Yesterday was my birthday, so we just pottered about, reading, sitting in the sun, swimming for me, and having a long walk along the cliff top into the next bay. There is a long walking route right round the coast; Portugal seems quite big on long paths. The highlight was the chocolate cake; there’s always cake for breakfast but we’ve never indulged. But today we sampled the chocolate cake and it was so good – intensely chocolatey but not too sweet - it’s made me dissatisfied with my standard recipe.

As this is our last full day we decided not to rush away from the hotel, but to have a long walk along the beach and a swim in the pool before setting off. This hotel was built in the 60s, but inside has lots of nice art deco-ish touches, and there are the huge rooms and the huge swimming pool just to make sure of happy guests. We are both talking about coming back to it for a few days some time, and it might happen as we have totally failed to summon up the will to see Lisbon! We simply don’t want to deal with a large city – the largest towns we’ve been in are Porto, Caceres and Salamanca, and they are quite small. The rest of the time we’ve been in such quiet and beautiful countryside.  So maybe we can have a city break in Lisbon, followed by a couple of days at the beach.

Monserrate

So instead of Lisbon, we went back to Sintra., and saw two more palaces with gardens. The first was Monserrate, which was begun by a very rich English friend of Byron (who visited, and wrote about Sintra). He had to leave England after a scandal involving a sixteen year old boy. No wonder he and Byron were friends. He built some Gothic follies and waterfalls. Then it was bought by a rich but respectable Englishman, who imported one of Kew’s head gardeners, and then by another rich Englishman who built a sort of Mughal pleasure palace, as a summer retreat for the family. The house is gorgeous and the gardens are amazing. There are giant sequoia, a colossal Norfolk pine, a lawn (the first ever in Portugal), agaves, Yucca, agapanthus, camellias – it all smells and looks terrific, although we did miss tunnels and secret doors.

The Duck house

Then we went to an even odder place, the Pena palace. This was built by Queen Amalia’s consort, who was Bavarian, and seemed to have had similar ideas to King Ludwig. It’s based on an old convent, but the rest is built out of reinforced concrete with elaborate doorways, crenellations, Moorish domes, a clocktower –it’s a hoot. The furniture is even more weird and wonderful, all carved and twisty and looking chronically uncomfortable – I bet they would have given anything for an Ikea Poang. There are life size statues of peasants with plant pots balanced nonchalantly on their heads, and Moors with turbans and pointy shoes holding up lamps, and best of all, a set of copper jelly moulds in the shape of a Yorkshire terrier’s head.

The gardens are gorgeous, again, Sintra has this wonderful climate for exotics. There are lakes with black swans and two duck houses built like miniature (about seven foot tall) Gothic towers. Eat your heart out, whichever M.P. it was.

So now we’re comfortably ensconced in the airport hotel, and home tomorrow. We’re really looking forward to it now, though we’ve had a terrific time.