Wonderland. This was kind of what it was like: a HUGE garden with secret paths, waterfalls, columns and stone features everywhere, all surrounding a giant home. We spent about four hours walking around and I'm certain we didn't see everything. It's was just...enchanting.

One of the many cubby holes formed from stone.

Hidden in the center of the massive garden was an underground turret, reaching up to the sky.

We also went up the mountain and looked at the Moorish castle as well as for a glimpse of the Portugese Palace, but we were pretty wiped out after that big hike. One of my favorite days.