Sintra part 2

After our first day in Lisbon itself, we went to Sintra for the day, which is where I had gone before to the really cool castle. We went back to that castle, and also visited another castle/palace and the traditional Portuguese palace.
The day we went, the weather was crazy! It was really windy at first, but sunny. After exploring for about an hour, though, it started to pour. After about 15 minutes, the rain stopped, and it got really sunny and a little hot. We took off our jackets, just in time to get drenched by some torrential rain. So we got out our umbrellas and jackets and huddled together until the bus came. It was really nice weather by our next stop, but as we were getting ready to go, it started hailing! 

We next went to the Pena Palace up the hill. This was constructed in 1854. The young prince Ferdinand wanted a cool palace and couldn't decide on what style exactly he wanted it in, so it's a little bit of everything.

It was hard to not feel like we were walking around in a life size minigolf castle, with bright and intense colors, mixes of eastern, arabic and european influences in the architecture.

There's notably a keystone with a key on it.

There were spiky turrets.

While it was one of the weirdest things I saw in all my time in Iberia, this palace was definitely one of the coolest things we saw that day. The inside was as mismatched, beautiful and fascinating as the exterior.

While we waited for the bus to take us to the next place, it started pouring again, this time with hail. The weather was pretty crazy all day, but we managed to get off the mountain and down to the principal Portuguese Royal Palace.

While much more plain than the Spanish palace in Madrid, the Palace was still really beautiful and very distinctly Portuguese. The kitchen was probably the most interesting part, with massive chimneys giving it the appearance of some sort of alien mining operation.